China Luring Scientists Back Home 292
blee37 writes "The NY Times reports that China is increasing incentives for Chinese students earning PhDs in the US to return home. One example is a prestigious Princeton microbiologist who returned to become a dean at Tsinghua, the Chinese MIT. In my experience as a grad student, Chinese students were often torn about returning home. The best science and the most intellectually stimulating jobs are in the US. Yet, surely they miss their families and their hometown. As alluded in the article, Chinese science remains far behind, especially because of rampant cronyism in academia as well as government. But, if more Chinese students go back, it could damage the US's technology lead. A large percentage of PhD students in the US are from China. Also, the typical PhD student has their tuition paid for and receives a salary. Does it make sense to invest in their training if they will do their major work elsewhere?"
probably still makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Especially in the lab sciences, you're not paying that PhD student's meagre stipend out of altruism, hoping that they'll one day blossom into a lovely scientist. You're paying it because you need people to do the research: the professor is more of a manager of a large-ish lab so unable to do it him/herself, and hiring actual research scientists on the open market would cost a lot more than $20-25k, and they would expect more reasonable working hours. Considering the proportion of the work that actually gets done by grad students, it's a bargain.
Re:probably still makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
This is true from the professors' and universities' POV, but not necessarily from the US government's. Grad student stipends in the sciences are often tied to grants from the NIH, NSF, etc., and that is very definitely seen as an investment: training the next generation of American scientists and engineers. If the government thinks it's not going to see some ROI, this may change, and the fallout could affect students from the US as well.
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They get a lot of their ROI in direct research, though, not just in the nebulous future-production-of-engineers. If an NSF grant spends $200,000 paying the stipends+tuition of 5 students, and those 5 students end up producing a few journal articles, and once in a while those sets of journal articles include important results, he NSF's gotten its $200,000 worth.
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I guess it depends on the lab and the kind of research. There are areas of the lab sciences where the prof has a hypothesis, has pretty much written the paper (or more likely has a postdoc writing it), and needs an army of drones to run a huge pile of experiments and get him/her some numbers. In that case, the job of the grad students is to get the numbers, and there is probably no cheaper way you could possibly get those numbers (research scientists who could successfully run experiments in a modern lab do
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If an NSF grant spends $200,000 paying the stipends+tuition of 5 students
Then it's getting a ridiculously good deal. That's $40K/student. A typical PhD in the USA takes at least 5 years, so that's under $10K/student/year, which doesn't even cover stipend or tuition, let alone both.
For reference, the grant that I was on for my PhD was for £500,000 (around $1m at the time) and paid for four PhD students and one research assistant. Including office space, overheads (equipment, infrastructure maintenance, technicians salaries and so on) charged by the university, and my st
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I was counting per year ($40k incl. tuition is fairly common as a ballpark figure).
Maybe it varies by the area, but my impression is that funding agencies don't really care about "greater body of scientists doing research" as their ROI, with the exception of specific programs like the NSF's Graduate Research Fellowship program.
They're funding a project, and they want to know if their $500k or $1m or whatever it is, will produce $500k or $1m of research. Sometimes the money doesn't even get primarily spent o
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Show them how good life is when free and happy, then send them back.
At home they where to infect the locals with pro US views.
Better yet rise up the ranks of their private or public sector and buy made in the USA over a long productive life.
Why do you think so many world leaders have very expensive US degrees?
The problem is China has out smarted the US.
They got their best and brightest near the US academics and learned all they cou
Educating the Chinese (Score:3, Insightful)
In one way it has actually worked:
China is pretty capitalist these days. Not to the point that the ruling party listens to Big Business when making laws like in the US and Europe, but according to Wikipedia free markets have mostly replaced the planned economy that is characteristic for communism.
Of course China is still a dictatorship, so the idea that free markets would lead to more freedom has not worked out (yet?).
Re:probably still makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
If the US as a whole isn't providing a sufficient incentive for these students to remain here and China is, then I'd say that the problem is mostly our doing. Give them a good reason to stay and they most likely will, treat them like crap and they'll leave.
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It's not only the US that treats its Ph.D. students like that. Here in NL (and I think in most of the rest of Europe as well) it's the same. Besides, in most companies scientists are paid much less than for instance the marketing people.
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...the problem is mostly our doing.
But is it a problem? The USA is all about government by the people.
