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Why Is US Grad School Mainly Non-US Students?
Journal written by phil_ps (1164071) and posted by
kdawson
on Sat Sep 29, 2007 05:09 PM
from the damn-it-jim-i'm-a-doctor-not-an-engineer dept.
from the damn-it-jim-i'm-a-doctor-not-an-engineer dept.
I am a new graduate student in Computer Engineering. I would like to get my MS and possibly my Ph.D. I have learned that 90% of my department is from India and many others are from China. All the students come here to study and there are only 7 US citizens in the engineering program this year. Why is that? I have heard that many of the smarter Americans go into medicine or the law and that is why there are so few Americans in engineering. Is this true?
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and? (Score:4, Funny)
The world always needs more lawyers.
Re:and? (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides that, medicine and law are recession proof. Hell, they are nuclear-war proof.
Parent
Re:and? (Score:5, Insightful)
Elsewhere in this discussion it is being said that the purpose of higher education is to earn more money. This may be true for some, but it's also true that education allows you to do something more interesting or fulfilling.
Regarding the original topic, my graduating class was about 1/3 were asian immigrants with a sprinkling of middle easterners, africans and caribbean types. Of the asians the majority were Vietnamese (incidentally these folks were the most patriotic Americans you might find - they love it here) I don't know of anyone that went back to their country of origin.
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Re:and? (Score:5, Funny)
The mod points seem kind of unnecessary:
As a practicing dentist...
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Re:and? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:and? (Score:5, Insightful)
First, I have lots of un- or underinsured patients that can't afford perio or endo treatment; this problem gets worse during recessions.
Second, the study proving that periodontal disease CAUSES heart disease has yet to be completed AFAIK it's due in '08. (Either that or the guys at U. Penn don't know what they're talking about) Yes, there are studies showing a CORRELATION between the two, but as we all know, correlation is NOT causation.
Third, who says I wasn't taught about dentures? I do a TON of dentures but if you think about it, dentures indicate a failure of previous dental treatment. My practice suffers because I could earn a lot more money providing perio, endo, implant and crown & bridge services to a given patient. How much do you earn doing extractions and dentures? How much would you earn doing more complex treatments that would preserve natural dentition?
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Re:and? (Score:5, Insightful)
I deal with construction people daily and 7 out of 10 of them you can easily tell they have a bad infection going on in their mouth as you can smell it in their breath. (yes you can smell it, some are so bad that a mouth full of tictacs cant mask it) That is insanely high, yet the dentists and dental associations really don't seem to care about afford ability to dental care. when a patient is told, $3500.00 to save that tooth and put a crown on it or $490.00 to yank it out. Guess what the poor person ($35,000 or less) is going to do?
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Re:and? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:and? (Score:5, Informative)
k...looking at Quicken Loans, if you have good credit you can get a $190,000, 30 year fixed loan (you need at least a 5% down payment these days, $10,000) at 6.25% interest, which is $1,169 a month. That's with good credit of course, but that's a whole 'nother discussion. If you really want to get ahead of the curve, pay an extra $100 to $200 a month against the principle.
You can play around with the extra payments (prepayments) at Karl's Mortgage Calculator [jeacle.ie] if you want. In the example above, an extra $100 from the start shortens the loan from 30 years to 24 years, 3 months. $200 a month would shorten the loan to 20 years 7 months.
So, in short, you're way off base. :-)
$200k will get you a nice house in a lot of the country...and it'll get you more in a few more months. ;-)
Parent
Re:and? (Score:5, Interesting)
What a load of nonsense. You're making 2 assumptions:
1) That advanced socities have complex law.
2) Lawyers are needed.
An "advanced" society will have people who have internalized the law -- they don't need others to interpret it for them. Do YOU need a law against killing? Of course not -- you know better. A civilization where people are blind to the consequences of their actions is not advanced. Advanced socities have LESS laws, because in reality there is only a few Laws: The Law of Karma, and the Law of Love, everything else springs from ignorance, greed, or power.
Western civilization is by no means advanced. When you still have people arguing over Intellectual Property Rights which are neither Property nor Rights, you have an IMMATURE society.
Lawyers are a necessary evil, because people don't know any better.
--
The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the government
-- Tacit, 56-117 AD
Parent
90% of those who apply are probably from India... (Score:5, Insightful)
Being an American graduate student myself, there are a lot of foreigners where I am as well. I don't have a problem with it. Why are you ranting here and not in some blog?
