The Disappearing American Grad Student

800$ is a very big sum for a lot of my countrymen. Also it is true that a lot of Indian schools operate with very few resources, that would be required to appropriately educate all the students they serve. And this makes them noncompetitive in international university rankings. And to be frank it is not in our interest to pander to the rankings, because they encourage expenditure of a large amount of resources to train a few people who may or may not directly help the nation's economy.

I don't think rankings are as important to even individuals as access to employment opportunities. The cost of college education has to be weighed against the return on investment. If for example, the H1B restrictions are tightened to the extent that foreign students aren't able to find job opportunities, then the ranking of the university would be irrelevant in absence of decent return on investment.

I believe the same holds true for the native students seeking graduate education. If the cost of education is too high, be it monetary cost or opportunity cost, the people will not seek it.

I know in a few graduate medical labs international students are seen as a big labor plus. No family, no friends, in a foreign environment, under a lot of pressure to succeed. You can pretty much ask them to work 80+ hour weeks easily. Americans have family, friends, marriages, maybe children! It's not this way in a majority of labs, but I definitely have friends in labs just like this.

Also I agree with the points many others have made, debt is a major factor. I got a undergrad stem degree at a UC and only went back to great school after working for three years and paying that debt off.

Plus: I'm enjoying the research.

Negative: I'm the oldest student and halving my salary for several years is not a great experience!

Before or after all the grad students couldn't get jobs because the market was full?

The monetary value proposition of grad school simply isn't very good if you're a US citizen. There is non-monetary value (like advancing human knowledge) that makes grad school worth it for some, but the pay is low.

Imagine you just graduated from a quality undergrad with high grades and strong recommendations from your professors. Maybe you had an internship or two or spent a summer doing research. Maybe you even have authorship on a published paper as an undergrad. You could be a very strong grad school candidate. Or you could just get a corporate job right out of undergrad.

Lets look at the options.

Option 1: You go to grad school and spend ~6 years working extremely long hours at nearly minimum wage with no benefits.

Option 2: You start at ~100K USD/year with benefits working for Big Tech/Finance/Big Oil/Pharma/Defense/etc. In those ~6 years you likely work fewer hours than a grad student. You have the free time to meet someone and the income to start a family.

Most people will chose Option 2. The two main types of people who chose Option 1 are those who are passionate about learning and advancing human knowledge and those who want a career where a PhD is required.

If instead you're a citizen of "India, China, Korea, Turkey and other foreign countries" (quoted from the article) then the calculus is completely different. Not only do you get to advance human knowledge, but you get to live and work (as a TA or RA) in the US for ~6 years. After graduation you have a good chance of landing a well paying job for a US-based firm or becoming a professor or research scientist.

Grad school for Americans is not a good investment, except maybe MBA, but that should belong to its own category. Often too short, less than 2 years, not really enough time for decent research, yet expensive, the chance of getting sponsorship is slim.

Grad school in US, thus is made for foreign students to get their foot on this country. It has a few attractions: It is short. Cost less than Bachelor Degree. It offers a chance to get familiar with the culture . Count as advanced degree so bigger chance to land a H1-B visa under condition you have a job offer. And most importantly, American Universities know this. They specifically design the programs to target foreigners, and made a shit load of money out of it.