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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?
The problem is?
The world always needs more lawyers.
Deleted
They accept those who apply. Most Americans are probably happy with just an undergrad degree and don't want to go to grad school.
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?
"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
India has a billion people. China has a billion people. America has 300,000 people, which is almost an order of magnitude less than India and China combined. Consider that many of the best grad schools are in America--plenty of Indians and Chinese come to America for grad school, but you don't see as many Americans going to India or China. All in all, Americans are fortunate that we can get the same education next door that other people travel around the world for.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
...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.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
The best students in the world go to the best Universities in the world. The Universities in the United States consistently dominate the top universities in the world.[1] Thus, it isn't surprising that many people from other countries come here to study.
[1] http://www.arwu.org/rank/2007/ARWU2007_Top100.htm
That is a factor.
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.
emt 377 emt 4
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.
'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
Delta-Mike November Bravo Tango
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.
no market for engineers in US. Market for engineers in India & China.
Next month, no market for lawyers, doctors in US... we'll all flip burgers.
A lot of foreign students are here on a foreign student visa. If they fuck up in school, they get sent back. So, by accepting a foreign student, the department has a very good idea that that student will be putting in 110% into the degree program, doing shit work for no money, whatever, when a domestic student is more likely to just tell an abusive department to fuck off and die and move to another school. It may also be that the student is less likely to be partying on the weekends (social stigma), and so grades won't be much of an issue if they made it that far.
:P
:)
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.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
Mostly I think it is because we're all too busy working for a living. Those who can afford college without having to work, do go into medicine and law as you said. Especially law. If you control the law you can control the money.
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.
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
"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?"
No. It's not that the smart ones are, in particular, not going into science and engineering. It's that more _people in general_ are going into things like law, the financial sector, etc., which means that statistically more of the really good people will go in those directions as well (although we can, of course, point out that someone who is good at law or finance might not be good at engineering or science, and vice versa). Science and engineering no longer have the draw they used to, particularly after the tech bubble burst.
I don't really know why this is. Could be a lot of things. Could be that we're more materialistic, and that yes, you can ultimately make more money in those sectors (although most of the people I know who graduated from law school are fleeing the practice of law like rats from a sinking ship). Could be that people used to go into science because it was more prestigious and indeed patriotic to do so after Sputnik scared the living shit out of us. Nothing like a hostile nation launching something over your heads for the first time to convince you that falling behind technologically could leave you in the middle of mushroom cloud, momentarily wishing you'd studied more math before you vaporize.
Combine that with the fact that tech is the best way to get out of India and China and come to the US, and maybe that explains the disparity.
Regardless, it says very bad things about our future as a country.
Really this is just silly. If 9.8% of US families is considered "the majority", then you'd be right. But you're wrong. Besides that fact, US GDP per capita is several times that of India or China, so by your logic there should be no Indian or Chinese grad students because not only are a majority of Indians and Chinese truly poor, they are much poorer than the average American.
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.
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...
Please help metamoderate.
Also, as an American who has a graduate degree, all I can say is, unless you're going to teach at the college level, do research, or need a graduate degree for some professional certification (Law, Medicine, Psychotherapy, etc...), a graduate degree is completely worthless and a waste of time. Want to learn more in a field that you are truly passionate about? Learn on your own. Grad school will just stifle your interest and creativity (playing to professors BS games, is one way they do it) and they'll make you do a lot of BS busy work becuase some bureaucrat with a Ph.D. somewhere thinks that's what you "must" do.
Just my bitter opinion.
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
I know a lot of guys with grad degrees in the tech field who are making as much as guys with BA's (or less in some cases). It looks impressive on a resume, but there isn't an automatic payoff like with the medical or legal professions. Unless someone wants to develop their own product or do research for a major corporation, there's little reason to spend 3-4 more years and come out. Guys with BA's have been out for a few years and already have industry experience under their belts, and that's worth a whole lot more in the consulting business than a thesis paper on "the practical applications of sight tracking optics in regards to voice activated GUI systems", unless that's the main product of the company you're trying to get in with.
But I know a few companies offhand that will hire a PhD on the spot...but those companies don't really make anything nor do they pay very much. They are patent houses.
