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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

#141

Post by paulpauper »

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…

10k PhDs would mean 10k dissertations. I thought the popular narrative is that finding new knowledge has become too hard or much harder than in the past, so how are these grad students finding stuff that is new? Are these dissertations extremely incremental or just repackaging/regurgitating stuff?

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

#143

Post by moduspol »

quietsegfault wrote: post #82
moduspol wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number seems arbitrary. Maybe we should be subsidizing until we have 100,000 more. I'm always skeptical when something is presumed to be a universal good in a way that's unfalsifiable. What metrics would you expect to see if we had too many STEM PhDs? What metrics can we expect to improve if we had more of them?

You’re confusing two different questions. ‘Should we have more STEM PhDs in government?’ is a reasonable policy debate. ‘Is losing 10,000 STEM PhDs in weeks a problem?’ has a clearer answer… yes, because institutional knowledge doesn’t rebuild quickly. Also, there’s no evidence this was performance-based attrition. Lastly, recruitment becomes harder after mass departures signal instability. The burden isn’t on critic…

I disagree--we're all paying for it, so it should be justified regardless.

And I don't need an optimal number. But the common refrain is essentially that more is always better, and fewer means we're losing our standing in the world. Always.

Maybe keeping a lot of them but shedding some percentage is actually more optimal. But I'm open to being wrong. That's why I'm asking for metrics.

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

#145

Post by cbsmith »

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…

I have yet to hear a criticism of academia where it sounds like we're better disproportionately losing people with PhDs than without them, particularly since most of those people got their PhDs quite a while ago.

PhDs seem to be quite employable by private industry, where competency is still valued.

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

#146

Post by ForHackernews »

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.

https://www.nature.com/nature-index/news/nature-index-resear...

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Edit: Oh, that's old. In 2024 Chinese institutions only made up 7 of the top 10 most productive research centers but in 2025 they are account for 8/10: https://www.natureasia.com/en/info/press-releases/detail/911...

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

#147

Post by ajjahs »

SoftTalker wrote: post #126
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…

Not everyone agress that those things are necessarily good. I think the Apollo program for example was a massive waste of money that didn't improve anything for the average person. It was mostly just a dick-swinging contest with the USSR to see who had the biggest rocket and could get people to the moon first.

[dead]

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

#148

Post by retired »

andriesm wrote: post #140
retired wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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??

Yes.

Say you have €80k in investments. Markets go up, in one year time your investments are worth €90k. You did not sell.

That means you had €10k in unrealized capital gains. Subtract the €1800 per person threshold. €8200, 36% tax is €2952 tax to be paid at the start of the year.

Losses give you tax credits redeemable against future capital gains (not against income tax from employment)

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

#149

Post by tmp10423288442 »

ixtli wrote: post #71
moduspol wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number seems arbitrary. Maybe we should be subsidizing until we have 100,000 more. I'm always skeptical when something is presumed to be a universal good in a way that's unfalsifiable. What metrics would you expect to see if we had too many STEM PhDs? What metrics can we expect to improve if we had more of them?

I think your comment is more a refutation of the top level than the person you're responding to. I think people are right to assume there is already a serious throughput issue with scientific research, especially so-called "basic" research in the US and seeing a mass exodus from the government is troubling because public funding is what, historically, generates the big breakthroughs. What the person you're replying t…

> public funding is what, historically, generates the big breakthroughs

Without an opinion on the rest of this, public funding in the US doesn't produce big breakthroughs from scientists employed by the government, but rather by funding university research.

It appears that, after the administration canceling a significant proportion of grants in 2025, that science funding has largely been maintained or increased from pre-2025 levels for 2026, although how the 2026 funding gets spent, and whether it is all spent, is an open question.

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

#150

Post by biophysboy »

moduspol wrote: post #45
Retric wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The number seems arbitrary. Maybe we should be subsidizing until we have 100,000 more. I'm always skeptical when something is presumed to be a universal good in a way that's unfalsifiable. What metrics would you expect to see if we had too many STEM PhDs? What metrics can we expect to improve if we had more of them?

One metric you could use is how often publications are mentioned by patents, and how often those patents lead to economic value. By this metric, it is valuable.

The number of PhDs we have is currently too many given the amount of money we have for project grants. But there is no evidence that the money we allocate to research is too large. If anything, you could argue the opposite.

I would be delighted if the private market funded basic research - the seed ideas that lead to patents.

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