I walk down Main Street, USA and the banners hanging from the sign posts - they don't say, "We support our scientists". On the the right, do people support Sarah Palin, or Dick Cheney, or George Bush because of some fierce love of science? Or, how about on the left: is it a fierce love of science that drives people to support Jesse Jackson, or Hillary Clinton, or Barack Obama? Do libertarians climb up on their soap boxes and demand to pay mo
Re:probably still makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
If you can't find a job with a PhD in Biochemistry in the entire USA, you're not telling the whole story.
Re:probably still makes sense (Score:5, Interesting)
If you can't find a job with a PhD in Biochemistry in the entire USA, you're not telling the whole story.
Well, I ain't no superstar but there's no scandal either.
And, I suppose in a certain sense, that was part of my point. The top PhDs - they're still going to get faculty positions at Harvard and Yale, so to speak. But "the people" here in the USA are really only willing to pony up to support a few of the Einsteins at the top. So, increasingly those of us who aren't superstars (both American and foreign) are finding better opportunities overseas.
That is, the lack of commitment to scientific research in the USA is causing a brain drain primarily from the bottom rather than from the top. I'm not saying that's wrong - just how it is.
Incidentally, as to why I've struggled to find a job in the USA, I took a couple years off after grad school to do some travelling, help my mom after my father died unexpectedly, and a few other things. I then did a three year stint as a scientific programmer and a year teaching part-time at a community college. So, at the moment, I just don't have the publication record to competitive for tenure track research faculty positions. But, I'm now also out past the 5 years since I did my PhD - so finding post-docs is also difficult.
If I keep doing part-time community college teaching I'll probably eventually land a full time community college gig. But, in the mean time, $30K/year is tough to support a family. Ideally, I'd get a job as a scientific programmer here in the USA paying $50K/year- but those jobs are very competitive. So when I got an offer for $45K/year doing a post-doc over in Asia - I really didn't have any choice but to take it.
And, that's my underlying point: for people like me who aren't superstars, moving out of the USA to pursue opportunities in places like Asia is looking better and better.
Re:probably still makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Brain drain sucks even worse for the people who live in the country the person receiving a PhD emigrated from. For instance, there are more doctors in the born in Ethiopia living in just the Washington, DC area than there are doctors in the entire country of Ethiopia. How does a country recover from such a tremendous brain drain and address major social ills like rampant poverty, famine, and endemic corruption when the very people who might be best able to assist with their own experience and knowledge do not return to their native country because there is nothing to return to and no reasonable job prospects? Why must the US retain as many of their foreign born individuals who received their PhD in the US, when under the right conditions these PhD holders could help their own country far more than any kind of work they do in the US? I'm not suggesting we force these people to return or even expect them to return, especially when there is nothing to return to. But then again I see nothing wrong with ti US offering grants and other forms of aid to underdeveloped countries so that they can improve their situation with respect to development and improve the local economy. This would come with the explicit expectation that these governments spend the money wisely, and steps are taken so that as little money as possible is wasted by corruption.
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> How does a country recover from such a tremendous brain drain
It's not correct to call that a brain drain from Ethiopia if that country doesn't build any brains itself. These brains are build by the US in the US. They are drained from nowhere.
If certain countries, especially muslim one's, would leave behind their cultural backwardness (trying to violently live Qur'an like 1400 years ago - stupid backwardness !) instead of killing christians or other other-faith-people, students would have real incentive
Re:probably still makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
> How does a country recover from such a tremendous brain drain
It's not correct to call that a brain drain from Ethiopia if that country doesn't build any brains itself. These brains are build by the US in the US. They are drained from nowhere.
If certain countries, especially muslim one's, would leave behind their cultural backwardness (trying to violently live Qur'an like 1400 years ago - stupid backwardness !) instead of killing christians or other other-faith-people, students would have real incentives to return to such countries.
So these countries get what they act.
Ethiopia is a mostly christian country though
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This would come with the explicit expectation that these governments spend the money wisely, and steps are taken so that as little money as possible is wasted by corruption.
Good luck with that.
Simple question...simple answer. (Score:5, Insightful)
What goes around comes around.
Grad students don't have to reside in North America to do good....get over it.