I don't see where he had a problem with it, either. The difference between you and him isn't that you don't have a problem with it--it's that you aren't curious about why it is. As an academic, it's rather odd for you to assume that curiosity implies anything more sinister.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
Philip Greenspun has a very good article on why becoming a scientist doesn't make sense for most people:
http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science
The article is titled "Women in Science," but it basically argues that the preparation costs for becoming a scientist (college, grad school, post doc) are so high, and the economic rewards so low and uncertain, that intelligent people are more likely to be drawn to other fields like medicine.
"All the students come here to study and there are only 7 US citizens in the engineering program this year. Why is that?"
Less than 20% of the MBA's in India are employable. They skate thru school, sharing test answers and learning little. The system there makes no effort except to get them out the door. The educational system only wants to say how many have been produced, happy to ignore that the certificates are worthless.
The individuals that recognize the travesty and know that the system in the USA is legitimate by comparison, spread the word. The ones that can come over do it for the legitimacy and the true value of an educational system rooted in honesty, hard work and individual betterment.
The scale of the Indian & Chinese populations means that what is a small number over there seems large in comparison here.
Yeah but, to be fair, this is slashdot. Everything has an element of complaining. If I were just curious about grad school stats I'd ask in a grad forum. I'd only ask here if I wanted a bunch of cynical worst-case-scenario answers, some complaints about the American school system, and a side dish of thinly veiled racism/xenophobia.
Free the Quark 3 from asymptotic confinement! Bring your charm! Don't get down! All colours and flavours welcome!
It's very rare to see a fictional TV show revolving around an engineer, mathematician, physicist or hard science major of any kind. The only counterexample I can think of offhand is Ross from Friends, but to the extent that his job was mentioned at all it was usually in some ridiculous context. Contrast that with the hundreds of shows there have been about doctors, lawyers, judges, financiers and reporters. Hence, those professions are considered sexy and lucrative, even when they aren't particularly so (public defenders and beat reporters), whereas scientists are considered obscure and arcane at best, geeky and borderline irresponsible at worst. The one looming exception is the astronaut/astrophysicist type on sci-fi shows, but what they tend to do, blast through galaxies and meet aliens, is something so unrealistic that it doesn't lend itself to employment aspirations.
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.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
Spending your time chasing the next Big Thing that going to make Lots Of Money is the fast track for a mid-life crisis.
American Public Education SUCKS.
I JUST had a conversation yesterday with a feisty physics professor I used to work with, and about this subject. The kids he gets for his freshman physics classes are so woefully unprepared and are unable to think very creatively.
As an example, he throws out questions like "what is the square root of 3 times the square root of 3 divided by two", and they start pulling out their calculators - and they're amazed that it can be solved so easily without one.
He wrote a simple problem on the board and told the students he wanted them to work on it for the next class. The question he got right away was, "Is this graded". It wasn't. The next class came and nobody had done it - because it wasn't graded. So he gave them 10 minutes to write a solution and told them it was "for a grade". Several of the students were outraged and told him, "you can't do that!"
He said you basically have to walk them through everything you want them to do with very explicit instructions otherwise they simply won't do anything. "They're not dumb.", he said, "They just have no motivation or creative spark to do anything they're told explicitly to do."
So, I agree with you (as would this prof) that the American education system is failing our kids.
I'm an engineer. I only hold an undergrad ME degree. However, I was helping my advisor (who was from Pakistan, by the way... he fled the purge of the educated in the 70s... great guy) with graduate level research my last two years. The reason was that there were no American grad students in the department, and those that were there didn't know english well enough to help write papers and, well, research other papers that were written in english. I don't know what those foreign grad students actually did, but I suspect that I wasn't the only person who found them to be relatively useless as TAs or research assistants because you couldn't talk to them without an interpreter. Schools do strange things for money... mine hired a Chinese laser expert hoping to get research grants. Problem: not only could he not teach, he couldn't speak English. Makes for an interesting physics class. I don't mean he had an accent problem; he couldn't speak the language. On the other hand, I had another Chinese physics prof who was great, brilliant optics guy. He had this weird fetish for US warplanes, though. I remember a lecture about the speed of sound including "You have gun... F15 coming... F15 going mach 1.2, launches missile, missing accelerating at whatever, whole building blow up, you never hear plane". Actually, that was part of every lecture now that I think about it. Still, I managed to get a good education even if I do kick myself from time to time for not going to law school. See, engineers get billed out, a lawyer gets the money or at least a cut.
