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Brain Drain Across the United States

jec.senate.gov

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Re: Brain Drain Across the United States

#101

Post by theoh »

mixedmath wrote: post #92

I think there are interesting things to say about brain drain, and I'm certainly under the impression that there is a tendency for people to move away from the middle of the country and towards the coastal cities (and apparently Texas, Colorado, and Illinois). But I find the choices of units for these statistics to be very odd. For example, I look at Massachusetts Net difference in Absolute terms in 2017 (where stars…

I'm not sure about the justification for the X-Y figure, but it seems like larger numbers would tend to make this kind of effect unlikely. If you assume that in- and out-migration are not in equilibrium, but that the probability of migrating is uniformly distributed over people of all levels of education, then X-Y should be zero.

Obviously, it would be better to use net numbers (arrivals of highly educated – departures of highly educated) and not attempt to normalise the numbers.

Re: Brain Drain Across the United States

#102

Post by briandear »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #14
briandear wrote: post #10

I wonder why we consider “highly educated” to mean “college educated.” I know plenty of college educated people unfit to manage a lemonade stand and plenty of “lesser educated” people that own successful companies. Using a degree as a proxy for intelligence is a mistake.

Level of education is a decent proxy for intelligence, in anything resembling an academic context. More education is usually better. It's why companies prefer hiring people with more education. That said, I think many roles should not require a college degree for application. That one single thing might make a big difference - because as you hint there are tons of otherwise great people who don't specifically have th…

Is the IQ of a person with a masters degree in sociology higher than the IQ of a non-degreee naval nuclear power technician? Yet the non-degrees nuke tech would be considered “less educated” by the measures being used in this discussion. A journeyman electrician often doesn’t have a degree, but they do more intellectually challenging work/calculations than some Master of Social Work person working at a local non-profit.

I deal with “highly educated” people in the mental health field on a daily basis and some can barely write grammatically correct sentences: the support tickets I get from people with PhDs and MA mental health professionals are frequently atrocious. But my “uneducated” dad worked as a precision machinist for NASA projects as well as teaching graduate students metallurgy. He’s considered not highly educated, but only because he didn’t get a degree. His education has zero to do with intelligence. That story isn’t an outlier either. My point is that higher education attainment often has nothing to do with intelligence beyond a base level, but more of class, financial resources and desire. A naval fighter pilot with a bachelors degree, in my experience is far more “educated” than someone with a masters in education, sociology, poetry or whatever. Highly educated as a proxy for “desirable worker” is a folly. Ambition, drive and work ethic are more valuable to a society than simply someone who checked the boxes and got a university degree. Using a university degree as a proxy for “desirable” worker is just snobbery and intellectually lazy.

Re: Brain Drain Across the United States

#103

Post by cageface »

taurath wrote: post #11

Brain drain within the US is just as frequently about cultural rather than economic issues. The culture wars the republicans have been running on since the 80s turns off thoughtful people - anti-intellectualism is killing these states. That said, it’s incredibly underserved and there’s tons of very capable and friendly people. Edit: maybe I didn’t get the intended point across - I’d ask though, how many people do you…

I left Utah many years ago for exactly these reasons. Salt Lake City is a lot more progressive now than it was then but every time I go back I’m reminded of how much I still feel estranged from that culture. If anything people there seem to be doubling down on their more intransigent beliefs lately.

Re: Brain Drain Across the United States

#105

Post by cageface »

landryraccoon wrote: post #96
crazygringo wrote: post #26

Interesting... I've only ever heard of brain drain used in an international context. Which is where the US comes out as a winner, as we're gaining from all the highly educated Chinese and Indians who come here to work and start companies. I actually find the concept rather odd to use domestically, because it's generally used to show a contrast between a country paying for your college education, and then you reaping…

The problem is that local governments and communities acting in their own self interest will rationally underfund education. Let's say that hypothetically all new science and engineering jobs are all in ScienceVille. In that case, any local government that doesn't receive some direct tax benefit from taxes collected in SV has negative incentive to teach their students anything about Science, since those students will…

Japan has an interesting approach to this problem. I don’t remember the details but they have some mechanism to funnel tax revenues from big urban areas to the smaller cities that provide a lot of their educated workforce.

