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A quarter of US-trained scientists eventually leave

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Re: A quarter of US-trained scientists eventually leave

#151

Post by kragen »

spiritplumber wrote: post #140
kragen wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The most lucrative tuition source for the university is foreign students (as in, they bring in far more tuition dollars for each foreign student than they do native). Those probably aren't STEM PhD students, whose tuition (especially at Ivies!) is normally paid for out of research grants or teaching funds.

In 2007 I was an Italian citizen studying at a university in Texas. For a final project, we built a cool autopilot, and demoed it on several vehicles, including a precision dropper airplane, and a sailboat. The airplane happened to be slightly better than what the USAF admitted to having at the time. There were 5 of us working on that project, including 1 US citizen. The citizen got a NASA internship out of it. The r…

Jesus. That's horrible. I'm glad you finally prevailed. Was this a doctoral program?

Re: A quarter of US-trained scientists eventually leave

#152

Post by daveguy »

gpt5 wrote: post #116
rolandr wrote: post #62

"Using newly-assembled data from 1980 through 2024, we show that 25% of scientifically-active, US-trained STEM PhD graduates leave the US within 15 years of graduating." I believe there will be a significant "discontinuity" in the data beginning in 2025. Likely along the lines of (1) US-born science majors going abroad for their PhD's (and likely staying there afterwards), and (2) a major decline in foreign students…

You'd very likely be wrong. People said the same thing in Trump's first cycle. We tend to overestimate the short term effects due to polarization and the constant media cycle.

Dumpty's first cycle still had a few sane people pulling his puppet strings.

Re: A quarter of US-trained scientists eventually leave

#154

Post by [deleted] »

vannevar wrote: post #148
kragen wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of the dozens of US STEM PhDs I know from recent decades had to pay their tuition by working as TAs, RAs, or usually both. They didn't walk in the door with a trust fund, work through the coursework, and then write up a dissertation. I'm not sure that's even a possibility in most STEM fields: you need access to millions of dollars of ultra-specialized equipment which you can realistically only get by working in a…

Right, they work a job to pay for their tuition. But they still pay, even if it's bartered.

[deleted]

Re: A quarter of US-trained scientists eventually leave

#155

Post by IcyWindows »

SauciestGNU wrote: post #150
Fomite wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't really a culture problem, IMO, as much as a funding one. My group currently employs two people of the description you have, and it does reduce the need for students (and honestly, increase productivity). It's also by far the most stressful part of my job. Funding them involves writing multiple grants per year (because the expectation of any particular grant is low, even with a decent hit rate) and I am con…

The funding problem is a cultural problem though. Religious right wing politicians in the US have attacked science and education funding at every opportunity. Science and education produce ideas that are at odds with right wing religious orthodoxy, so those things must not be allowed in society.

I don't think it's that simple.

I'm not religious, but I think a lot of academic funding is wasteful.

Re: A quarter of US-trained scientists eventually leave

#156

Post by analog31 »

PaulHoule wrote: post #125
analog31 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was a physics grad student ~35 years go, this was called "the birth control problem. I had every intention of going into industry. I described it to my dad who got his PhD in the 1950s and he said it was the same back then. But there's a perennial "this time it will be different."

It wasn't the same in the 1950s. When it became really clear to me how dire the long term job situation was when I getting my PhD in the 1990s I started combing through issues of Physics Today and noticed that the field and academia as a whole was explosively expanding from 1920-1968 or so and there was a sudden crisis in the late 1960s, with an echo in the late 1970s and also when I was in in the late 1990s. ( Physi…

One big disruption in the job market was that mandatory age-based retirement was outlawed. This created a span of several years when there were virtually no retirements.

I should have mentioned that my dad's degree was in chemistry, and it might have been a different vibe. But the production of PhDs at a rate faster than they could be absorbed by academic hiring was a thing. My dad (and mom, she got her master's in chemistry) went into industry too, so maybe I was lucky to have good role models.