In academic America, graduate schools pay YOU :)
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.
If someone used a tag called "becauseindiansaredumb" or "becausemexicansaredumb", everyone here would be up in arms.
Advice: on VPS providers
Medical degrees are useless outside the country they were obtained in, because you need a license to practice medicine (and law). US in particular has a very strict and somewhat unfair licensing exam for all foreign doctors/foreign school graduates that requires them to pretty much re-take the last 2 - 3 years of their undergrad degree, regardless of how long they practiced medicine anywhere else in the world.
So, you may see less foreign students at medical and law schools unless those students plan on actually working in the US later.
On the other hand you can take your CS degree earned anywhere in the world and take it with you and get jobs.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
Engineering education is in high demand. Medicine, you can learn anywhere, as evidenced by the hordes of doctors in the US HMO medical system who only barely speak or understand English. Law? What would a Chinese or Indian national do with a US law degree? Engineering, though.... the US is the place to get an engineering degree. Subsequently, there is a lot of competition to get into the limited space available. The reason colleges are so willing to fill their slots with foreigners even though their supposed purpose is to educate residents of the state (which supports the school with tax money) is that foreigners are considered "out of state students". Out of state students pay extremely high tuition compared to state residents, originally under the theory that this would limit the number of outsiders coming in to take advantage of a state-supported school and then leave the state to go home after. But over the last few decades, state universities have turned from state subsidized places of higher learning intended to increase the education level of state residents, into state subsidized businesses trying to maximize their tuition, grant, investment, and patent income. They are required to take a certain number of state resident students, but they strive to maximize their profit by taking as few as possible. This is the "greed" motivation.
As a side note, he adds that Indian immigrants are usually under enormous pressure from their parents to succeed in school, and that the Chinese students are scared to death of failing because that means it's right back to China where they'll end up assigned as the Third Assistant Injection Molding Technician in a plastic bucket factory in Shanghai. Subsequently, they have a tendency to vastly outperform "locals" and make up the majority of students.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Besides that fact, US GDP per capita is several times that of India
13X India, 5.3X China
C//
I have a masters in chemical engineering. I come from a family of engineers: my dad's an engineer, his dad was one, and my father in law is one -- altogether we cover electrical, civil, chemical, and industrial.
Here's my take on why so few Americans are going into engineering:
I worked for Lockheed and several other major corporations as an engineer, and the standard practice is to hire 'em, and fire 'em. One Christmas they corralled us all together and told us they were going to lay off 110 engineers. Being the youngest in the group, I thought I would be going. But no! It was the guys with 20+ years that got the ax. Guys with kids in college, with mortgages, who'd been loyal to the company. I saw my future and got the hell out. I'm in IT now, and even though things have been a little rough since dot bomb, they worst year in IT is better than the best year in engineering.
Why go to school for fours years in a very difficult subject only to get treated like cattle? Engineers make the world run, they make things that absolutely cannot ever break, live up to impossible standards, spend years in training, and get absolutely not gratitude whatsoever in return, either in salary or respect. I think its time they unionize.
I think this has become clear even to the kids. I remember my wife was offered a full ride to a very prestigious school for engineering. She went to a couple of companies in high school to see what engineers do, and turned it down. She paid to go to a state school, got a degree in communications, and is much happier for it.
When engineers start getting treated better, then more people will do it.http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/User:Steve_Ballmer
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.
Unemployment Training: The Ideology of Non-Work Learned in Urban Schools
Insightful, if a little depressing. He gives some pointers on how to counter the trend though.
We make it hard for them to become citizens. These are the people we should want most.
Having them leave, then compete with us, is not good.
Nicely worded. I think you're right. From watching afar, there seems to be some unwarranted scare-mongering going on in the US (and here as well). Not only in education but in many other sectors. There is now some dynamic load balancing going on globally and panicking is not going to achieve anything. There will always be opportunities for countries to specialise (particularly the US, ie. what is wrong with education as an export? Education has been my country's second largest cash cow industry for the last twenty years). People here are bitching that the jobs are going overseas. They are, but we are also experiencing massive growth in other areas, investment in infrastructure in developed countries, etc.