Re: Brain Drain Across the United States

#106

Post by JamesBarney »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #98
JamesBarney wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because educating people doesn't change their genetics. If as a society you care about basketball playing ability. And you find tall people are having less kids than short people no amount of basketball camps are going to make the next generation taller. Also what we care about is societal contribution which primarily happens through work and we're terrible at making people better at their jobs through the education…

Success is hardly a heritable genetic trait. Most of the education differences you see among families is environmental, and can be compensated for by improving public education.

Intelligence and conscientousness are both very heritable and highly correlated with success.

And there are no educational interventions that come close to the effect size of intelligence or conscientousness.

Re: Brain Drain Across the United States

#107

Post by expressrunning »

cinquemb wrote: post #75
akhilcacharya wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re 100% correct and it is why I’m generally very bullish on America despite the gloom and doom on the right and late stage capitalists on the left. It’s the competitive advantage of being a nation bound by ideas and common purpose than a monarch or ethnicity or religion.

As someone who grew up in Ohio, went to an Ivy, and left the US (but working remotely when I come across interesting projects for companies), I want to offer a different perspective. >It’s the competitive advantage of being a nation bound by ideas and common purpose than a monarch or ethnicity or religion. I think the US has become very ossified in this belief (which people fool themselves that the nature of this bel…

It’s a flight to safety for trillions of sovereign funds, amidst worldwide recession (except US) and emerging market collapse. Plenty of future upsides for US, since all the capital is there.

Re: Brain Drain Across the United States

#108

Post by toasterlovin »

michelpp wrote: post #65
toasterlovin wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking frankly, I don’t see what anything that you posted has to do with brain drain. All you’re doing is pointing out unrelated things which you think makes the senator look bad.

In short order the Supreme Court will decide on whether or not to include a citizenship question on the upcoming census. The result of including the question will sow fear in non-citizens, fully entitled to be counted (the census requires "whole persons", not just citizens) and is projected to cause an undercount of many, many millions of people in "brain gain" states. This will directly effect the amount of federal…

You’ve just made what seems like a reasonable argument about how a citizenship question on the census affects education funding. But the only way you’ve connected this to the brain drain argument is by pointing out that some of the same people are involved.

Re: Brain Drain Across the United States

#109

Post by durkie »

Xcelerate wrote: post #58
durkie wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Georgia is an interesting outlier here: they introduced the HOPE scholarship in the 1990s to allow any in-state (already lived there for at least a year) student free tuition at a state school as long as they maintained a 3.0 GPA, all funded by the state lottery. And you have some pretty good schools to choose from here: University of Georgia, Georgia Tech, and Georgia State (which has improved a lot in the past 10 y…

> students aren't paying for their education, are going to school in the state where they likely grew up, and then are still leaving This was me. I grew up in Georgia and went to Georgia Tech on the HOPE scholarship, but there just aren't many tech jobs in the area (despite the fact that GT has one of the top ranked CS programs). I moved to the Bay Area a year ago. If Georgia would incentivize the tech industry like…

It's about to be me too. GT grad and likely moving to Bay area soon.

Re: Brain Drain Across the United States

#110

Post by reredacted »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #98
JamesBarney wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because educating people doesn't change their genetics. If as a society you care about basketball playing ability. And you find tall people are having less kids than short people no amount of basketball camps are going to make the next generation taller. Also what we care about is societal contribution which primarily happens through work and we're terrible at making people better at their jobs through the education…

Success is hardly a heritable genetic trait. Most of the education differences you see among families is environmental, and can be compensated for by improving public education.

Lmfao, it may not be genetic, but it's obviously inheritable.
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