7 ms·

Is the US spending billions to educate them, or are they spending billions to be educated here?

by mwint 5y ago

N1H1L 5y ago
The US is. NSF plus DOE Office of Science plus NIH is over 50 billion dollars, of which easily a third is going for training internationals PhDs and postdocs.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
kjeetgill 5y ago
I think most PhDs are paid for by the University, not the students. In computer science, and I'd imagine most other stem at least.
- stevenbedrick 5y ago
  True! But in STEM fields the money to pay for PhD students (tuition, stipends, fees, insurance, etc.) almost always ultimately comes from the Federal government in one form or another. Typically, it'll be paid for out of one of their advisor's grants (which usually are from a Federal source), or sometimes from a training grant of some kind (e.g. an NIH T32 or some such, which is also from a Federal source).
option 5y ago
Yes, and then we send them back to China, Russia and India despite their attempts to stay and contribute here.
krastanov 5y ago
It is very much the exception to pay for a PhD education. You are usually even paid by the university while a grad student. In some fields it might have an opportunity cost (you are paid a very low salary for years as a graduate student/researcher, instead of working in industry).
throwawaygh 5y ago
> Is the US spending billions to educate them One PhD student costs a professor about $100K - $200K per year. A third of that is stipend and the other two thirds is... well, in CS I'm not even sure. A good bit of administrative welfare AFAICT. (Universities don't pay FICA taxes for grad students and grad student healthcare premiums are actually more of a subsidy for the risk pool of the aging faculty/admins than an actually half-reasonable benefit for the grad students.) The US graduates 2K PhDs per year, of which >60% are foreign nationals. So we spend something roughly like (2000 * .6 people) * (150000 $/person) = $180 million per year. So a couple billion per decade. Now... we do get folks with CS BS degrees for 1-5 years at $30K/yr, which is a fucking steal, and at least a great universities they are often from the upper quarter or so of the undergrad distribution. So maybe the students are also paying in the form of subsidized labor. But we do spend hundreds of millions per year in any case. All of that said, as long as universities are staffing mathematics departments with shit paid ad juncts it's kind of hard to argue that our country is failing to compete due to a lack of phds...
- abeppu 5y ago
  Is looking at the per-student cost and multiplying by the number of students a good way to evaluate the systemic cost? Or are there other factors separate from the marginal cost to a professor of an additional grad student which should be included (e.g. are there institutional-level resources which are significantly supporting this workforce?)
  - throwawaygh 5y ago
    > Or are there other factors separate from the marginal cost to a professor of an additional grad student which should be included (e.g. are there institutional-level resources which are significantly supporting this workforce?) No. At least, not in CS. What sorts if things would you be referring to? Compute? Honestly you're better off with a trivial cloud grant than trying to use the slurm cluster with a dozen ancient gpus for hundreds of faculty to share. Office space? Your average dilapidated cube farm is LUXURY compared to the sardine situation grad students put up with. Robotics hardware? Doesn't really scale like that. And... those are the only three things needed for like 90% of CS research. In CS, precious few dollars other than the stipend go toward anything useful. As far as a faculty member is concerns, that money money disappears into a pit. (What's going on is that the PhD stipend is fixed by the funding agency, and the university squeezes as much as possible away from the professor/student. Just armies upon armies of assistant deans doing not much of anything while the grad students toil away doing the only useful work in the place for rent and pizza.)
kelnos 5y ago
The former, mostly. PhD students are usually funded by their university, as well as by research grants come from US government agencies and research-oriented companies and organizations. So we (as in "various elements of US society") are paying to educate people, and then are sending them back where their home countries benefit, while the US does not. It's so dumb. There are some cool exceptions, like some programs where students educated in the US are required to go back to their home countries. The idea is to help raise the level of education in countries where the higher education system isn't well developed or funded, and I think that sort of thing is an admirable goal. But it's so bizarre that we, for example, complain about supposed Chinese academic espionage, and complain about brain drain, but simultaneously make it really hard for international students to stay in the US after they graduate.
- xeromal 5y ago
  Aren't the PHDs producing things in the US that we use though? Medicines, research ,etc?
  - paxys 5y ago
    How are they doing that if they aren't allowed to live or work in the US after they finish their degree?
    - xeromal 5y ago
      They're doing the research and publishing the results during the degree. That's part of the PHD.
      - phendrenad2 5y ago
        PhD's real work starts after they graduate.
        valarauko 5y ago
        Sure, but the argument in this thread suggests that the US is making an overall loss by funding the research carried out by foreign nationals. This is hardly the case - the value of the research is worth more than the manpower costs spent on them. Is there greater value to be had by encouraging them to stay within the country? For sure. Look at postdocs - the US gets them at a pittance, they are more productive than PhD students and rather mentor them; and unlike graduate students, are usually overwhelmingly foreign nationals.
indymike 5y ago
Both can be true.
skybrian 5y ago
Since graduate students do work for universities at low wages, it seems like the universities are getting a good deal. So how do you want to account for labor costs? After they leave, the work got done and the workers got paid. Both sides benefit from this arrangement, though you can certainly argue (and many do) that the benefits should be split more fairly by paying the workers more. Separately, the US would benefit from letting them stay and do more work. But that's generally the case for any immigration restriction. They get in the way of mutually beneficial private arrangements. US employers can't hire people who are willing to work for them, and the workers strongly benefit from being able to work in the US. Immigration restrictions are all about the government getting in people's way and the various justifications people make for continuing this interference.

