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Florida public universities to pause hiring new H-1B workers
- rayiner 8mo agoThe labor market for recent college graduates is very soft right now, so it seems like a good time for a pause on importing foreign workers: https://www.investopedia.com/workers-who-attended-college-are-being-hit-the-hardest-by-unemployment-11903139 https://www.investopedia.com/workers-who-attended-college-ar...
- pavel_lishin 8mo agoI have a friend whose university in Florida is trying to hire a professor for a specific field; they are having an incredibly difficult time finding someone domestically. Only two candidates showed up, and both were apparently terrible, and not a good fit for a teaching position. A recent college grad may not be able to actually do the work that these universities are looking for.
- gedy 8mo ago> Only two candidates showed up Untenured position in Florida - I'm guessing the pay was not great, no?
- Eddy_Viscosity2 8mo agoI was going to post the same comment. The old 'no one wants to work' complaint which almost always translates to 'no one wants to work for super low pay'
- delfinom 8mo agoJunior professors get absolute poverty wages these days. Junior administration hires get paid more at most universities.
- pavel_lishin 8mo agoI don't know what the pay structure was. I can't even begin to guess at what sort of salary band a college instructor would be in, in any state. But I am guessing that Florida is, in general, not the most desirable place for academics to be.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- butterbomb 8mo agoProbably enough to live amongst the lower middle class till carpetbagger real estate speculation and the general clown economy push you back to the rust belt shithole from which you came.
- rayiner 8mo agoYet you can throw a rock and hit ten candidates for doctrinal STEM programs. I have no doubt that there are needs in specific areas. But that’s why the process described in the article permits exceptions. In theory, you could trust USCIS to identify areas that have real need. But that process hasn’t been reliable in decades: https://spectrum.ieee.org/stem-crisis-as-myth-gets-yet-another-workout https://spectrum.ieee.org/stem-crisis-as-myth-gets-yet-anoth... (“Salzman spoke of the latest data on STEM graduates and jobs, reiterating that STEM programs turn out at least 50 percent more IT graduates every year than there are U.S. job openings. He also said that if the H-1B program is ramped up to the numbers that are being advocated (up from 85 000 to 185 000), that worker oversupply could possibly increase to the 90 percent mark or more.”). Note this article was written before the impacts of AI, etc., started being felt. So things are even worse now.
- stackskipton 8mo ago>they are having an incredibly difficult time finding someone domestically. Part of this is we broke the pipelines in United States to domestically produce such talent. Foreign student visas made these jobs extremely unattractive for domestic students with options because of low pay + debt load while making them extremely attractive to foreign students because until recently, many people around the world were willing to do whatever for US visa.
- rayiner 8mo agoEven if you pay foreign workers the same, which I doubt is true, it’s still a form of labor suppression. These workers have completely different expectations than native born workers. My dad grew up in a village in Bangladesh. My aunts and uncles were college educated professionals from affluent families, but their apartments (in the 1990s) were like NYC housing projects. So my tolerance for grinding for my job is completely different than that of most native born Americans. And I got my citizenship in high school. I can’t imagine what it’d be like if I was trying to keep my H1B. How hard could you get Americans to work if getting fired meant they had to move to Bangladesh? Look at it this way. Except at the tippy top, employers aren’t looking to hire “the best.” They decide what the role is worth, and then select from the pool of people willing to work for that level of pay. A de facto path to U.S. citizenship for someone and their kids is basically a form of non-cash compensation for H1Bs. So even if the cash pay is the same, the foreigner worker is getting more value than the American worker. The effect is the same as if the government kicked in an extra $50,000 a year (or whatever) to the paycheck of foreign workers but not American workers. So if the role pays $100,000, it will draw a pool of foreign workers as if it pays $150,000 a year. So, at every level of job, the American worker is competing with more qualified and motivated foreign workers, because the job simply is worth more to those workers. For a long time, I faulted Americans who didn’t teach their kids to “learn to work 16 hours a day” like my dad taught me. But I have kids of my own now, and they don’t have the mentality of someone who is a generation away from having to take a boat to school during monsoon season. And that’s probably a good thing that we should want as a society.