Re:90% of those who apply are probably from India. (Score:4, Funny)
'cause he's wondering how the next gen of american CS's will cope with the un-american competition. Imagine a future where most U.S. tech-companies outsource R&D and production to India and china...oh...never mind
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Re:90% of those who apply are probably from India. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:90% of those who apply are probably from India. (Score:5, Insightful)
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the problem is that they usually don't stay (Score:5, Insightful)
Having them leave, then compete with us, is not good.
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Re:90% of those who apply are probably from India. (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. Americans find perfectly good engineering jobs with "just" a bachelor's degree. There aren't enough jobs which require advanced degrees in engineering to make it worth the time to give up 2-3 years of engineering paychecks, pay for college, pay for books, pay for living expenses, and earn those advanced degrees. More than likely, you'd graduate with a master's or a PhD and work at the same job you could get with a bachelor's degree.
On the other hand, foreigners looking to immigrate to the United States work under the assumption that if they go to school here and earn one of our advanced degrees, then we'd be more likely to allow them to stay once their studies are complete. THAT is why foreigners outnumber Americans in these topics. It's not because they're smarter, not because they love engineering more, and not because education is better in their country. It's because they want to immigrate here.
Parent
Re:90% of those who apply are probably from India. (Score:5, Insightful)
Plus, in a lot of jobs, especially with bigger companies, you can get a job with a BS or MS degree and then go on to study later with the company's help. That's probably the best way to go about getting an advanced degree and getting decently paid at the same time. Unless you study physics. Then, you absolutely need a Ph.D. and you should get used to poverty
Parent
Re:90% of those who apply are probably from India. (Score:5, Informative)
Getting an MBA has actual value. Working and gaining real-world experience has actual value. Meaningful research is a noble task, but... there isn't that much of it going on in most programs from what I can tell.
Contrast that with India or Germany, where you basically need a PhD to get a job flipping burgers (yes, sarcasm), and it is easy to understand why Americans are a minority.
Also, it isn't a recent change; it's been true for the past 20 years.
Parent
Short answer (Score:4, Funny)
Yes!
I would give the long answer, but I have to get back to preparing a computer networking paper with my chinese advisor and my 3 chinese colleagues
It's a numbers game (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's a numbers game (Score:5, Funny)
The Rapture happened? I'm still here? Wow, that's strange. I insult God all the time.
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Re:It's a numbers game (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:It's a numbers game (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember, while our schools might be below average compared with other first world nations, it's also an extremely fragmented system - unlike how some school systems are nationally administered, you have to remember that every state has it's own school system - indeed you can frequently substitute counties and cities in there as well. This means in that while the USA has some of the worst schools in the world - we also have some of the best in the world. There are regions where public schools would be considered excellent, and areas where anybody who's anybody send their children to private institutions.
Finally, we've been concentrating too much on mediocrity - spending too much effort on making sure everybody we can meets minimum standards, rather than trying to push students as far as they'll go.
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Re:It's a numbers game (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:It's a numbers game (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:It's a numbers game (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:It's a numbers game (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably around the time Christopher Colombus [wikipedia.org] arrived to America.
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Re:It's a numbers game (Score:5, Interesting)
Ah questions...
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the cost and value of a grad student (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know about taxes, but given an average grad student stipend, that's insignificant compared to both the cost of the education and the value of their research. In a grad school I attended, our stipend was about $20,000 a year, and I was told the cost per grad student per year to the institution was about $60,000 a year. (Where does that other $40,000 go? Advisor's salaries, class tuition, IT costs, buildings maintenance, etc...)
PhD programs are not like undergrad, where you learn a bunch of stuff and work on mostly contrived problems and you aren't expected to contribute anything new to the field. It's more like a job where you solve hard problems for the people funding your education in exchange for grant money. Typical funding sources are NSF, DARPA, NIH, and sometimes corporations (IBM, Microsoft, and Intel all fund quite a bit of research).
What the US government gets out of the grant money it spends is better solutions to hard research problems, some of which have significant economic value. In that respect, individual students are a bit of a gamble, but overall I'd say it's a net gain. If it's a Chinese or Indian that does the actual work, who cares? The real idiocy of the program though is that we often don't allow them to stay once they've completed their degree. Oh no, we can't have highly educated foreigners in our country competing for valuable US jobs! Never mind that there really aren't enough PhDs in the world to make any significant difference to the employment statistics.