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Re:Simple question...simple answer. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Simple question...simple answer. (Score:4, Interesting)
Simple. Give them a good reason to stay. The fact that so many are choosing to return to China is strongly indicative that the US has done something very very wrong in terms of making these students want to remain here. If we want to stay in the lead in terms of scientific research we'd better find a way to up the Chinese government's ante or else we risk getting pwned.
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Re:Simple question...simple answer. (Score:5, Interesting)
That doesn't have to be the case. When I worked as a Post-Doc in Utrecht, the Netherlands, in 2000, we had a Chinese co-worker who just got his Ph.D. and was working also as a post-doc. He got a letter from the Chinese authorities in which he was invited to come back to China. He was promised a job as a professor at a university there. I don't remember wether he went there to have a look before he moved, but after he moved we got a heartbreaking email from his wife who told us that this so-called 'professorship' didn't exist, and the authorities had given them room to live in a house together with 9(!) other families. This was a big setback for her, being used to the standard of living here in NL. Her husband had a better job here than he had gotten in China. And of course there was no way this poor guy and his family were allowed to come back to the Netherlands. I wouldn't be surprised if this happens a lot with Chinese people who are drawn back to China by their government.
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It depends on the environment on the amount of enculturation. There are some places with very large foreign-student populations, and very competitive environments, where a Chinese student will essentially come to the US for 5-6 years, work 80+ hour weeks that entire time, mainly associating with other Chinese students in the same situation, and then graduate.
They'll probably still know more about American culture than not coming at all, but to some extent large labs in the physical sciences are a bit of a b
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The top ranking locals know to use your smarts.
Your just a tool that has decades of skills.
Get out of line in any way, the Laogai awaits for you and your family.
They know who they sent out in the 1970, 80, 90's ect, what your doing and where your positioned.
When to ask a question or have a sit down with your fav prof from China, just an afternoon of friendly chats.
Repeat that a few 1000 times per year for the US and then the world over and China is soaking up serious skill sets.
Re:Simple question...simple answer. (Score:5, Insightful)
When the scientists publish their results, those results will be out there just as much as if the scientists had stayed here.
Re:Simple question...simple answer. (Score:5, Insightful)
Public research, yes.
But there's a ton of very smart people with PhDs that don't do public research, only very important private research. Just to pick one I imagine Boeing has tons of people with PhDs in aeronautics whose results aren't published but rather used in fierce competition with Airbus and so on. That kind of brain drain will be a problem.
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It's often not about the knowledge published in the publications, but about the way the scientists do the research. And a publication can make very difficult things seem very easy. You often need the scientists involved in the research to replicate the results.
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Unfortunately that's true, but I think it says something about the increasing failure of the public science literature to actually embody advances in knowledge. In a lot of areas, you really cannot replicate the results solely from the published literature--- meaning it's not really science.
In many cases, this is deliberate, because the scientists are playing an academic game on one side of the fence, and working for startups on the other side of the fence, so they go out of their way to make the "public" p
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Considering how often I read on Slashdot about some Chinese team doing good science, I must agree.
You can say what you want, but they’re doing some impressive science down there. Which also is sad, because imagine them having a good government. They (the government) would not have to act like dicks. They could lead out of sheer respect for their work. Imagine a Chinese/US team effort to get to mars.
I guess there’s nothing I hate more, than some asshole slowing down the progress of the whole worl
Re:Simple question...simple answer. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's an interesting thought experiment.
If you take a brilliant, highly educated person out of a country with political freedom and put him a politically repressive country, he doesn't stop being brilliant or highly educated. But does it affect his productivity?
I don't think it does. However, the chances of something stupid being done with him and his work is higher. There's a wonderfully ironic example of this from the US Red Scare in the late 40s, when our government engaged in political witch hunts of intellectuals.
Qian Xuesen was a brilliant young rocket scientist, one of the founders of the JPL, one of the key brains behind early US rocketry, and a giant in the field of aerodynamics and jet propulsion theory. When he applied for citizenship in 1949 he was turned down, on fears that he might be Communist. The only evidence: he was Chinese. At one point he was arrested by the FBI for carrying a table of logarithms on a trip outside the US. His security clearance was revoked, making it impossible for him to continue his crucial rocketry work for the US.