- 5upplied_demand 8mo ago
- light_hue_1 8mo agoYou're leaving out what happened in Florida. First, Florida killed tenure. You get reviews every 5 years and can be fired if they don't like what they see. Second, Stop WOKE, means that Florida gets a say in what I teach. So Florida took away the most important (and for many maybe only) attractive part of the job: academic freedom. Almost half of Florida faculty are trying to leave. So yeah. Of course they get the bottom of the barrel. That's all that's left for them. With the ability to get a job almost anywhere else in the world you'd have to have extreme circumstances to consider Florida.
- lux-lux-lux 8mo agoThis is absolutely a factor; New College lost half its teaching staff when DeSantis took a wrecking ball to it over ideological disagreements, Florida is not a great place to be in the field right now. I’d add that Florida higher education pays below average vs. nationally and the state is dealing with some serious cost of living issues at the moment (e.g. insurance).
- TimorousBestie 8mo agoExact same thing happened in Indiana after they instituted tenure review and ideological standards for teaching. It’s kinda like it’s the purpose of these laws to dismantle public higher education.
- toomuchtodo 8mo agoPay more. They will find someone at the right price. They are unwilling to find someone at the pay on offer. We should stop listening to institutions (corporate or academic alike) demanding quality at the lowest compensation bound possible, leveraging visas for labor to accomplish this. Pay the talent, develop the talent, or go without the talent.
- OptionOfT 8mo agoThis. There is rarely a shortage of qualified people. It's usually companies who hide behind 'we use data from HR to ensure we pay market rate'. Paying market rate doesn't make people change jobs.
- toomuchtodo 8mo agoAnd that HR data is effectively wage suppression collusion across organizations.
- doug_durham 8mo agoIt really depends upon the positions you're hiring for. For professors, you are looking at talent at the long tail. Top people in a particular field will be randomly distributed across the globe. The restriction that Florida is putting on universities means that they cannot go after top talent for professorships or researchers if they aren't in the United States. That's a problem. We want them here teaching our students. We want them making their research contributions here where we can profit from it.
- hypeatei 8mo agoTrump disagrees with you: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5601588-trump-h1b-visas-talent/ https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5601588-trump-h1... The host interjected, “Well, we have plenty of talented people here.” “No, you don’t,” the president replied. “No, you don’t have certain talents and people have to learn.”
- booleandilemma 8mo agoGreat news. We need this in all companies as soon as possible. American jobs for Americans.
- testbjjl 8mo agoBorn in San Francisco at Mt. Zion, now Zuckerberg Chan, to parents and grandparents born in Berkeley. What have immigrants ever contributed… looks around… oh. Why stop at nationality. California for Californians! Pretty bad take.
- PKop 8mo ago[flagged]
- verdverm 8mo agoTeach college? Without tenure and where the govt will attack you if you say the "wrong" thing? This is how you end up with fewer citizens who are qualified to teach other citizens.
- itqwertz 8mo agoA nice relocation package to a sunny climate would be pretty attractive to many qualified U.S. residents in the northern states. Why are universities not creating a talent pool for their self-sustainment? Many of us have had to suffer through college lectures of dubious real-world application and near-incomprehensible accents. I am not alone when I realized that I could just enter the tech world with self-study, self-promotion, and applying to open positions. They say, "those who can, do - those who can't, teach", and I believe it. Maybe the real question is: Are universities going the way of the physical newspaper, the personal blog, the dinosaur...?
- testbjjl 8mo ago> Many of us have had to suffer through college lectures of dubious real-world application and near-incomprehensible accents. I am not alone when I realized that I could just enter the tech world with self-study, self-promotion, and applying to open positions. So instead of getting the credentials required to authoritatively say what does and does not have real world applications, you dropped out, removing yourself from a qualified labor pool? Do you think the deep engineering knowledge and practices to solve hard problems is overrated?
- Spivak 8mo agoWhat year is this comment from? Having an undergrad college degree has been a near worthless credential in tech for at least a decade.
- pavel_lishin 8mo agoIt may surprise you to learn that there are other fields besides tech.
- testbjjl 8mo agoI hope the doctor I am seeing this morning has an undergrad+, same with my tax guy, and the guy that designed the bridge I am crossing and the road I am driving down.