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Re:It's a numbers game (Score:5, Insightful)
This is from personal observation of this field over the last twenty years. The stupidest thing we can do is pay for their education and then not allow them to stay. The second most stupid thing we can do is make it harder for them to come here. We are currently doing both of those stupid things more than we used to.
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Re:It's a numbers game (Score:5, Interesting)
We sold weapons to Iran before and after the Shah. We just concluded a massive weapons deal with Saudi Arabia. To be honest, I don't think Saudi Arabia or 90's era Liberia are any more democratic than North Korea. Don't claim the moral high-ground unless you can justify giving 20 billion USD in advanced weaponry to a tyrannical theocracy known for sponsoring terrorism.
And as for China's willingness to invade democracies when it suits their self interest, see what the US did in 1956 to Iran(Check out Operation Ajax on Wikipeida), and what the US did to Guatemala during the Cold war; Or what the CIA did in Chile, or the Congo, I could go on.
Of course, every country with power and influence has black marks. See France's activities in West Africa and Rwanda, their current activities in Niger, to say nothing of their history in Indochina and Algeria; Or see the UK's actions in Uganda, Former Rhodesia, Iran, and Suez. Don't even get me started on Russia or Israel.
The truth is, governments are rather soulless entities, which by design act in their own self-interest. To ascribe personal qualities to them like evil is idiotic and counter-productive. Instead, we have to understand the pressures a nation's leaders face.
China is an ethnic powder keg teeming with religious and ethnic strife, Jingoism, and hyper-Nationalism. They have massive inequalities of wealth, and a population schooled in Marxism. In the meantime, rapid economic, political, and demographic trends have made most government and societal institutions irrelevant.
Faced with this, what do you think the Chinese leaders want the most? Stability. Every single action they take, from supporting dictatorships in Burma and North Korea, to propping up the US economy with bond purchases, to refusing to float their currency. China has no urge to pick a fight with America, not now and not ever. They have their own problems to worry about, and the last thing they want to do is add another.
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As someone who went through med school... (Score:5, Funny)
Most people live outside the US (Score:5, Insightful)
[1] http://www.arwu.org/rank/2007/ARWU2007_Top100.htm [arwu.org]
Easy answer (Score:5, Insightful)
Very few Americans require anything more than a BS to get a job with a Computer Engineering or Computer Science degree. On the other hand, it's easier for a non-citizen to get a job if they have a MS from a domestic school. As well, it's generally easier for them to get into shool than get into a job (the job comes after being here a few years and getting that MS), and gives a nice ~2 year jump on the whole green card process. If they somehow fail to find a job after getting the MS, there's always the option to continue on with a PhD while looking for something that will actually pay the bills.
The goal of college for 90% of Americans is to get a better job. Therefore 90% of Americans aren't going to spend any more time than necessary in school, and if they do go for higher degrees it's usually for something that will increase their pay. A BS in CE doesn't get paid much less than a MS in CE, but a BS in CE with an MBA who's promoted into management does get paid quite a bit more.
Re:Easy answer (Score:5, Insightful)
From personal experience, I appreciate learning in an applied engineering environment rather than the theory of academia.
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Re:Easy answer (Score:5, Interesting)
In my experience, yes. Most Americans go to college to "get a better job" or because they want to enter a certain field. They are, to coin a phrase, "goal oriented" -- school is a funnel into which they jump and once they get out the other end they can go back to living their lives, only now they will have been granted permission to enter into the career of their choice. So-called elite schools are desirable, not because they offer a better learning experience, but because they will "look better" to potential employers.
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You have asked and answered your own question (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a matter of economics, are you going to invest that much money and time in something when significant portions of the grad level work is being exported out of the country? With major corporations from the likes of Microsoft to IBM hiring principally outside the US in China and India, this is where the jobs will be and thus, where the grad students are coming from.
The real slap in the face of the whole thing is that said companies than have the audacity to complain that we don't have enough educated workers to provide a workforce here in America.