Re: A quarter of US-trained scientists eventually leave

#157

Post by maxglute »

DustinEchoes wrote: post #141
maxglute wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

South Asian (Indian) / White / East Asian ceo gap something like 3 / 2 / 0.5 per million pop in US. Chinese long recognized this ceiling, and more are returning to PRC because of it. More and more, PRC getting Chinese returnees that are credentialled 40yro stuck at manager / director level who see greener PRC grass leaving after accumulating industry knowledge / experience taking their entire network / ip / tacit kno…

CEO gap mostly goes away when controlling for pop. age / cultural differences (less assertive), not nebulous racism like first comment. PRC still pays a lot to recruit through 1000 talents, USDOJ continues to uncover cases where $X00,000+ offered for IP / research. Meanwhile Chinese (m|b)illionaires make exit plans in case they get Jack Ma’d or worse.

Yes, yes and Asian tertiary applicants has worse personality except not. Eitherway, I didn't bring up racism. I said Chinese want leadership positions, they're not getting it vs the usual other races in US, so some go where they can get it, which happens to be increasingly PRC.

X00,000 USD is... not a lot anymore. That's normal compensation for high tier jobs, aka PRC tier1 opportunities is simply default globally competitive especially when you factor in other allowances. Top tier 1000 talent tier inducements where PRC build you a lab, give 7 digit in guaranteed funding, aka exactly the kind of opportunities bamboo ceiling is cutting off in US is pretty rare, almost rounding error in overall flow of talent. NVM DoJ has prosecuted ~0/150 thousand talent cases for actual espionage, i.e. never uncovered anything but candidates double dipping on PRC and NIH/NSF grants.

I don't know what billionaires capita flighting fraction of their liquidity has to do with anything. Ultimately whats more damaging for geopolitical S&T competition, capital flight, or knowledge flight.

Re: A quarter of US-trained scientists eventually leave

#158

Post by kragen »

vannevar wrote: post #148
kragen wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of the dozens of US STEM PhDs I know from recent decades had to pay their tuition by working as TAs, RAs, or usually both. They didn't walk in the door with a trust fund, work through the coursework, and then write up a dissertation. I'm not sure that's even a possibility in most STEM fields: you need access to millions of dollars of ultra-specialized equipment which you can realistically only get by working in a…

Right, they work a job to pay for their tuition. But they still pay, even if it's bartered.

You have a point!

Re: A quarter of US-trained scientists eventually leave

#159

Post by SauciestGNU »

IcyWindows wrote: post #155
SauciestGNU wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funding problem is a cultural problem though. Religious right wing politicians in the US have attacked science and education funding at every opportunity. Science and education produce ideas that are at odds with right wing religious orthodoxy, so those things must not be allowed in society.

I don't think it's that simple. I'm not religious, but I think a lot of academic funding is wasteful.

It's not just that science contradicts orthodox religious views. It's also that humanities education and exposure to a diversity of people and thought can "deprogram" students away from traditional ways of thinking, which is a threat to traditional power hierarchies.

Re: A quarter of US-trained scientists eventually leave

#160

Post by rdtsc »

> We use SED data to measure the number of PhD graduates in our focal STEM fields who were non-US citizens at the time of graduation.

[...]

> Emigration rates across PhD cohorts correlate strongly with the foreign national share of graduates ( = 0.86 to 0.95) [...] In all cohorts, the 5-year (15-year) emigration rate is approximately 25% (50%) of the foreign national share

I am not sure if they did this on purpose or not but they missed putting that critical part in the title or right in the abstract. The majority here are not US citizens but foreign nationals. And, most importantly, I couldn't find where they mentioned (or maybe they don't) that these students are studying in US on non-immigrant visas. They're not supposed to or expected to stay after they are done studying. Some stay if they find a company to sponsor them for an internship (Optional Practical Training) but unless they change their visa type they're still expected to leave for their home country.

Without that part highlighted it makes it sound like these US citizens who were born and grew up in US, went to universities here, and then graduated and went to work in China or Europe or something. There is a number of those but, it's not the majority. Maybe they can study just that cohort separately, I think that would be a more interesting thing to look at.

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