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It's not the emphasis on STEM immigration that's keeping young Americans from these jobs, it's the piss-poor state of math education in the average US K-12. I w

by zeteo 15y ago

It's not the emphasis on STEM immigration that's keeping young Americans from these jobs, it's the piss-poor state of math education in the average US K-12. I was a calculus TA in college and was amazed at the proportion of prospective science majors who couldn't deal with variables and fractions; need I add they had all been educated here? Until that gets fixed (and it will take at least one generation, if it happens), you've got to fill the jobs somehow, you know.

geebee 15y ago
That's a factor, but are you sure it's 100% the piss-poor state of math education? I'm not sure if you've read the RAND study I mentioned... here's a link: http://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP241.html http://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP241.html Now, this study doesn't mention anything about immigration systems, it just concludes that the aversion to STEM graduate degrees (particularly PhDs) is market driven. So to me, there are a few factors here: - Our K-12 system failing to produce graduates that can go on to advanced study in STEM - The declining appeal of STEM careers relative to other options available to the best and brightest - The relationship between the decline of the appeal of STEM fields and the increasing use of visas to fill these positions (for instance, the RAND study makes recommendations for changes to PhD programs... but these programs will be able to resist change if they have the power to bestow visas). I'm not at all claiming to have a definitive answer here, but I do think you've gone way too far in attributing it to the decline of math education in the US. I would never try to argue that you haven't identified a major factor, but I think your claim that this is the only factor or even the single overwhelming factor is weak, especially in light of the RAND study. As for filling the jobs... well, I haven't argued that we shouldn't base immigration on job skills, I've argued the opposite! However, I do think we need to consider the possible impact of emphasizing one particular field (STEM) over another, and make sure that we aren't using these visas to the extent that the prevent the market correction that would - slowly as you've pointed out - improve the appeal of STEM careers and bring "Americans" (by which I mean people living here with broad choice of career paths) back into this field.
- zeteo 15y ago
  Of course it's market driven. My point was that the cost structure for a STEM degree for someone who did K-12 in the US is different from someone who went to a good program in, say, Poland, where I'm told that until recently they would skip calculus and directly teach real analysis in high school. So the cost/benefit ratio is high for the US citizen, but that's not an argument against allowing qualified STEM immigration as a stopgap measure until K-12 is fixed. This problem doesn't exist for fields outside of science and tech, where US pre-college education does a much better job.
  - geebee 15y ago
    Unfortunately, we can't know this without analyzing drop-out rates. Anecdotally, I was a PhD student at Berkeley and I personally know grads of IIT and elite european universities who did drop out (including one student who failed even the MS exam). So I'm skeptical, but I don't have the data. I would want to analyze drop out rates, as well as time to completion, and see if they are far better for international students. I did feel at something of a disadvantage, not because my math education was poor (I was a math major), but because US students specialize later. In college, US students do much more general ed. I spent some time in France as a teenager and was surprised to discover that at age 13 I was going to have to pick a track (letters vs science)... I returned to the US at that point, so I completed my high school in the US. I think that a broad education can be helpful in STEM fields in ways that are not predictable, but if you're hitting advanced stochastic processes for the first time, and the student next to you did this course already as an undergrad, you're at a disadvantage - but that advantage may be a temporary one, and the benefits of a broader education may well kick in later. Hard to say.
    - zeteo 15y ago
      If you were a math major and got into the PhD program, you've made it and I don't think foreign students have any advantage over you. I was rather talking about people who just begin college. What was your experience of the drop-out rate from the introductory math/science classes?

by zeteo 15y ago

geebee 15y ago

That's a factor, but are you sure it's 100% the piss-poor state of math education? I'm not sure if you've read the RAND study I mentioned... here's a link: http://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP241.html http://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP241.html Now, this study doesn't mention anything about immigration systems, it just concludes that the aversion to STEM graduate degrees (particularly PhDs) is market driven. So to me, there are a few factors here: - Our K-12 system failing to produce graduates that can go on to advanced study in STEM - The declining appeal of STEM careers relative to other options available to the best and brightest - The relationship between the decline of the appeal of STEM fields and the increasing use of visas to fill these positions (for instance, the RAND study makes recommendations for changes to PhD programs... but these programs will be able to resist change if they have the power to bestow visas). I'm not at all claiming to have a definitive answer here, but I do think you've gone way too far in attributing it to the decline of math education in the US. I would never try to argue that you haven't identified a major factor, but I think your claim that this is the only factor or even the single overwhelming factor is weak, especially in light of the RAND study. As for filling the jobs... well, I haven't argued that we shouldn't base immigration on job skills, I've argued the opposite! However, I do think we need to consider the possible impact of emphasizing one particular field (STEM) over another, and make sure that we aren't using these visas to the extent that the prevent the market correction that would - slowly as you've pointed out - improve the appeal of STEM careers and bring "Americans" (by which I mean people living here with broad choice of career paths) back into this field.

zeteo 15y ago
Of course it's market driven. My point was that the cost structure for a STEM degree for someone who did K-12 in the US is different from someone who went to a good program in, say, Poland, where I'm told that until recently they would skip calculus and directly teach real analysis in high school. So the cost/benefit ratio is high for the US citizen, but that's not an argument against allowing qualified STEM immigration as a stopgap measure until K-12 is fixed. This problem doesn't exist for fields outside of science and tech, where US pre-college education does a much better job.
- geebee 15y ago
  Unfortunately, we can't know this without analyzing drop-out rates. Anecdotally, I was a PhD student at Berkeley and I personally know grads of IIT and elite european universities who did drop out (including one student who failed even the MS exam). So I'm skeptical, but I don't have the data. I would want to analyze drop out rates, as well as time to completion, and see if they are far better for international students. I did feel at something of a disadvantage, not because my math education was poor (I was a math major), but because US students specialize later. In college, US students do much more general ed. I spent some time in France as a teenager and was surprised to discover that at age 13 I was going to have to pick a track (letters vs science)... I returned to the US at that point, so I completed my high school in the US. I think that a broad education can be helpful in STEM fields in ways that are not predictable, but if you're hitting advanced stochastic processes for the first time, and the student next to you did this course already as an undergrad, you're at a disadvantage - but that advantage may be a temporary one, and the benefits of a broader education may well kick in later. Hard to say.
  - zeteo 15y ago
    If you were a math major and got into the PhD program, you've made it and I don't think foreign students have any advantage over you. I was rather talking about people who just begin college. What was your experience of the drop-out rate from the introductory math/science classes?