Why Is US Grad School Mainly Non-US Students?

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?

and?

[Colin Smith]

The problem is?

The world always needs more lawyers.
 

Short answer

[slashdotmsiriv]

"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?"

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 :)

As someone who went through med school...

[MMC Monster]

...there sure aren't as many "americans" here as there used to be. Of course, I mean white anglo-saxon protestant males. A lot more minorities. A lot more first and second generation americans.

Re:It's a numbers game

[dal20402]

America has 300,000 people

The Rapture happened? I'm still here? Wow, that's strange. I insult God all the time.

Re:90% of those who apply are probably from India.

[j35ter]

Why are you ranting here and not in some blog?

'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

Re:It's a numbers game

[The One and Only]

You're like the sixth person to call me out on a typo. Who could have ever guessed that Slashdotters were pedantic nerds with nothing better to do on a Saturday night than correct a minor error? (Strangely enough, I did, correctly, say that the US population was about an order of magnitude less than 2 billion. 300,000 is about four orders of magnitude less.)

Re:It's a numbers game

[Aqua04]

Who could have ever guessed that Slashdotters were pedantic nerds with nothing better to do on a Saturday night than correct a minor error?

What do you mean ? What else would there be to do on a Saturday night ? By the way, its usually best to leave a space before a question mark at the end of a sentence. You said "minor error?", it should be "minor error ?". Reads better and makes the user experience of reading your sentence that much more comfortable. Thanks.

Re:It's a numbers game

[The One and Only]

It looks like a typo to me, and considering what happened the last time I made a typo...

Re:It's a numbers game

[HangingChad]

Who could have ever guessed that Slashdotters were pedantic nerds with nothing better to do on a Saturday night than correct a minor error?

You mean there are other options? What are these strange things of which you speak?

Re:and?

[BarkLouder]

The world always needs more lawyers.

.........at the bottom of the ocean.......

Re:It's a numbers game

[Panoptes]

Don't blame the poor chap - he was obviously using Excel 2007 for the calculations.

Re:and?

[A nonymous Coward]

Your sig says I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.

The mod points seem kind of unnecessary:

As a practicing dentist...

The most famous engineer in the US

[InterGuru]

The most famous engineer in the US is Dilbert.

Re:Teachers don't teach

[The One and Only]

the wast majority of Americans are dumb religious morons

Thank you, Ensign Chekov.

Re:Teachers don't teach

[megaditto]

Moderators? Why, they are the product of the American k-12 system.