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U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office

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Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office

#61

Post by thrance »

JuniperMesos wrote: post #22

The implicit assumption that this is a bad thing is grounded in the assumption that anyone who is a STEM PhD is automatically someone the US government should want to employ, which I don't think is true. Academia is a badly broken system, and many people with formal credentials like PhDs have wasted huge amounts of time and effort on producing what is ultimately low-quality scientific work. This is a pretty uncontrov…

Usually, when a system is broken, the correct course of action is to fix it. Not destroy it utterly.

Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office

#62

Post by direwolf20 »

Larrikin wrote: post #48
direwolf20 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A degree from Bullshit University in bullshitting should not grant any extra immigration rights because it doesn't mean anything. Although... the current administration must have high demand for bullshitters.

Bullshit university should not be accredited and BSU should be shut down. An unaccredited school should have no effect on immigration policy

Unaccredited universities are allowed to exist.

Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office

#63

Post by throwaway173738 »

noncoml wrote: post #21
d4mi3n wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What problem are you hoping to fix by doing this? I think for any proposal to change policy that has serious impacts on the economics of the country, we should really be very clear on what problem we see, how we plan to solve it, and what specific trade-offs we're making with our solutions.

> What problem are you hoping to fix by doing this? He/she is saying the quiet part out loud. It was never about illegal immigration. Illegal immigration is just the start. The underlying theme is xenophobia, racism and bigotry.

Even calling it “illegal immigration” lends fuel to the fire. There’s a very distinct difference between crossing the border illegally and violating the terms of a legally acquired visa or stamp. The latter is a civil matter which is why people weren’t historically rounded up and detained under threat of violence or murder. So yeah this whole thing is strictly about xenophobia being used to whip up the in group about an out group so we don’t look too closely at EG Venezuela or the sales process for presidential pardons.

Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office

#64

Post by Sharlin »

ccheney wrote: post #46
ixtli wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came here to see if the comments could explain to my why this obviously bad thing is actually good. Its somewhat comforting to see others worried about the implication. The fact is that governments (aka public funding) is really what drives the biggest most impactful sorts of scientific breakthroughs. Think: NASA spinoffs, the internet, rocketry, MRNA, etc. I know that the US has been failing to fund important thin…

Is it not a good thing that these folks could do something more productive in the private sector? Just on your Fusion example alone: https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/31/every-fusion-startup-that-... Wouldn't it be better if companies like these had a larger pool of PhDs to pull from? Private sector does some things better, see Rocket Lab, Blue Origin, SpaceX, et al. This _is_ a good thing.

Incredible false dichotomy. I don’t even know where to start dissecting this "argument".

Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office

#65

Post by quietsegfault »

JuniperMesos wrote: post #22

The implicit assumption that this is a bad thing is grounded in the assumption that anyone who is a STEM PhD is automatically someone the US government should want to employ, which I don't think is true. Academia is a badly broken system, and many people with formal credentials like PhDs have wasted huge amounts of time and effort on producing what is ultimately low-quality scientific work. This is a pretty uncontrov…

The problem with this framing is that it treats a mass exodus as if it were selective pruning. Losing 10,000+ STEM PhDs in weeks isn’t a quality filter. We’re hemorrhaging institutional capacity. We lose researchers who understand decade-long datasets, technical experts who can evaluate contractor claims, and people who can actually critique scientific literature when making policy decisions.

Where’s the evidence these specific 10k were the low performers? The more likely scenario is that better performers left because they have options, while weaker performers stayed. If the issue is quality, you’d want systematic performance review, not mass departure driven by factors unrelated to competence.

Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office

#66

Post by notahacker »

Retric wrote: post #35
JuniperMesos wrote: post #22

The implicit assumption that this is a bad thing is grounded in the assumption that anyone who is a STEM PhD is automatically someone the US government should want to employ, which I don't think is true. Academia is a badly broken system, and many people with formal credentials like PhDs have wasted huge amounts of time and effort on producing what is ultimately low-quality scientific work. This is a pretty uncontrov…

That’s a straw man argument. Losing 10 people becomes a question of their individual qualifications, losing 10,000 people and this is no longer about individuals. Some of the people who left where underperforming but a significant percentage where extremely underpaid while providing extreme value to average Americans.

One would also have to consider the calibre of the individuals hired to replace them, or not, and whether functions such as the National Science Foundation add more or less value to the government than functions the government has chosen to increase its spending on...

Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office

#68

Post by Braxton1980 »

imglorp wrote: post #58
JuniperMesos wrote: post #22

The implicit assumption that this is a bad thing is grounded in the assumption that anyone who is a STEM PhD is automatically someone the US government should want to employ, which I don't think is true. Academia is a badly broken system, and many people with formal credentials like PhDs have wasted huge amounts of time and effort on producing what is ultimately low-quality scientific work. This is a pretty uncontrov…

Can we agree academia is the worst system, except for all the others? In the last century, the US led so many tech fields because of both academic and corporate research and the people to do it. Let's fix that system if needed and keep it well stocked. The alternative is ignorance, leading to unskilled industries and an easily misled electorate.

Wouldn't an easily misled electorate benefit the political party that lies the most?

Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office

#69

Post by bryanrasmussen »

JuniperMesos wrote: post #22

The implicit assumption that this is a bad thing is grounded in the assumption that anyone who is a STEM PhD is automatically someone the US government should want to employ, which I don't think is true. Academia is a badly broken system, and many people with formal credentials like PhDs have wasted huge amounts of time and effort on producing what is ultimately low-quality scientific work. This is a pretty uncontrov…

hmm, I was thinking >The implicit assumption that this is a bad thing is grounded in the assumption

that in a large enough set of something there should be considered to be a normal distribution of high quality, medium quality and lower quality members in the set, unless one can show the distribution is biased in some way.

Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office

#70

Post by morelandjs »

JuniperMesos wrote: post #22

The implicit assumption that this is a bad thing is grounded in the assumption that anyone who is a STEM PhD is automatically someone the US government should want to employ, which I don't think is true. Academia is a badly broken system, and many people with formal credentials like PhDs have wasted huge amounts of time and effort on producing what is ultimately low-quality scientific work. This is a pretty uncontrov…

The tail of the distribution justifies the entire distribution. I agree that a large percentage of PhD research is inconsequential, but a small percentage is massively consequential. It’s ok to whiff on a thousand STEM PhDs if you pick up one Andrej Karpathy (for example).
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