Nothing to see here, move on.
.
The reason is truly lack of need. For an Engineer or Programmer, there really is no reason to pursue anything higher then a bachelor degree unless you are interested in becoming a faculty member or going after government funding for your research. Take computer science for example and compare it to Biology. In Biology, you really don't get into the practical aspects of biological work until you hit grad school. Only big research labs have the equipment, money, and expertise to give you experience in things like Mass Spectrometry, Microarrays, etc. Computer Science, on the other hand, your PhD level work is no different then your undergrad work except that you are working on something you're interested in and you get to dedicate your time at it. You're definitely not learning how to be a better programmer anymore than someone who takes a job is learning how to become a better programmer...That's why engineers and programmers can get a Bachelor's degree and have very successful careers while Biologists on average require significant graduate studies to reach the same opportunities...
Most Americans are probably happy with just an undergrad degree and don't want to go to grad school.
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.
You couldn't be farther from the truth.
I've got around another year of coursework, and possibly another year after that to finish out a dissertation. When I started my PhD programme, the work I did for the first month was somewhat bland and didn't challenge me. After that initial period, I had the chance to work on some interesting research in medical engineering, authored a few conference papers with my adviser, finished up a journal publication and took a few courses in my discipline. Once I started to touch on the interesting subjects, like pattern recognition, neural networks, machine vision, computational microbiology, etc., I started to really enjoy being a student and yearned for more knowledge. Of course, I also wanted to have a firm background in my area of focus, so I could venture forth into industry once I finally graduate.
Yes, the days were long, and there were plenty of times I thought that I wouldn't have everything done, that I'd do poorly on my exams, etc., but everything just boils down to your perseverance and your adviser's willingness to work with you. Since I'm an RA, I'm expected to work a certain number of hours per week, but often my adviser allows me to work on my publications instead. Whenever I need to bounce some ideas off of him, or just get his approval, I sit down with the guy for at least half an hour. Considering we meet two or three times per week, and the fact that he's heavily knowledgeable and respected in his field, I walk out of his office with a very good insight into a particular problem. Of course, had my adviser not been so willing to work with me, provided me with some fun and engaging research projects, let alone take a chance and fund me, I honestly wouldn't have stayed past a Masters degree.
My niece and I both go to the same Big 10 university. I'm a PhD. CS, she's a law student. The university gave her a full ride scholarship that does not require that she work. I am required to work 20 hours a week for my stipend. The university gave me a desk in an office. I am the only English speaker in the office. There is a computer on my desk (one that nobody else wants anymore), just no display, keyboard, or mouse. If I want to work in my office I must bring my own personally purchased laptop. So I work from home where I have dual monitors, a mouse and keyboard. The university gave my niece a new laptop when she began law school. The question should be why do universities treat their domestic engineering grad students like crap.
I am an undergrad math major here at UC Berkeley. While I havent checked enrollment numbers it seems to me that a high percentage of the graduate students in my field are from other countries. But is this all bad? I wonder how many of them stay in the US and join our workforce. Anecdotally, I know alot of people whose parents were born somewhere else and came over to the United States for school and liked it enough to stay. It would seem to me that the strength of the United States' universities allows us to "steal" some of the best and brightest from India and China and all the rest. I think this is a huge advantage for the US and reason for much of the innovation done in the last century in America.
With all the outsourcing, especially in engineering I can't help suspect that is a contributing factor (all the Indians is a clue). We also live in a country that is full of religous nuts (40 some odd percent or something think the world is a few thousand years old). Science is probably not high on the list for these ignorant folks. Another factor is with all the outsourcing, we have developed an attitude in the industry that somehow its better to get an MBA or be a manager than an engineer. They actually think they are smarter (this was always the way). The fact the business programs in university are far simpler than science makes it more tempting for the lazy. Americans are going to pay in the long run for this, especially when we see the Chinese land on Mars or something first.
In the humanities grad school departments are full of citizens of the USA. In my department there are as many people from Europe as there are from Asia and combined they make up less than 10% of the department's graduate students. There are just as many from Korea as there are from China (one each at the moment I think) and there aren't any from India. In my Master's program at a different school the only international graduate students I ran into were from Canada and that was mainly because the school was something like 3 hours away from the Canadian border.
