Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

science.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 459 posts

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

#131

Post by ixtli »

bigyabai wrote: post #119
JuniperMesos wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is famous for low-quality research and bad papers, which is exactly what you'd expect from a system that grants an expanded number of formal credentials to people who aren't actually doing good scientific research.

Be that as it may, China also has persistent threat actors outfoxing American cybersecurity in the form of Salt Typhoon . The cards are on the table, and the US is already undoubtedly losing several fronts of asymmetrical warfare.

I have a friend who, to explain it simply, worked medium high up in the CIA for 8-12 years during Bush and Obama. The only time he gets serious about talking about his time there is on this topic. Chinas cyber security is, according to him, light years ahead of the US to the point where its embarrassing.

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

#132

Post by goodluckchuck »

If 14% of the PhDs employed by the U.S. Government was 10,109, then there were about 72,207 total. That's about 3.2% of the civilian government, compared to 2.1% in the public workforce (and 1.3% of population).

So, the government tends to employ PhDs at a substantially higher (~50%) rate than the public workforce.

Edit: Yeah, oops, people generally use public / private the other way around.

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

#133

Post by rwyinuse »

retired wrote: post #83
ixtli wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the opposite is happening in China. I saw an article the other day ( https://fortune.com/2026/01/14/china-graduates-1-3-million-e... ) that showed how the amount of engineers being produced there is orders of magnitude greater than the US. Way above what you'd expect given the different sizes of population. Now, i realize an engineer isn't the same as a PhD but i think we're seeing a dramatic brain drain ha…

I’m not a PhD, just an engineer and I moved out of The Netherlands. It was no longer economical feasible to live there. I am very pessimistic about the future Western Europe. Right now it offers the one of the best QoL in the world for the average worker but who knows for how long. With the current brain and wealth drain there will no longer be enough people to support the social system.

Right now I'm not sure there is a country where young people are generally satisfied and optimistic about their future. America is a mess, Europe is generally a mess, China is struggling with too many grads who aren't able to find jobs matching their qualifications... From what I've heard things aren't exactly great in India either.

Every country has its problems.

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

#134

Post by lotsofpulp »

hurfdurf wrote: post #53
lotsofpulp wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could be the biggest own goal in human history.

Fairly certain 1930s Germany ranks higher in this regard by quite a margin.

As I understand, 1930s (and 1920s) Germany was not a desirable place due to the losses from WW1.

I meant more of a place where things are mostly going OK (compared to most other places), and resources (human and natural) are available, so any failure modes have to come from within.

Germany flipped over the boardgame while losing, but USA flipped it over while winning.

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

#135

Post by triceratops »

krona wrote: post #115
sheikhnbake wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also flies in the face of China's currently accelerating pace of research and breakthroughs by producing insane numbers of STEM majors and PhDs

Which breakthroughs, specifically? There are no Chinese institutions pumping out nobel prizes. Zero.

10 years ago were no Chinese companies pumping out world-class cars either. But here we are.

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

#136

Post by atonse »

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…

You may be right in the general sentiment that not everyone with a PhD is a desirable candidate, but even if half of them were, that would be 5,000 fewer and that isn’t insignificant, especially in STEM fields.

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

#137

Post by sizzzzlerz »

Braxton1980 wrote: post #68
imglorp wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

We have definitive proof of that viz a vis, trump and his idiot magats.

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

#138

Post by retired »

surgical_fire wrote: post #124
retired wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not a PhD, just an engineer and I moved out of The Netherlands. It was no longer economical feasible to live there. I am very pessimistic about the future Western Europe. Right now it offers the one of the best QoL in the world for the average worker but who knows for how long. With the current brain and wealth drain there will no longer be enough people to support the social system.

The Netherlands had effectively full employment until a few years ago, last I checked. Unless things got dramatically worse in the past 3 or so years, I think you are massively overreacting. I happen to have a few personal friends that live there, for that matter.

I left mainly because of housing prices, the difficulty of being a freelancer, the 49.5% income tax after €78k, the 36% unrealized capital gains tax and just everything in life like supermarkets or public transport being so much more expensive than other European countries.

I took a big pay cut moving to Southern Europe, but post-tax I earn the same and everything is just so much cheaper. I honestly have a significant better life here. Good weather too.

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

#140

Post by andriesm »

retired wrote: post #123
ixtli wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to hear you got priced out :( Unfortunately i am also quite pessimistic about the future of europe and the us, too.

The Netherlands is taking action against the brain drain by rapidly importing highly skilled migrants through various tax lowering schemes in the first five years of living here. However plenty of those people leave after that period. Especially with the upcoming 36% unrealized capital gains tax on all your savings and investments. Feels a bit like ISPs giving discounts to new customers only.

On unrealized gains, wait, what??
Post reply on HN