Unable to work in the homeland he'd wanted to adopt, Qian would have been forced to move back to China, which would have been delighted to take him back. But this wasn't a case of some low level researcher who might smuggle the crown jewels of America's defense technology out of the country. Qian's brains *were* the crown jewels. High level defense department officials immediately realized this was a horrible mistake. Unfortunately, it wasn't politically possible to back away from that mistake at the height of the Red Scare. Qian was put under house arrest for five years, for no other crime than applying to become an American citizen.
Eventually he was allowed to return to China, which welcomed him with open arms even though he was not a Communist. After several years there the self-fulfilling prophecy came true and Qian joined the party. He was allowed to pursue his work unfettered by political interference, training a new generation of Chinese rocket engineers and advancing Chinese ICBM capabilities by decades. With Qian's help, China went from having no modern domestic rocketry technology to designing and building its own ICBMs in ten years. In fifteen years China was able to put payloads into orbit.
Note the abundant ironies here. The supposedly "free" US government oppresses a brilliant individual, but the supposedly "oppressive" one welcomes him with open arms and lets him do the kind of work he's born to do. The US government, by catering to fear and paranoia, provided a bitter enemy with the ability to strike US soil with nuclear weapons.
You could argue that the secretive, non-democratic government was actually at an advantage here, not having to worry about being re-elected and able to simply squelch any kind of organized public scare mongering by its political enemies. Qian apparently sailed through the Cultural Revolution because he was obviously too valuable to mess with. Too bad the FBI wasn't able to realize that during *our* Cultural Revolution.
That's why in the US the power of the federal judiciary to be a check on the elected branches is so important. If the executive branch, for example, is allowed to define it's own para-judicial system for politically sensitive cases, it *will* screw up, even though it *knows* at the time it's screwing up. Had Qian had been able contest the accusation in a forum that was not charged with political calculation, his clearance would have been restored and citizenship granted, to the enormous benefit of the United States. Instead his destiny was put in the hands of politics, and the politicians *knowingly* caused all the bad things they were ostensibly preventing, just to get through the next elections.
Re:Simple question...simple answer. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Simple question...simple answer. (Score:4, Informative)
Grad students don't have to reside in North America to do good....get over it.
It has nothing to do with their education and everything to do with taxpayers money being used (in the form of grants) to pay for that education. But apparently you're just one of the many billions who think that the US exists solely to be the global sugar daddy.
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the US exists solely to be the global sugar daddy.
It's kinda implied by the US itself, with the amount of influence it wants to have in the world.
Re:Simple question...simple answer. (Score:5, Insightful)
Could you be any more wrong about the US/China relationship? We owe them $800,000,000,000 [treas.gov]. It's pretty obvious who's the sugar daddy.
Re:Simple question...simple answer. (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree. The original poster expresses bad-manager sentiment; if I train my employees, they might get so good that they'll leave for greener pastures. If the work is good and the work environment friendly, people are more likely to stick around. If you make them feel like their own boss is their worst enemy, then don't be too surprised if your employees start leaving in droves. Train the people you hire; nobody said life had any guarantees, and the best-case scenario is that your own employees learn more and perform better.
I think the worse problem is the other way around (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's where I think the main problem actually is: We actually send home some who do want to stay. And that is a true wasted opportunity. I've met a couple of very smart people in my days as a grad student that were sent home even though they wanted to stay. Visa expired, couldn't find a job in time or some other such nonsense. If you have a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering, you are not likely to be a drag on society, even if you don't wind up employed in your first six months out. And now they are in China, Germany, India, or Mexico, working and contributing in those economies and using all the tools and education they got courtesy of Uncle Sam.
We should make it easier for them. And yes, I have real people in mind that I am typing about.
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I absolutely agree. The NSF, DARPA, NIH, etc.. have paid for the education of many a foreign grad student, only to have them booted out of the country after they finish their degree. (A lot of them end up moving to Canada.)
Some of the grad students I knew had to do some crazy things like leave the country periodically, and then apply to get let back in, just because that's what the bureaucracy required.
T [phdcomics.com]
Re:I think the worse problem is the other way arou (Score:5, Informative)
In general until that point, it's still worth it to fund their education just for the work they do as a grad student, and the likely work they will do in the US afterwards, even if a few end up going home and working and contributing heavily in another economy.
Speaking as a grad student, it's not like we're paid that much, less than unemployment on average apparently. [phdcomics.com] Cheaper in many cases than hiring a non-grad student to do the same work. The lab gets cheap labor, and the student gets an education. Even if those students don't stay, I expect it adds up to a net benefit for us.