- dmix 8mo ago> "The H-1B has long been abused by IT outsourcing firms sponsoring middle skill workers for underwhelming pay," said O'Brien, "Unfortunately, the proposal, as currently written, would go much further than trimming back the questionable uses of the visa at state schools." This is a fair take but maybe a pause is just a pause. Considering how big of problem visa abuse is in education in multiple countries, these organizations taking a break to review things and start to take it seriously is probably a good thing.
- JohnTHaller 8mo agoGiving Republicans the benefit of the doubt is nearly always a losing proposition
- dmix 8mo agoThis is a popular issue in Canada, Australia, and Europe too. There's obviously some need for reform. You just can ask people who work at these institutions. Not everything is an American republican-bad thing.
- JohnTHaller 8mo agoI recognize that it's an issue elsewhere and that there are abuses and there is need for reform. But my point stands. The modern Republican party, especially in Florida, is generally not interested in reform to make citizen's lives better. Nearly every time they are given the benefit of the doubt, it's a benefit that should not be given them.
- decremental 8mo ago[dead]
- BobaFloutist 8mo agoI actually disagree that just because something is a popular issue necessarily means there's need for reform, people are perfectly capable of driving themselves into a frenzy over something that, when actually examined, is functioning appropriately.
- xyzelement 8mo agoI've noticed an interesting trend in various groups that I am in. People are generally anti-right-wing but tend to agree with them in areas that actually affect their lives. This story is an example of that - us in tech are plenty familiar with H1Bs, both in terms of the "talent" that it tends to bring in, and impact on the American workforce. So we know this is right. A different demographic is for example my black friends who are obviously not right-wing, except they are sick of migrants camping out in their parks and school gyms. Or my persian friends that don't love trump but are over the moon about what's going on right now. I don't know what to make of that, it's like we are left wing in theory but right wing in practice.
- fred_is_fred 8mo agoHiring more H1Bs is actually a right-wing position, not a left-wing one. It helps reduce overall wages.
- brandonmenc 8mo agoIt’s an elite position. I’ve never seen a MAGA hat arguing for more (or any) H1Bs - quite the opposite.
- _DeadFred_ 8mo agoMany big tech CEOs financed Trump's inauguration. Many donated to his ball room. Those MAGA hat wearers paying millions for access/behind the scenes policy creation are. Adding to OPs point, Trump did a major immigration push, yet a major push to punish companies/employees who create the demand that immigrants were filling was not part of that. Imagine launching a 50+ billion dollar drug war, but only going after drug users.
- happytoexplain 8mo agoBut in the rich-poor left-right quad, only one square is strongly against importing workers, and it's on the right side. Even just looking at the right side though - it really feels like the non-rich right's opinion on this is louder than the rich right's opinion (though, of course, it is money, not volume, that directs both parties in most cases).
- zzleeper 8mo agoWow. The amount of quasi-xenophobic comments in this tread is nuts. They are also a bit misguided. You don't hire a professor at a R1 school just to teach math101. You hire them they can build a research lab or otherwise help to advance the frontier of the field (cancer, stats, etc.). The talent pool in several of these fields is very very small for Americans, because the brightest just go (used to go?) to work to finance or tech. So if you say you can't bring any bright foreigners, you are constraining yourself to a lower talent pool than other countries, and thus will pay a price (in less research, in no foreign students applying and thus no $$ from them, etc etc)
- maldev 8mo agoThere's different visa's for gifted people to come into the US. The H1B is not intended for this purpose you claim. The brightest won't be affected by this.
- zzleeper 8mo agoIf you are in early career (i.e. graduated your PhD within the last 5 years) you are extremely unlikely to get the gifted people visa. The standard approach is to just get the H1B (not the lottery stuff for tech companies but the non-lottery one for hiring faculty at universities). Ask any foreign MIT professor hired early in his career and they went through H1B (and later on, they are more reluctant to move into a place like Florida..)
- huddert 8mo ago[flagged]
- ozozozd 8mo agoSo obvious no one read before commenting. > According to a records request obtained by IFP, O'Brien said at least 315 of the 1,300 H-1B petitions approved between 2017 and 2022 were for physicians, PhD scientists or STEM faculty. Yeah, we don’t want no stinkin doctors. Our healthcare is cheap as it is. /s