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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

#181

Post by CharlieDigital »

ixtli wrote: post #52
retired wrote: post #40

We are seeing the same in The Netherlands: https://delta.tudelft.nl/en/article/fewer-phd-positions-and-... https://www.sciencelink.net/features/its-not-just-about-mone...

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…

There was an interesting Freakonomics podcast a few months back that pointed out an interesting divide in how the US and China thinks about its leaders[0].

    > China is a country that is run by engineers, while the U.S. is a country run by lawyers. Engineers, he explains, are driven to build while lawyers are driven to argue, and obstruct.
Even Trump:

    > And even though Donald Trump is not a lawyer by any means, I think he is still a product of the lawyerly society, because lawsuits have been completely central to his business career. He has sued absolutely everyone. He has sued business partners, he has sued political opponents, he has sued his former lawyers as well. And there is, I think, something still very lawyerly about Donald Trump in which he is flinging accusations left and right, he’s trying to intimidate people, trying to establish guilt in the court of public opinion
Very interesting take and I think insightful on why the US is the way it is today and sidesteps the democracy vs autocracy debate.

[0] https://freakonomics.com/podcast/china-is-run-by-engineers-a...

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

#182

Post by esalman »

zerof1l wrote: post #24
BrenBarn wrote: post #11

The scarier part is that a lot of people will see this as good news.

Why? If they instead move to EU, that's a win for EU.

Because academia and University research is broken at best and leftist breeding ground at worst /s

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

#184

Post by epistasis »

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 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,

No, you're making a completely illogical jump there, that is absolutely not assumed in any way.

The assumption, if there is one, is that the position that the work PhD was doing in the government served the public good, more than they were being paid.

US Government science positions are not academia, so your second sentence does not even apply to this! Unless your assumption is that if the person was trained with science that did little then their training can not be applied to anything that is worthwhile, which is an obviously false assumption.

Arguments with these sorts of gaping logical holes are the only defenses I ever see of cutting these positions. I have searched hard, but never found a defense that bothered to even base itself in relevant facts, and connect through with a logically sound argument.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but it sure is damning when in a democracy there's not even a fig leaf of an intellectually sound argument backing a drastic and massive change in policy.

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

#185

Post by titzer »

cbb330 wrote: post #114
morelandjs wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

The US doesn’t have enough money to fund the entire distribution And as a tax payer I prefer discretionary spending for high performers.

> for high performers.

Like $40k bonuses for ICE agents. Incidentally, $40k is about the stipend for a typical PhD student. I'll take a smart student doing nothing but eating food and digesting theorems over the absolute chaos that is being funded by our tax dollars.

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

#186

Post by notahacker »

sanskritical wrote: post #93
nialv7 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what you are saying is idiotic. people who are in demand can find work anywhere, they are the kind of people who will leave as soon as they feel their work environment has become even remotely uncomfortable. people who stay are more likely to be those who can't find job elsewhere.

I think people who will leave as soon as they feel their work environment has become even remotely uncomfortable are likely sitting in a comfortable sinecure, and it isn't the role of the taxpayer to provide sinecures for people with doctoral degrees. Government workers are meant to serve the government, and the government of the United States is By the People. The People voted for the administration and if someone c…

Yes, I'm sure it's "infantile" for people at the NIH to resign because they believe their work is being censored for conflict with the administration's preferred pseudoscience.

Could you sound any more like a Lysenko propagandist in the USSR if you tried?

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

#187

Post by toyg »

sanskritical wrote: post #93
nialv7 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what you are saying is idiotic. people who are in demand can find work anywhere, they are the kind of people who will leave as soon as they feel their work environment has become even remotely uncomfortable. people who stay are more likely to be those who can't find job elsewhere.

I think people who will leave as soon as they feel their work environment has become even remotely uncomfortable are likely sitting in a comfortable sinecure, and it isn't the role of the taxpayer to provide sinecures for people with doctoral degrees. Government workers are meant to serve the government, and the government of the United States is By the People. The People voted for the administration and if someone c…

Your guy has armed goons with "absolute immunity" literally executing people in the streets, after threatening to invade neighbours and allies, appointing shockingly-unqualified loyalists at the very top of national institutions, and generally gutting the rule of law. It's a bit past "tolerating political disagreement", man.

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

#188

Post by noncoml »

141205 wrote: post #6
thatfrenchguy wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, so that we can loose our innovation edge and loose the next Apple, Google or Nvidia. Amazing plan.

There's a big difference between cutting off all foreign-born talent—and addressing the serious issue of graduate school turning into an immigration racket; the current issue with graduate degrees is a very close mirror to the issue with H1b worker visas. The abuse of both systems has harmed Americans—and to some extent the long-term health of the tech industry and the academy.

> The abuse of both systems has harmed Americans—and to some extent the long-term health of the tech industry and the academy

Can you please explain how it has harmed Americans and tech industry and the “academy”

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

#189

Post by AnotherGoodName »

rwyinuse wrote: post #133
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.

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.

Australians will complain a lot but honestly the future is very bright. Higher exports than imports, government debt isn’t completely out of line and it’s not going exponential like some regions, it has European like public services, a median wealth 2.5x that of the USA, good employment figures.

It’s not perfect but i still think it’s pretty good.

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

#190

Post by alecco »

US Academia will struggle to keep their current PhDs in administrative positions. If it quacks like a Ponzi...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_education_bubble_in_the...

https://students.bowdoin.edu/bowdoin-review/features/death-b...

https://www.reddit.com/r/highereducation/comments/13rno6w/wh...

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