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Re:I think the worse problem is the other way arou (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the whole situation is ironic. Quite often when I hear stories about immigrants with degrees getting jobs in the USA, people go ballistic about how they are stealing Americans' jobs and depressing wages.
When they go back to their home country, people then complain about a brain drain and about how they should make a 'contribution' to the country that educated them (never mind that they paid highly inflated tuition and quite often even their graduate education was paid for by moneys outside of the USA + grad students essentially work for $10 an hour - slave wages).
So they are damned if they do and damned if they don't.
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I think the whole situation is ironic. Quite often when I hear stories about immigrants with degrees getting jobs in the USA, people go ballistic about how they are stealing Americans' jobs and depressing wages.
When they go back to their home country, people then complain about a brain drain and about how they should make a 'contribution' to the country that educated them
Those who are taking expensive western jobs are the Indian call center guys, because wall clock time can be bought much cheaper where the living costs are lower. I've hung out with quite a few foreign students and for the most parts they were very bright, granted there were a few playboys whose parents simply had the money but they outpaced most of the domestic slackers who were just looking to get an easy degree. They heightened the standard more than anything else, if you wanted to compete for the same jo
Different people make different arguments (Score:3, Insightful)
People who rely on employment to make money rightfully fear an increased and talented labor pool leading to more competition in the labor market. People who rely on talented and affordable labor to make money rightfully fear a decreased and talent-drained labor pool, leading to scarcity in the labor market.
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I agree with you and I also know people that have this happen to them, so they are now doing research in other countries.
What I think is interesting is that US policy always (officially) favours an open market and competition. But in this area (grad-school-educated people) they have these weird protectionist rules. It is not as if the US even has a lot of unemployed PhDs laying around to begin with...
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What is Germany doing in there? We might be worse than before all non-Nazi-friendly scientists fled to the USA, but we’re still top-notch here.
Besides: What’s all the us against them mentality about? In science there no place for this. That’s the nice thing: Scientists do not care for stupid politics. Iranians, US, Chinese, Russians, Israeli, etc, all work together, and don’t even think about if some power-greedy suit/gunswinger is thinking they “shouldn’t”.
The Worm Turns (Score:5, Insightful)
The US has been profiting from the "Brain Drain" for the best part of a hundred years. Now, finally, the countries from whom they've been recruiting the best and brightest have some solid reasons to go home after enjoying the benefits of a US postgraduate education (which often was paid for by the other country at a rate two or three times that charged to US students). Meanwhile, undergraduate, secondary and primary education in the US has been degraded by underfunding to the point where fewer and fewer Americans are able to take advantage of the superb post-grad opportunities.
Re:The Worm Turns (Score:5, Insightful)
When I was in college most American kids were having the time of their lives. Parties, sex, drugs, frats. All the foreign or new citizen kids were in the library and filling the halls of the engineering / computer science dept. Years of that are catching up and all most Americans can do is blame everything on money or not enough government services. How do you think that Vietnamese kid whose family immigrated to the US was able to afford his Master/PHD. He actually worked for it.
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Ever watched Jerry Springer?
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The US has been profiting from the "Brain Drain" for the best part of a hundred years. Now, finally, the countries from whom they've been recruiting the best and brightest have some solid reasons to go home after enjoying the benefits of a US postgraduate education (which often was paid for by the other country at a rate two or three times that charged to US students).
My thoughts exactly.
Hell, in Russia, degree and beyond is actually free (if you're good enough, anyway), and then people turn around and immigrate... a lot of folk are quite bitter about it all.
And in this case, those Chinese students have likely paid a lot of money (more than an American would) to study in U.S., and not all of them go for post-grad. I would be very much surprised if it's a net loss even if all post-grads leave.
Re:The Worm Turns (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm really getting tired of the "underfunded" argument as to why schools are failing in the US. Seriously?
Public funding has increased steadily, at a rate faster than inflation. This is not just nationally, but also at the local level through property taxes.
Also, the funding argument is easily dissuaded simply by pointing out counter-examples: there are many, many private schools which are able to educate students to superior levels in all of the basics. We're talking half as much funding and less.