Is the US spending billions to educate them, or are they spending billions to be educated here?

by mwint 5y ago

Is the US spending billions to educate them, or are they spending billions to be educated here?

The US is. NSF plus DOE Office of Science plus NIH is over 50 billion dollars, of which easily a third is going for training internationals PhDs and postdocs.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

kjeetgill 5y ago

I think most PhDs are paid for by the University, not the students. In computer science, and I'd imagine most other stem at least.

stevenbedrick 5y ago
True! But in STEM fields the money to pay for PhD students (tuition, stipends, fees, insurance, etc.) almost always ultimately comes from the Federal government in one form or another. Typically, it'll be paid for out of one of their advisor's grants (which usually are from a Federal source), or sometimes from a training grant of some kind (e.g. an NIH T32 or some such, which is also from a Federal source).

option 5y ago

Yes, and then we send them back to China, Russia and India despite their attempts to stay and contribute here.

krastanov 5y ago

It is very much the exception to pay for a PhD education. You are usually even paid by the university while a grad student. In some fields it might have an opportunity cost (you are paid a very low salary for years as a graduate student/researcher, instead of working in industry).

throwawaygh 5y ago

> Is the US spending billions to educate them One PhD student costs a professor about $100K - $200K per year. A third of that is stipend and the other two thirds is... well, in CS I'm not even sure. A good bit of administrative welfare AFAICT. (Universities don't pay FICA taxes for grad students and grad student healthcare premiums are actually more of a subsidy for the risk pool of the aging faculty/admins than an actually half-reasonable benefit for the grad students.) The US graduates 2K PhDs per year, of which >60% are foreign nationals. So we spend something roughly like (2000 * .6 people) * (150000 $/person) = $180 million per year. So a couple billion per decade. Now... we do get folks with CS BS degrees for 1-5 years at $30K/yr, which is a fucking steal, and at least a great universities they are often from the upper quarter or so of the undergrad distribution. So maybe the students are also paying in the form of subsidized labor. But we do spend hundreds of millions per year in any case. All of that said, as long as universities are staffing mathematics departments with shit paid ad juncts it's kind of hard to argue that our country is failing to compete due to a lack of phds...

abeppu 5y ago
Is looking at the per-student cost and multiplying by the number of students a good way to evaluate the systemic cost? Or are there other factors separate from the marginal cost to a professor of an additional grad student which should be included (e.g. are there institutional-level resources which are significantly supporting this workforce?)
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  > Or are there other factors separate from the marginal cost to a professor of an additional grad student which should be included (e.g. are there institutional-level resources which are significantly supporting this workforce?) No. At least, not in CS. What sorts if things would you be referring to? Compute? Honestly you're better off with a trivial cloud grant than trying to use the slurm cluster with a dozen ancient gpus for hundreds of faculty to share. Office space? Your average dilapidated cube farm is LUXURY compared to the sardine situation grad students put up with. Robotics hardware? Doesn't really scale like that. And... those are the only three things needed for like 90% of CS research. In CS, precious few dollars other than the stipend go toward anything useful. As far as a faculty member is concerns, that money money disappears into a pit. (What's going on is that the PhD stipend is fixed by the funding agency, and the university squeezes as much as possible away from the professor/student. Just armies upon armies of assistant deans doing not much of anything while the grad students toil away doing the only useful work in the place for rent and pizza.)

kelnos 5y ago

The former, mostly. PhD students are usually funded by their university, as well as by research grants come from US government agencies and research-oriented companies and organizations. So we (as in "various elements of US society") are paying to educate people, and then are sending them back where their home countries benefit, while the US does not. It's so dumb. There are some cool exceptions, like some programs where students educated in the US are required to go back to their home countries. The idea is to help raise the level of education in countries where the higher education system isn't well developed or funded, and I think that sort of thing is an admirable goal. But it's so bizarre that we, for example, complain about supposed Chinese academic espionage, and complain about brain drain, but simultaneously make it really hard for international students to stay in the US after they graduate.

xeromal 5y ago
Aren't the PHDs producing things in the US that we use though? Medicines, research ,etc?
- paxys 5y ago
  How are they doing that if they aren't allowed to live or work in the US after they finish their degree?
  - xeromal 5y ago
    They're doing the research and publishing the results during the degree. That's part of the PHD.
    - phendrenad2 5y ago
      PhD's real work starts after they graduate.
      - valarauko 5y ago
        Sure, but the argument in this thread suggests that the US is making an overall loss by funding the research carried out by foreign nationals. This is hardly the case - the value of the research is worth more than the manpower costs spent on them. Is there greater value to be had by encouraging them to stay within the country? For sure. Look at postdocs - the US gets them at a pittance, they are more productive than PhD students and rather mentor them; and unlike graduate students, are usually overwhelmingly foreign nationals.

indymike 5y ago

Both can be true.

skybrian 5y ago

Since graduate students do work for universities at low wages, it seems like the universities are getting a good deal. So how do you want to account for labor costs? After they leave, the work got done and the workers got paid. Both sides benefit from this arrangement, though you can certainly argue (and many do) that the benefits should be split more fairly by paying the workers more. Separately, the US would benefit from letting them stay and do more work. But that's generally the case for any immigration restriction. They get in the way of mutually beneficial private arrangements. US employers can't hire people who are willing to work for them, and the workers strongly benefit from being able to work in the US. Immigration restrictions are all about the government getting in people's way and the various justifications people make for continuing this interference.