Quite simple (Score:5, Interesting)
I thought about going to grad school for Biology as I have a keen interest in various fish and some local rivers & streams ecology that I picked up on my own. I had a sit down with the Dean of the Biology department where we basically shot the shit for an hour or two, talking about various subjects, including programs at other schools. He seemed surprised that not only did I know who the "big names" in my relatively obscure interests, but that I was also reading their papers and applying them. He looked at me and asked me point blank: Why the hell aren't you in my department? And I didn't have a good answer. He went on to explain that there's a ton of people in Biology grad school, but none of them were actually biologists. Instead, they were padding grades and trying to get into med school. While he was most certainly happy that they were going on with their lives, he said finding people actually interested in Biology was like pulling teeth. Basically: he'd pick someone like me, regardless of my GRE scores for the most part, over a mountain of med school hopefuls because it was his job, as far as he was concerned, to educate biologists. It was an interesting conversation. "Man, you could get your doctorate just doing what you're doing now at home on your own dime..."
And no, I didn't go to grad school. Not yet, anyway.
Too busy working for a living. (Score:5, Insightful)
Most Americans, even if they are really smart and work hard in high-school, still have to work while attending college and have little time for serious study. By the time they've finished four years of University, they have between $60,000.00 and $100,000.00 in debt. They look around and realize that if they go to graduate school, they will probably double that debt.
Now, they've worked for most of the time they've been at University, and haven't truly been able to get all the benefits of dedicated study, and they are faced with more of the same. More debt, etc.
Because they have work experience and because they can take jobs that pay reasonably well, they do so, figuring it is best to cut their losses.
This is somewhat short-sighted, but, it is inevitable.
A foreign student in the U.S. usually (from my experience) attended non-graduate school in their home country and it was a free-ride one way or another (I'm not saying they aren't smart and didn't have to work really hard). They are now in the U.S. attending graduate school, usually on some sort of scholarship (not saying they didn't earn it).
They don't need to work to pay for school. They are not accruing massive debt. They can't just take a reasonable paying job in the U.S. because their student visa doesn't allow it. In their home country, reasonable paying jobs (without an advanced degree) aren't as plentiful. Their choices are, continue in graduate school while not accruing massive debts and yet being able to dedicate 100% of their efforts to learning and mastering the material, or return to their home nation and compete for jobs without and advanced degree. It's a pretty easy choice.
med school has fewer? Hahahaahaa... (Score:5, Insightful)
I have heard that many of the smarter Americans go into medicine or the law
Medicine is not the place to go - there is an insane glut of grad students and postdocs. Competition is extremely fierce. If you're thinking of going for any sort of specialty practice- forget it. Everyone wants to be a *insert narrow specialty* doctor; nobody wants to be a general practitioner or go into pediatrics where we really need doctors. So, we have 50 zillion hand surgeons, and a line a mile out the doors of all the family docs.
As for medical research - our lab is chock full of foreign students. The lab director prefers them because they're basically slaves- they want desperately to be in the US, and the lab holds their visa. They'll put up with shit pay, no/little credit for their work, insane hours, and unreasonable demands. They're just happy to be on US soil.
Someone told me once that the lab couldn't attract US candidates because said candidates were going for higher profile, better paying positions.
If you want to be successful coming out of grad school- go for engineering, either mechanical or electrical. Big shortages predicted in both fields, from what I've heard.
Whatever you do, skip research - unless you look forward to flushing several years of your life down the drain to help some professor reel in a research grant, who'll barely care to list your name on the paper. And that's *if* the research isn't scooped by another lab...
TV for one. (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, it's not just Americans who watch TV but the problem particular to Americans is that their real-life experience seems to parallel what they see on TV, they deal with plenty of brokers, doctors and lawyers in real life and have little contact with engineers and scientists. Americans also pay their doctors and lawyers extremely highly. In other countries doctors and lawyers are not quite so highly compensated and engineers have higher social status overall.
That tag... (Score:5, Insightful)
Economics. (Score:5, Interesting)
For most students who intend to enter the commercial sector, getting the "one up" degree just doesn't pay that well. Speaking about engineering specifically:
1. Graduate with a BS/BA. Get a job, work for two years, and you'll be on just about even ground (salary-wise) with the guy who got his MS/MA. And you won't have picked up the debt/costs associated with getting the MS/MA. I ran the numbers for me, and the payback on this is about 6-7 years.
2. Graduate with an MS/MA. Get a job, work for three years, and you'll be on even ground -- or often better -- with the guy who got his PhD. And you won't have picked up the debt/costs associated with the MS/MA. I ran the numbers for me, and the payback on this is about 15-20 years.