The cause for government school failure in the US is not due to a lack of funding. That's an excuse, and pushes the blame from the cause. The cause is that they're government schools, with strict top-down models they must adhere to, and do not take the individual student in mind. Schools have to do well on standardized tests, yadda yadda. It's all a huge drain to actual education, and has been so, progressively for over 60 years now.
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Those school systems which are functioning good throughout the world are very much "government" ones too, so you might let go that socialism phobia. Something went a bit more wrong with your implementation along the way.
One could even argue that what you're describing is, essentially, applying corporate ethics to the way education is performed ;p
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Yup. It's a shame we ran out of Nazis to help with the space program though.
I predict a boom in Chinese research. (Score:4, Insightful)
From what I have observed in the field that I study (quantum optics), there has been a rapid increase in the number and quality of publications from Chinese institutes. For the moment, they tend to lag behind the labs in more developed economies, filling out the body of information in the field rather than pioneering new techniques. Nonetheless, the research is usually very sound and many institutes are catching up very quickly.
The students from China tend to be very talented and are willing to work extremely hard. As the quality of equipment and infrastructure improves in the Chinese labs and the opportunities there rival the more mature labs the Chinese students will have no problem returning or staying to do doctoral work. I imagine that the situation is similar in other fields and I'm sure that there will soon be an explosion of quality research coming from China.
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as their exposure to the west increases this will change i'm sure, but for now most of the innovatino is still going to come from the USA and other western countries.
Re:I predict a boom in Chinese research. (Score:4, Insightful)
The thing that concerns me is that "but for now" part.
If the U.S. doesn't get its collective head out of its ass and start not only teaching math and science again, but actually respecting (and even honoring) the fields, then we're going to be the world's foremost service people. We've got too many kids going to college just for the "piece of paper" that valuable resources are being wasted. It's well past time for parents to accept that a college degree isn't an automatic job guarantee, and start directing their kids into some trade schools. A journeyman plumber takes more money home than a Liberal Arts grad flipping burgers.
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Re:I predict a boom in Chinese research. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah - you mean, like the Japanese from the 60s and 70s? By that logic, we should see a CNOOC sign on top of Rockefeller Plaza by 2020.
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Large part of our world is built on Chinese ingenuity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_inventions [wikipedia.org]
So I'm not sure what you are saying. The period of stagnation China had for some time relatively recently was an exception in their history. Not without destructive influence of the West, too.
Re:I predict a boom in Chinese research. (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes -- it's not just quantum optics. (Score:2)
Look at the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits (the leading journal for integrated circuit design), and compare the authorship of the papers in the January 2010 issue [ieee.org] with that of, say, the January 1966 issue [ieee.org]. The fraction of not just Chinese, but Asian names of all types, has dramatically increased, as has the fraction of papers from Asian institutions (being zero in 1966).
My university experience is similar [slashdot.org], and the parent summed it up well: "The students from China tend to be very talented and are wi
still some issues for china's progress (Score:5, Interesting)
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It is definitely very common to find this "memorizing-stuff-is-education" in developing countries. Brazil for example, used to be very much like this in the 80s. Even Richard Feynman complained about it when he taught in Brazil for a year. It is still somewhat like that, but has improved. My experience with China (and Singapore, for that matter) is that the issue is more of a "no challenge allowed", so students don't have a say and have to do exactly what is asked of them. Maybe due to this, most students f
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It's not just in China. It's in our classrooms. I recently went back to school for a degree in CS and--I know this is going to sound a little bad--but a certain foreign students would ask me to just send them the code for a certain problem we were all working on.
And if you frequent places like the OpenCV forum it is very common to see a post that says words to the effect of "I'm trying to do X. Send me some code." It's definitely off-putting. I love collaboration and discussion, but just being somebody
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...I don't think the number of PhD's alone will decide whether US or China has technology lead...
It will certainly help Chinese if PhD's brought up in place targeting creativity will start to shape their educational system.
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If you haven't read it yet, then you might like read Peter Hessler's "River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze" [amazon.co.uk]. It makes particular sense to those of us who've had the privilege to live in China, and for you, having taught there, will probably really resonate.
What inducement would it take? (Score:2, Interesting)
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Oh, a chinese colleague of mine told me that the one thing he misses most from China is the food! So keep the "chinese" food in foreign countries at a shitty level, and they'll be sure to return one day..
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While I'm not Chinese or Asian, I completely agree with him.