Just because there are a lot of non-US citizens in some departments doesn't mean that there are in every department. Now why certain departments are more likely to have international students than others is a different question.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
I agree with you, but someone needs to correct this idea that Japan's economy is still in stagnation. It has been growing far faster than the Eurozone for the last several years. The economic stagnation basically ended 3 to 4 years back. on top of the high rate of growth, prices are stable to slightly falling in the country amplifying the gains. I won't go into the structural problems that remain and social issues that still hold back this economy, but it is by no means stagnant.
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
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Teachers, not professors ;)
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.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
More importantly, 90% of American engineering students realize that the only reason for getting an MS in engineering is to teach. I'm yet to find someone who thinks he learned something worthwhile in post-grad engineering school.
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.
The most famous engineer in the US is Dilbert.
In my mechanical/Aerospace engineering classes (I'm working on my Ph.D.) they are dominated by white students.
I believe a big part of that is due to the fact that most aerospace jobs - in defense, virtually all, some (not many) at NASA - require security clearances. So why start what you can't begin? There were a lot more indian students in particular at the undergraduate level.
I'm taking a CFD class right now, 8 students, 1 Indian student, 1 oriental student. Don't know citizenship status. Rest of us are caucasian. The semester before, Hypersonic Aerodynamics, all caucasian and african-american. Semester before, Aerothermodynamics, all caucasian and african-american. The same trend was readily apparent for my graduate work as well.
I know there are a lot more foreign students in the CS department. I don't think its an american vs. foreigner thing, I think it is a type of engineering thing.
As a current PhD student (and an American studying in America), I learn with dozens of colleagues from abroad. Not necessarily 90%, but certainly close to 60%. (I'm also in humanities, so that may change the experience.) However, in watching the drive and the commitment that so many of these students have, I see a huge chasm between them and the American students. The American students often (though not always) have an aura of entitlement about them, while the internationals really fight to achieve. I think the biggest difference between emigrant students and domestics isn't ability, but willingness to see something through that requires that much diligence and commitment.
Can't teach with a masters. At least, not at the university level. A masters of computer or electrical engineer is useful. You can't learn everything you need to know to be a practicing engineer in a 4 undergraduate program. Most of the engineering recruiters I talk with are looking for masters grads. An average bachelors degree gets you essentially a technician job.
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.
Thank you, Ensign Chekov.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
That's easy. Anyone with a modicum of talent and an undergraduate engineering degree from a U.S. college or university can find just as good a job as they would with a graduate degree.
With an engineering degree from a non-U.S. institution, that's not true, especially for jobs in the U.S. Hence, people from many other countries come to the United States to get a graduate degree so they can open the door that a U.S. undergrad degree would open.
The only jobs where a graduate engineering degree is required or will help are teaching positions and very high-level technical jobs which also require unusual talent and decades of experience.
In a study of the seven leading industrialized nations, the United States scored dead last in mathematics. However, the students involved in the study ranked first place in how confident they FELT about their mathematic skills.
They keep lowering the educational standards in order to keep kids passing through the system. This system, however, keeps focusing on making sure the kids feel good without ever having them accomplish anything. Compounding the problem is that everyone gets an award, so the ninth place trophy winner is just as good as the first place trophy winner. You take the kids that really do have talent and try hard and tell them that they're just as much a no-talent bozo as the kids who ride the short bus to school. They learn nothing, but damn if they don't feel good about themselves. The education system's modern bubble-wrap mentality of no losing, no disappointments, no harsh reality checks has provided a surplus of of girls who think dressing like a slut somehow empowers them, guys who have been beaten down into spineless wimps and that the whole world stops if any of them are ever offended.
I'm seeing these kids enter into college where their brains are mush. They're not stupid - they've just never been challenged. They expect to get a C grade for simply turning in the assignment, and an A for effort.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
Orders of magnitude are based on a log-10 scale. When one says "x is an order of magnitude greater than y", one means "log x is 1 greater than log y". For instance, 1000 is an order of magnitude greater than 100 because log 100 is 3 and log 1000 is 4. Likewise, log 2 billion is 9.3, and log 300 million is 8.4. As you may have gathered by now, 9.3 is almost one more than 8.4.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
I don't agree with your assertion that a technology-heavy workforce is not necessary for a strong economy. That might be true for a small economy that has a strong influx of money for some other reason (Switzerland), but wealth is created by advancing technology. Why has the US economy been so strong for most of our lifetimes? Because we have the most lawyers? Or, because we had the best technology ranging from automobiles, to airplanes, to semiconductors to electronics, to some of the most efficient food production, to construction?