And the kicker: Anyone smart enough to get a graduate degree can run those numbers. This doesn't even include the opportunity cost of delaying starting a family while you pursue the degree.
However, foreign students have an added sweetener in the pot: it's easier to stay in America to make the big bucks if you have a graduate degree. And this tips the equation significantly.
I just want to puke whenever I hear US firms bitching and moaning about how there aren't enough American graduate scientists/engineers. It's simple economics, you bunch of whining douche bags. You understand them, because when demand for your products goes up, you're quite happy to raise the price. But when the shoe is on the other foot? You whine, bitch and moan about how employment costs are out of hand.
Again, it's simple economics, supply and demand. Supply short? Pay more. If it doesn't, don't be surprised when supply stays low.
Re:$$chool. (Score:4, Insightful)
But as long as "success" is defined by earnings, and
lawyers and doctors are paid more than engineers,
the smart ones will pick this way.
Parent
Re:$$chool. (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, graduate school (at least on the doctoral level) in science and engineering is usually very well funded. Not only is it common to get free tuition, but it is also common to receive a stipend. It's less than you'd get working, but it's still something.
Not so in medicine or law, AFAIK.
Parent
Re:Because a majority of US citizens are poor? (Score:4, Insightful)
Most Americans don't go to grad school because there is little economic incentive to do so. The US economy only supports so many technocrats. The presence of so many Indian and Chinese students in US science and technical grad programs is a natural function of those nations' evolving manufacturing and services sectors. They simply need to train more technocrats because their sectors are growing compared to those sectors in the US, which are economically mature.
As to India or China "surpassing" the US, what does that mean? Surpassing the US in what? Manufacturing? Good! That's economic specialization that creates efficiencies for everyone. Not only is talk of "surpassing" mere economic scare-mongering (did we learn nothing from such silliness when the Japanese were supposed to "surpass us" in the 1980s? Where are the Japanese today? Economic stagnation), it makes erroneous straight-line projections that ignore very important long term considerations of demographics and other factors. The US economy will be a large and important factor in the global economy for the foreseeable future. But the global economy continues to grow and evolve and the US economy continues to change from its post-WWII dominance (unsurprising since it was the only intact industrial economy on the planet) to an important player in a dynamic specialized global economy.
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Re:Because a majority of US citizens are poor? (Score:5, Insightful)
two other factors that i haven't seen mentioned are the steady increase in student loan burdens and the fact that a foreign student dominated graduate culture tends to attact more of the same. students are coming out of undergrad programs with more and more debt, and it's hard for those students to think about anything but getting into the workforce and paying that off now. the fact that they can delay repayment and earn enough money in graduate assistantships to keep the debt from increasing isn't as well advertised as it could be.
the OP stated that he's one of 7 american students in a 90% foreign class which is pretty similar to what i encountered in a CS graduate program. graduate classes are really very much harder than undergraduate classes, and i don't care who you are you're probably going to get stuck on parts of the curriculum and have to work through it with other people to fully grasp the concepts (and, no, i'm not talking about cheating on your homework). in my experience the american and non-american graduate students are two pretty disparate groups, and being a part of the larger of those two orbits has to be a huge advantage when you need to tap those resources. that's setting aside the fact that graduate students effectively live on campus in their study areas and labs, so having a large support group in that environment is huge.
Parent
Re:Teachers don't teach (Score:5, Insightful)
The US K-12 system blows. The US university system is pretty much the best in the world. This leads to lots of foreign students taking advantage of the quality of American higher education. Entertainingly enough, it also leads to lots of professors having to undo the brain-damage the K-12 system inflicted on students.
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Re:Teachers don't teach (Score:5, Funny)
Thank you, Ensign Chekov.
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Re:Because a majority of US citizens are poor? (Score:5, Insightful)
Take into consideration that when a bank has a dollar in savings, it can lend someone some ridiculous amount like 250, and you'll realise that the 500 billion dollars a year Americans borrow leads to some serious green moving around the economy in a very bad way.
I wouldn't be surprised if some country out there, especially one like China, who holds tonnes of US debt, could get some amazing growth very quickly. After all, the US gained it's power by industrialization in the world wars. They became the largest arms dealer in the world, and while countries like Britain became debt ridden, the US became the largest debtor.
Personally, given the circumstances, I'd say the US is entering the perfect storm leading to it's own demise.
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