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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
#32Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office
#33The 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…
Why wouldn't stem PhDs follow some bell curve of quality? I'm sure many PhDs that are leaving don't contribute but some of them do. I personally don't see a reason for it to be skewed for only PhDs which don't contribute to leave.
Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
American is built on immigration, and nearly all of us are immigrants or very recent descendants of immigrants. How in the world has immigration harmed Americans?
It's a NIMBY policy, pulling up the ladder. It's rooted in zero-sum thinking, that can't imagine "make the pie bigger" and can only imagine a fixed-size pie where their slice is getting smaller.
Given the impact the economy has on people's lives, it's an understandable fear. There's plenty of evidence for this not being the case (and in fact evidence for the "brain drain" strategy having substantial positive impact), but getting people to let go of a fear typically requires more than just hard evidence that it's unfounded.
(There's a separate branch of that fear, that imagines immigrants to be a drain on public assistance programs, but there's plenty of evidence that that is not the case.)
(Also, as always, policy is complicated and no comment that fits on a page is going to capture all the nuance of it or facets of it.)
Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office
#35The 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…
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.
Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office
#36Earlier 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.
Every country with benefits for old people dreams of being able to import high value workers who can provide those benefits.
Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
American is built on immigration, and nearly all of us are immigrants or very recent descendants of immigrants. How in the world has immigration harmed Americans?
Ask the indigenous Americans.
I think if you're going to argue that we shouldn't have contemporary immigration because of the harm to native Americans, then you should show what harm is caused _now_, that native Americans actually oppose immigration, and probably that you support other ways of helping them like giving them land back.
Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office
#38The 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…
It sounds like you're saying that this is a step in the direction of "fixing" academia. I don't see any evidence of that, all i see is fewer scientists receiving decreasing funding in a state where weve already been slashing basic research investment for generations. Also, there is no evidence that the ones that are leaving are the least productive. Intuitively it's likely the opposite: the ones who have the most potential will find work elsewhere and will be the first to leave.
EDIT: I would also like to say that i have never seen evidence that we can measure the performance of 10k PhDs in a single dimension at all. So a claim that this could be good for scientific research and development seems unprovable at best.
Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office
#39Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office
#40We 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...