The thing I miss the most from living in Asia is the food. Only in very few places outside Asia have I found "good Chinese food", and all of those were places run by immigrants (where people in the kitchen didn't even speak English). I also heard the same from Indian and Nepalese friends.
So I guess food can really be a strong drive in going back. Stronger than most people would think.
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Sorry for replying to myself, but it should say "Only in very few places outside southeast Asia..." on the part about Chinese food.
We are asking the same in India (Score:2, Insightful)
India invests a lot of money in training grad students in the prestigious IITs (premier engineering colleges in India). 50% plus students travel to US, do their MS/PhD and work in the US and become US citizens eventually. We call this "brain drain" in India. We will be glad if the "reverse brain drain" helps us regain some of the losses.
As a leader, it is the responsibility of a country like US to help everyone grow. If the US does not demonstrate leadership traits, someone else will. Leadership is not simp
Re:We are asking the same in India (Score:5, Insightful)
Better than fussing at the U.S. that these students are choosing to stay here, better you should be asking why they don't want to go back. Caste system? Social stratification? Old-boy network? Nepotism? What does the U.S. do/have that India doesn't?
Re:We are asking the same in India (Score:4, Insightful)
As a leader, it is the responsibility of a country like US to help everyone grow. If the US does not demonstrate leadership traits, someone else will. Leadership is not simply about more money/resources/power. It is about being a "leader" and behaving like one.
Hogwash. China and India are directly competing with the United States on several levels. China builds weapons specifically targeted at the United States. Frequently, the weapons are based on stolen US technology.
What logic says we have to help our competitors grow???
(Granted, our relationship with India is far simpler and more cordial than our awkward tie-up with China, but there's still enough competition in some areas to take notice.)
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Interesting how you portrait it as competition...which kinda implies you're not completely looking at yourself as the position of leadership.
Anyway, look up list of Chinese inventions on Wikipedia. We stole quite a bit from them, too.
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The logic that says that this helps ourselves to grow!
It’s called teamwork.
summary is economically confused (Score:5, Insightful)
The overall benefits of this system continue to be overwhelmingly in the favor of the United States. Even those who do return to their home countries go back with a much deeper understanding of the US, not to mention greater English fluency.
The restrictions on foreign students in the aftermath of 9/11 stood out among the other security-theater policies for their active harmfulness.
they go home - Because there is no Visas to stay (Score:5, Informative)
I know from personal experience that it has become increasingly difficult to stay in the US (or Immigrate) since the late 90es.
At this time, even highly skilled individuals with several post graduate degrees have no chance to get a Visa and move to the US.
Unless a student was lucky and managed to marry a US citizen during their school time, they have NO OTHER CHOICE than to leave the US once their student visa expires, and they cannot get a work (H1) visa in time.
Supposedly this is all for your own good, to protect the country and the domestic job market.
Green card (Score:5, Insightful)
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Canadian here as well and I 100% agree with your whole post.
Yet another article (Score:5, Insightful)
Every year, the US media feels obliged to panic about some high-profile scientist that returns to China/India. In most cases, the same scientist will come back to the USA after 1-2 years, because they grew frustrated with the backwardness, lack of freedoms in their home country. These guys gave up promising jobs in the USA, so they have to go to some much less prestigious job in the US.
Don't believe me? Here's one example. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/28/business/global/28return.html?_r=1&ref=global-home [nytimes.com]
In the same vein, US universities like to loudly proclaim the opening of campuses in Asia, such as in Singapore, Dubai, or South Korea. Most of the campuses end up being shut down after about 3 years, because they couldn't get enough students, and the students they could get were of very low caliber. In the meanwhile, student tuition experiences huge hikes to pay for the millions of dollars to open new campuses, university administrators pat themselves on the back and give themselves huge bonuses, then when they shut the campuses down, they give themselves bonuses again for "cutting costs".
I'm definitely keen that China doing that (Score:2, Insightful)
Grapes turned sour? (Score:5, Insightful)
As alluded in the article, Chinese science remains far behind, especially because of rampant cronyism in academia as well as government
This article from New Scientist:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527426.900-get-ready-for-chinas-domination-of-science.html [newscientist.com]
doesn't agree. Chinese science is in fact well up there with the rest of the world, and will overtake us soon. There is nothing strange in this - while we in the West have grown rather complacent about education, which is necessary for science, the Chinese have been ramping up their investments in education and science. This, by the way, is something their government have decided, so this jibe about ".. as well as government" seems particularly misplaced in this context.