Looking through history, countries were economically strong compared to the rest of the world mostly because they had better technology. Most of the time, those countries raised their own standard of living and sold the products of that technology at great profit. Sure, there were colonizing powers that leveraged internal instability of their colonies to rule and steal, but for the most part such powers also had superior military technology. Which is still better technology.
My friends at NEC in Japan are very worried about Samsung because they are making stuff that people want to buy. Through better technology. That they originally learned from the Japanese and the US but have been refining.
There has been a marked increase in the number of Korean graduate students in top engineering schools over the last 10 to 15 years by the way.
The problem with creationists is that they take the bible literally and expect the rest of us to weigh their myth equally against good science. Any scientist who is a creationist should be viewed with deepest suspicion.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Most US citizens with PhDs are underemployed.
The Ph.D. Glut Revisited
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
I agree, for instance when I was in highschool (not that many years ago) I was considered an average student by my grades. This was mostly because I was bored and could think circles around my teachers. Case in point, in my AP chemistry class we were discussing some of the math and theory behind absolute zero. While all the other students were furiously taking notes I was taking it in and thinking about it, which lead me at the end of the lecture to ask my teacher the following question "So, since absolute zero has no energy what would keep the electrons from falling into the proton/neutron nucleus? If that happened would there be a huge release of energy from a breakdown of the strong force or would it essentially become a very large neutral chuck of matter?", so on and so forth. My teacher just gave me a blank stare like a deer in the headlights and the other students started to snicker because their 4.0 GPA brains couldn't comprehend independent thought processes or asking questions beyond the scope of the lecture. I later learned on my own that what I was asking is a question that has been around for a long time and there are some good mathematical models that show possibilities. But that ladies and gentlemen is why I was bored to tears in formal education, burned out on it, and have forgone it for self education. Now I'm starting to get interested in going to Uni because I'm rapidly approaching a wall for what I can learn on my own.
"Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes."-Tycho
US GDP is pretty badly skewed by the massive amounts of debt created by the US government.
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.
It's been a long time.
To answer your question, ask how many old engineers you've met. Generally, an Engineering career lasts how long? When I got my Masters' in Computer Science people were talking about "structured programming" and things like OO and XP didn't exist. If you're going to go into Engineering, you'll have to spend a lot of thought keeping current. This probably true of medicine and law, too, but it seems that the human body and human nature are pretty much the same as they were a thousand years ago.
You don't hear as much about age discrimination, but I figure it's real in Engineering (illegality notwithstanding) more so than other professions. Given this, it makes more sense to invest the extra time and money of post-graduate education in something that'll pay back in a longer career.
ermm.. no It was after a lab session, it was an extra research project we were doing under him. I'm not from America by the way - India. We also ussually dont have sermonising in our classrooms like I said this was in his room after a particularly screwed up lab session.
...
Problem is he is right, in electronics which is my field China is far ahead of us, he was just saying that we are ussually kind of confident that China will not be able to overtake us wrt software, but we shouldnt be so smug about it cause during his previous visit to China etc. etc. etc
you get the general idea right. Interestingly where are you from ?
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The question you have to ask yourself is how much more money you'd be making if you got that master's degree, and if the extra cost is equal to the additional amount of money you'd make over the course of your life.
That said, I think the reason a lot of us avoid going to school for additional degrees is because of the substantial debt we accrue while in college. I, for one, am going to be in the hole 17k when I'm finished.
How do the foreign students pay for their schooling?
SRSLY.
What's so hard to believe about his income If he's not employed full-time, he could easily make $10,xxx a year without being a complete slacker. 35 hours a weeks will get him $10,xxx gross, and that's damned close to full-time. If he's an adult student, and therefore trying to better himself, then it's *really* likely he's not working full-time. Regarding the comment about his internet connection, I did the math some 20-odd ways when I was in between contracts: buck-for-buck, my internet connection was the cheapest way to research/apply for jobs, be reachable by contract agencies, and also have enough entertainment that I didn't completely lose my mind.
