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Hillary Clinton Announces Tech Plan

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Re: Hillary Clinton Announces Tech Plan

#21

Post by ak217 »

jordanb wrote: post #9

> attaching a green card to the diplomas of foreign-born students earning STEM degrees. HAH! I knew this was going to be in there. Of course it's a gigantic bailout to the universities. STEM grad programs are already full of foreign nationals trying to get a slot in the advanced degree H1-B track. This would absolutely turbocharge that: buy a degree from whatever fourth rate American university for $xxx,xxx and value…

That is a pretty myopic thing to say. One of the biggest issues for the US higher ed system is that foreign students who receive an education here often can't stay or have to face ridiculous hurdles. In many thousands of cases, you are also wrong about buying the degree: research grants to universities fund those students' tuition and stipends, in exchange for good work.

Address the inflation of university budgets at the source of the problem. Rejecting highly educated, successful foreign nationals who we have already invested money in and who want to stay here and be productive in the workforce is one of the stupidest things this country currently does. Rejecting this proposal because you think it's a bailout for universities is cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Re: Hillary Clinton Announces Tech Plan

#22

Post by vec »

seeingfurther wrote: post #6
rayiner wrote: post #2

> It proposes investments in computer science and engineering education . . . and attaching a green card to the diplomas of foreign-born students earning STEM degrees. These sound good in theory, but in effect they're an industry-specific labor subsidy. When the government "invests" in STEM education, what happens is that the companies that need to hire engineers save money both as a result of reduced training costs…

Isn't that a good thing? What would be some negative consequences?

The Econ 101 answer is that we'll have some number of people going into STEM fields would be more productive to the economy (and probably personally better off) as lawyers or cops or bakers or whatever. More realistically, it's likely to cause average salaries for engineers to decline somewhat as supply catches up to demand.

Re: Hillary Clinton Announces Tech Plan

#23

Post by ccvannorman »

thecolorblue wrote: post #13
MrZongle2 wrote: post #8

I realize that Clinton -- like any candidate -- has a platoon of advisers for a wide variety of topics, and it is these people (rather than the candidate) who comes up with the proposed policy. But I can't help but immediately think that this was the candidate who disregarded the sound advice of the IT and security professionals in the State Department and had an entirely different bunch of people set up a faulty alt…

> ...faulty alternative email service... Do you have a source for this? It was my impression that nothing was out of the ordinary about her email server, and the rules around it were vague.

How did you get that impression? (This is why democracy is hard)

Here is a well sourced and concise explanation of why Hillary's actions around email were unforgivable. [1]

[1] https://medium.com/soapbox-dc/12-red-flags-in-clintons-email...

Re: Hillary Clinton Announces Tech Plan

#24

Post by p4wnc6 »

arthulia wrote: post #10
seeingfurther wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that a good thing? What would be some negative consequences?

Wages going down and competition going up for people in the tech industry.

I worry more about quality going down than either of those. Companies will amass huge armies of truly awful engineers and it will become a profession of attrition.

Not to mention that we will motivate foreign students to study mostly only STEM and thus deprive ourselves of the diversity of thought and the artistic and critical labor output of foreign workers in non-STEM domains.

Makes me think of Arcade Fire: "One day they will see it's long gone."

Re: Hillary Clinton Announces Tech Plan

#25

Post by jordanb »

arthulia wrote: post #10
seeingfurther wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that a good thing? What would be some negative consequences?

Wages going down and competition going up for people in the tech industry.

Not just the tech industry too. There are plenty of areas of STEM which are totally saturated with smart effective highly educated people and the result is low wages and poor employment outcomes. Just look at chemistry or biology.

Re: Hillary Clinton Announces Tech Plan

#26

Post by basch »

Moshe_Silnorin wrote: post #16
jordanb wrote: post #9

> attaching a green card to the diplomas of foreign-born students earning STEM degrees. HAH! I knew this was going to be in there. Of course it's a gigantic bailout to the universities. STEM grad programs are already full of foreign nationals trying to get a slot in the advanced degree H1-B track. This would absolutely turbocharge that: buy a degree from whatever fourth rate American university for $xxx,xxx and value…

America has an amazing ability to attract the most high-quality immigrants, and an even more amazing ability to screw this up. Just give a green card to whomever can get a sufficiently high SAT score. This would start an insanely powerful brain drain in America's favour.

can you imagine if countries had tried this instead of eugenics?

Re: Hillary Clinton Announces Tech Plan

#28

Post by Eyas »

hasenj wrote: post #20

Trump said something to the same effect in his campaign launching book (Crippled America) where he lamented how the US makes it easy for illegal immigrants but difficult for honest people who studied and graduated in American universities but then have to go back to their home countries because the US doesn't want them to stay.

It is kind of difficult with Trump because he has actually said everything. In a complete system of logic, you will find an argument made in support of every good idea out there (but also, every bad idea out there).

In the case of Trump and tech immigration, he had argued for H1-B/green card reform for skilled workers, as you have said, and against it, see http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/oct/...

Re: Hillary Clinton Announces Tech Plan

#29

Post by [deleted] »

seeingfurther wrote: post #6
rayiner wrote: post #2

> It proposes investments in computer science and engineering education . . . and attaching a green card to the diplomas of foreign-born students earning STEM degrees. These sound good in theory, but in effect they're an industry-specific labor subsidy. When the government "invests" in STEM education, what happens is that the companies that need to hire engineers save money both as a result of reduced training costs…

Isn't that a good thing? What would be some negative consequences?

[deleted]

Re: Hillary Clinton Announces Tech Plan

#30

Post by throwawaysocks »

GrumpyYoungMan wrote: post #17
rayiner wrote: post #2

> It proposes investments in computer science and engineering education . . . and attaching a green card to the diplomas of foreign-born students earning STEM degrees. These sound good in theory, but in effect they're an industry-specific labor subsidy. When the government "invests" in STEM education, what happens is that the companies that need to hire engineers save money both as a result of reduced training costs…

So? An increase in citizens trained in a highly intellectually demanding field and encouraging immigration of some of the best and brightest of other nations makes it more than worthwhile to pursue.

> So?

So, the point of these programs isn't citizen enrichment. The point is job training.

Consider: philosophy is also intellectually demanding, but I don't see "Philosophy for All" educational initiatives.

I think a lot of people who oppose CS Ed investments are self-interested, but that doesn't mean there aren't genuine problems with government policies that tie themselves too closely to today's labor market.

If we're not careful, "learn to code and you'll have a job" will be tomorrow's equivalent of "get a college degree and you'll have a job".

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