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We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

theguardian.com

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Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#391
post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Internment is long-term (see Wikipedia), The Wikipedia page for Internment [1] doesn't include the words long-term when I view it. Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simply mean imprisonment, it tends to refer to preve…

Seamus Culleton is allowed to leave detention, he just can't stay in the US. He is choosing to stay in detention while he pursues legal challenges to his deportation order.

[deleted]

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't want there to be good schools that some people can get into and and garbage schools for everyone else. What you need is a high minimum standard that every last school in the nation has to adhere to and it shouldn't be possible to graduate from any of them without being able to read at grade level.

The way it works now is that 20% of the bottom students eat up 80% of a teacher’s time and resources. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing depending on what your goals are. What I am saying is that you can’t have everything. You have to choose. This system this comment describes and the system your comment below describes cannot coexist.

That just means that we need to move the bottom 20% of students into their own classes where they can get the extra attention they need. That means they can get a high quality education and so can everyone else. You do not have to choose. You can have both.

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#393
post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Internment is long-term (see Wikipedia), The Wikipedia page for Internment [1] doesn't include the words long-term when I view it. Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simply mean imprisonment, it tends to refer to preve…

Seamus Culleton is allowed to leave detention, he just can't stay in the US. He is choosing to stay in detention while he pursues legal challenges to his deportation order.

[deleted]

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But related to this article, is China winning in terms of accumulating talent? I don’t think people all over Europe/Asia/Africa migrate to China. If they succeed, it’s purely with their own talent. The US still has that advantage even if it has less of it, unless I am mistaken.

> I don’t think people all over Europe/Asia/Africa migrate to China. Learning mandarin is the major blocker imo, more people would move if the language was easier.

I learned it in high school and university as European and I can speak decently. China isn't that good of a place for foreigner due to difficulty of getting permanent residency/citizenship. Hong Kong is the exception but the economy is not too hot there now.

I moved to Singapore although it had nothing to do with my language skills.

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or train (and appropriately credential) more teachers and pay them like the critical specialists they are.

If teacher pay made a big difference in outcomes, expensive private schools would have very well paid teachers. But private schools typically have lower teacher pay than public schools.

Teacher pay doesn't have as large an influence on student success as it does on how many people are willing to enter the occupation and stay there. Private school teachers typically deal with far fewer students in the classroom and in much better conditions. They also don't typically have to spend as much of their own money on basic school supplies. Improving conditions at public schools and lowering classroom sizes would help to attract teachers too.

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#396
post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese is too difficult of a language. I have spent 5 years learning it part-time and have gotten to a level I can understand 30% of a TV show and 20% of a newspaper. Unfortunately it's two different languages and both are unlike almost anywhere else. The spoken language is tonal and the consonants don't easily match English. If I have a heavy English accent, I just don't speak Chinese instead of sounding like a for…

It’s true that learning Chinese as an adult—especially if you come from an English or other European language background—can be extremely challenging. I have several colleagues who have lived in Beijing for more than a decade, are married to Chinese spouses, and still can barely speak the language, it becomes even more challenging for reading. This creates real difficulties in daily life. Today, almost all routine ac…

Can you explain how the rise of apps would make things more difficult for those who know little Chinese, as opposed to easier?

> online shopping, digital payments, banking, ride-hailing

Surely pre-smartphone, all the offline equivalents of these were also Chinese-language only? Especially in that era, effectively no taxi drivers or shop assistants would've known English, and you didn't have a phone to translate for you.

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It bears repeating: for everyone who insists that the US Executive Branch isn't compromised by our enemies, what different actions would someone who was compromised and trying to speedrun the destruction of American power, influence, and hegemony have taken?

This suggests that our executive branch has fallen under the influence of foreign agents through blackmail or coercion of some sort. Whereas the simpler and more obvious explanation is that the US President shares the general outlook and values of America’s enemies and thus naturally acts in their interests without persuasion needed.

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Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're happy to fund the military, they have a list of words [1][2] that they use to flag grant applications, including "female", "bias", "political" and others. Cuts seem to be directed at biomedicine, health and social studies. [1] https://grant-witness.us/ [2] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/07/us/trump-fede...

That's true, I've seen it in action, but at the same time... the number of grants and the rate of grant issuance has been very slow. They aren't using a scalpel to eliminate all the "woke". They are also attacking Harvard, the number 1 science university in the US. There's a scandal at Harvard last month where the Dean of Science was fired because he was protesting against eliminating graduate students in the science…

The Harvard budget alone is larger than most other countries.

Some things are more important than grant money, and don't necessarily improve with larger budgets. =3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lai9QhBibk

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. And what is the EU doing to attract American talent that doesn't want to live under the Trump regime with his ICE stormtroopers? Nothing really. Meanwhile, highly accomplished people in the US with Chinese ancestry are being wooed to China to do important R&D there.

Did you just compare Chinese immigration enforcement favorably against "ICE stormtroopers"? Foreigners in China have to tell the police where they live, even if it's just a stay in a hotel, and they get deported very quickly for minor crimes. There isn't a problem of illegal immigration in China because the police are so strict, nobody can get away with it!

Seems a lot more humane than allowing such things and then one day sending armed masked men to kidnap people from the street.

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you just compare Chinese immigration enforcement favorably against "ICE stormtroopers"? Foreigners in China have to tell the police where they live, even if it's just a stay in a hotel, and they get deported very quickly for minor crimes. There isn't a problem of illegal immigration in China because the police are so strict, nobody can get away with it!

Strict police does sound quite a bit less bad than fascist police...

You have to know very little about China to think that it is somehow more favorable to foreigners and minorities than the US.

What the US does is bad, but somehow Americans think that means everywhere else is better.

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