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A quarter of US-trained scientists eventually leave

arxiv.org

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Re: A quarter of US-trained scientists eventually leave

#91

Post by beepbooptheory »

j7ake wrote: post #66
MostlyStable wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the culture normalized such that a much larger proportion of research was conducted by permanent, non-faculty, research employees, this would both reduce the need for so many students and increase the jobs available for students, and create a new employment niche with a different balance of teaching/administration/research. It would basically be turning "post doc" into an actual career rather than a stop over. Thi…

Your suggestion would have fewer fresh eyes to look at the problem. If the scientific enterprise were just about churning out widgets, then yes it’s better to have permanent staff. But having a strong training pipeline for the globe is a huge plus for US prestige, and the top people are still offered jobs as faculty or industry within the country, so it still a net gain for USA. But it’s brutally competitive for the…

Thats interesting, I don't know if I have ever seen this kind of labor market logic applied to science before. Is this an agreed upon idea? In my mind, science and the kind of focused research it entails is kind of definitionally distinct from something like "innovation." Like, frankly, yes, I want a stream of widgets; if that means consistent units of research done to contribute to an important area/problem, which are reviewed and judged by peers.

Like what's even the alternative? We want a Steve Jobs of science? That's really what we are going for?

Re: A quarter of US-trained scientists eventually leave

#92

Post by jessetemp »

lingrush4 wrote: post #54
resters wrote: post #42

It's the second (so far bc he hasn't ruled out a third) presidential term for a strongly anti-immigrant / anti-immigration president who has a lot of support domestically. Immigrants are being chased out of the US in record numbers. Many of my friends with brown skin (second generation immigrants) are worried their kids will be harrassed by ICE, etc. The sad fact is that there are a LOT of Americans who deeply resent…

Sorry to ruin your mudslinging, but if you read the second sentence of the linked study, you'll see the American voters' choice of president has nothing to do with this: > Leave rates are lower in the life sciences and higher in AI and quantum science but overall have been stable for decades

Sorry to ruin your ruining, but if you read past the abstract and look at the data, you'll see it tends to correlate with whether a democrat or republican is in office. Immigration policy is also mentioned in the discussion.

> Given these findings, a corollary question is what attracts foreign graduate students to the US and leads them to stay. Prior research points to immigration policy—a subject of perennial public interest—having a large effect on stay rates

Re: A quarter of US-trained scientists eventually leave

#93

Post by cafebeen »

j7ake wrote: post #66
MostlyStable wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the culture normalized such that a much larger proportion of research was conducted by permanent, non-faculty, research employees, this would both reduce the need for so many students and increase the jobs available for students, and create a new employment niche with a different balance of teaching/administration/research. It would basically be turning "post doc" into an actual career rather than a stop over. Thi…

Your suggestion would have fewer fresh eyes to look at the problem. If the scientific enterprise were just about churning out widgets, then yes it’s better to have permanent staff. But having a strong training pipeline for the globe is a huge plus for US prestige, and the top people are still offered jobs as faculty or industry within the country, so it still a net gain for USA. But it’s brutally competitive for the…

In a practical sense, I would argue the scientific is primarily about churning out grants and papers.

Re: A quarter of US-trained scientists eventually leave

#94

Post by materials4028 »

cavisne wrote: post #65

“40% move to China” This is the plan not a coincidence. China pays huge “grants” to their citizens to come to the US, get educated, work in big tech/science, then bring it all home.

If this is true (I doubt it happens at scale), then the US got to benefit from some severely underpaid labor for a couple years at no cost to the taxpayer. What's there not to like?

Re: A quarter of US-trained scientists eventually leave

#95

Post by bell-cot »

programmarchy wrote: post #19
delaminator wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

foreigner comes to US to buy STEM education completes it, leaves

Academia is more than a transaction. It's a social good. One that's also subsidized by the US taxpayer.

Are you referring to the taxpayer support of state (not private) colleges, which subsidizes the tuition of in-state students? Foreign student don't get that subsidized rate.

Or do you mean the taxpayer-supported research - that anyone with an internet connection can download the results of, from anywhere in the world, without paying a penny of tuition?

Re: A quarter of US-trained scientists eventually leave

#96

Post by tkgally »

epicureanideal wrote: post #4

1/4 within 15 years doesn’t sound like a huge problem.. if it were 80% within 5 years, ok you’d have my attention.

It doesn't sound like a lot to me, either. I have known many people who moved to another country for graduate study. Some of them ended up settling in that country, but others pursued further study or employment in yet other countries. And perhaps the largest group among my acquaintances are those who eventually moved back to their home countries. They feel more comfortable there, they have family there, or, in many cases, returning home is what they intended to do all along.

Re: A quarter of US-trained scientists eventually leave

#97

Post by kragen »

travisgriggs wrote: post #53

I wonder how much generational impacts there are here. My son is a PhD student at an ivy. The most lucrative tuition source for the university is foreign students (as in, they bring in far more tuition dollars for each foreign student than they do native). He has also observed that the payers of these tuitions are usually the parents, who tend to be people who rose through the ideal of "the dream of american educatio…

> The most lucrative tuition source for the university is foreign students (as in, they bring in far more tuition dollars for each foreign student than they do native).

Those probably aren't STEM PhD students, whose tuition (especially at Ivies!) is normally paid for out of research grants or teaching funds.

Re: A quarter of US-trained scientists eventually leave

#98

Post by turtletontine »

MostlyStable wrote: post #60
msteffen wrote: post #29

My understanding is that scientific research has a dual problem, where the number of students needed to carry out existing professors' research is much larger than the number of junior faculty positions generally available. The result being that most trained PhDs must leave (US) academia because there are no jobs for them. In fact, I've heard scientists complain that universities owe it to students to provide more he…

If the culture normalized such that a much larger proportion of research was conducted by permanent, non-faculty, research employees, this would both reduce the need for so many students and increase the jobs available for students, and create a new employment niche with a different balance of teaching/administration/research. It would basically be turning "post doc" into an actual career rather than a stop over. Thi…

What you’re describing sounds a lot like the Department of Energy national labs. They have (or had) many permanent-track research roles without teaching obligations, where scientists can have long stable research careers.

The problem, as always, is funding. In the US, the federal govt is essentially the only “customer” of basic research. There’s some private funding, often from kooky millionaires who want someone to invent a time machine, but it’s the exception that proves the rule. Universities sometimes have pure research roles, but they’re generally dependent on the employee paying themselves with a constant stream of grants. It’s a stressful and precarious position.

Re: A quarter of US-trained scientists eventually leave

#99

Post by j7ake »

MostlyStable wrote: post #89
j7ake wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your suggestion would have fewer fresh eyes to look at the problem. If the scientific enterprise were just about churning out widgets, then yes it’s better to have permanent staff. But having a strong training pipeline for the globe is a huge plus for US prestige, and the top people are still offered jobs as faculty or industry within the country, so it still a net gain for USA. But it’s brutally competitive for the…

While I'm more skeptical than you are of the value of a string of new students coming through as opposed to just keeping the very best students, I'm also not suggesting we mandate this change or force it. I'm suggesting that we give people more information to make better informed decisions. If students decide that they are comfortable with a sub 20% job placement rate, then great, nothing needs to change. If they are…

I think a mix of the current system with more permanent researchers makes sense.

There is a lot of work in research that fits the permanent worker better than the fresh 22 year old. But having that fresh talent is really beneficial to science.

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