When China was a closed country not long ago, you Americans couldn't shut up about how everything would be so much better if China would open up and become part of the global world. Now they have done that, and you whine because they turned out to be bloody clever; and all you have left is yesterday's cold-war rhetoric. The competition from China is good for us - it will make realise that we have to get our act together and sharpen up.
zquad (Score:4, Interesting)
US's technology lead? (Score:2, Troll)
What lead? They lost it ages ago.
Usians really need to stop thinking they're the best. This megalomania is getting their science nowhere.
The best science and jobs? (Score:2)
The best science and the most intellectually stimulating jobs are in the US.
That’s the thing. Soon they won’t. Because the Chinese government is working hard, to get up to US level, and the US government is working hard, to get down to China”s level.
view of a biotech scientist (Score:4, Interesting)
In a historical view, the post WWII, and in the longer view, the post industrial revolution era, are anomolous, in that there was an unusual conc of science in the us and western europe; for large swaths of human history, China was the dominant, or at least a co dominant science technology country.
There are still living people who remember when Germany was THE leading science power, and if you were a serious scientitst, you went to Germany to finish your education; people like Willard Gibbs were celebrated precisely because genuwine US science hereos were so rare.
The post WWII period, when our wealth dominated world science, is coming to an end. So, the correct view is not that we are loosing our dominance, but that an unusual situtation, where an unusual amount of science was concentrated in the US, is coming to an end.
That we offer free training at what are still the best universitys in the world, because of the specious theoretical economic arguments infavor of globiliazation (see samuleson) certainly doesn't help the US.
I don't know about physics or chemistry, but life science is a labor intensive field. Right now, I make a pretty good living as a PhD scientist in boston area biotech; how on earth am i going to compete with someone from china, just as smart and well educated, a lot hardworking, and a lot cheaper ?
And this is not theory - it is happening; all of the major pharma and RnD firms (eg, Invitrogen) are setting up shop in china with large numbers of scientists.
One other point, which people outside of life science research may not understand. Life science research - basic science as practiced at our universitys - is almost a pyramid scheme; it is based on the idea that very hardworking, intelligent people willl spend 4-8 years at very low salary (graduate school/postdoc) and the carrot for this low wage job is that you can become an independent researcher - similar to the idea behind interns and residents.
So, every university professor depends, critically, on having a group of graduate students to do the actual work; if you are a prof, you must find young people willing to work long hours at relatively low pay.
The problem is that independent researchers are very exspensive, so most of the people who go into phd programs will wind up trashed - they will not have a career in science, at least not a good paying one.
so a large part of the driver for chinese scientists at our universitys is as cheap labor that is "expendable" - you can send them back to china at the end of their grad work; I emphasize that this is driven by the selfish economic needs of university profs; basically, chinese and indian grad students are guest workers, and the great thing is, you can send them back, so you can get new pools of young, cheap labor.
Thus, in the univeristy community, there is tremendous pressure to maintain the flow, and you have people claiming that there is a "shortage" of scientists; of course, in a free market system, by definition, a shortage means you are not paying enough..
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His error was more subtle. (Score:2)
Dr. Roth didn't disclose any "secret" information from a "black" DoD program. He discussed an export-controlled technology on the Commerce Control List [gpo.gov] with Chinese and Iranian nationals -- graduate students actually doing the research. He also had export-controlled information on a laptop he took with him on a trip to China, and was convicted of its export too, even though forensics showed the files had not been opened during the trip.
What's on your laptop? Checked it against the CCL lately?
I think most
Re:Fixed the story for you (Score:4, Insightful)
So...once someone works for an American company, it becomes unethical for them to work in any other country is it? Self pity much?
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If US have enough American PhD why does America lures Chinese students to study home?
I'm not sure if it's the same in the USA, but over here students from outside the EU and Commonwealth pay much higher tuition fees. This means that it's in the interests of the university to recruit as many as possible, because they get more money and can use that to subsidise other things (more staff, more local students, the vice chancellor's limo, whatever). For a funded PhD, however, these tuition fees are paid for by a grant, either from industry or, more commonly, from the government. This means th
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