-- Dedicated Cthulhu cultist since 1982 A.C.E.
Moderators? Why, they are the product of the American k-12 system.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
I was debunking the claim that rising Chinese technology and economic dominance is not something to be afraid of.
The reason why more Indian and Chinese students go to grad school is fairly simple, at least in any tech-related (IT, Biotech, etc.): fewer Americans are taking up those majors to begin with, because they know these jobs are going overseas.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
If he is smart enough to contribute to slashdot comments then he must be smart enough to get a job making more than minimum wage. /sarcasm
Seriously, pulling $10k/year is, frankly, retarded. In fact, if you DO have the mental capacity to post to slashdot (and as a result can likely browse and search the internet and use a word processor), you can make, minimum, $12/hour even with a dinky receptionist type job. Get off your ass and get a real job, its really not that hard.
Sorry to sound so harsh but even at my lowest paid total crap jobs I still pulled in $18-24K/year.
If the original poster has some sort of outstanding reasons (handicapped, mental health, etc), then perhaps theres some level of excuse, but GODDAMN.
Cheers.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
This question keeps coming up on Slashdot, in one form or another, and my answer is always the same: Economics.
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.
New York, San Francisco, LA, and many cities have a monthly rent of more than $1200 for a decent one-bedroom apartment within commuting distance of downtown, or for a cheap small house (if you can find one!). Add a small family, and it becomes unaffordable for someone even making $60,000/year.
Yes, I'm afraid it's lower middle class in those urban areas.
Get off your ass and get a real job, its really not that hard.
Actually, it really depends on where you live. In a rural area, you might be lucky to get $20,000 for a high end job with a degree in some areas. From a personal experience I grew up in a place where the furniture and textile markets had collapsed due to foreign imports and there was massive unemployment due to factory closures. However, it was a big government town (3 major state facilities in the county... 1 being a prison) so I was lucky and got a job as a computer tech early on. However, I will admit I got paid more as a temp job as a grocery bagger in a major metropolitan area 5 years later.
Anyways... I did my best to get out of that hell hole and pretty much for the sheer fact I knew people living in a metro city in another state who I could sleep on their couch for 6 months unemployed and doing crappy jobs let me have the ability to search work in that area that helped me start a career in technology which eventually netted me a job that paid more than my dad got in our home town (considering he had a masters degree and I dropped out of college has to say something).
Of course this is anecdotal but so is your observation. It really depends on where you live on your job prospects and income.
That said... Living expenses make me wonder if I really make more here than I would be had I never moved. Of course, if I moved to NYC I'd even get paid more but I'd make less due to rent.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
But when I went to college to be an engineer it was preceded by decades of emphasis on science. The Apollo missions where number one on the TV. And it was considered cool to be an engineer. You could actually get dates!
Fast forward to my teenage kids. Being someone which technical knowledge about anything gets you labeled a Nerd and Ghey. This negative peer pressure, combined with the complete lack of any emphasis on people actually learning technology does little to encourage students to even pursue a BS degree in Engineering or any of the Sciences (except for psychology which might be considered a soft science).
There's no emphasis for it. Look at computers and computer technology. People don't have any clue what anything actually does and they have an absolute aversion towards learning about it. Why? Because Marketing has told them it's all so difficult and dangerous that you should buy their product to take care of all your computer needs. Marketing leads to fear and fear leads to hate and hate leads to the dark side.
I graduated with a BSE in 1973 and later received an MBA. In my wide experience an engineer has about 15 good years before the $ increases cease and the juicy assignments start flowing to new grads. The terminal phase of an engineer is management and he will never equal his law and medicine alumni in wages earned. There is no respect for engineering in America, you will never see a 'Marcus Welby, PE" show on TV. Until one actually has to have a PE license to practice engineering this will not change. Corporate America has always controlled the engineering salaries by manipulating supply and demand. Now there is unlimited supply from India, China, and the like. So the "smarter" Americans go into Law and Medicine so they can make money from those newly minted foreign born engineers. As an aside I would recommend that the new grads go into international finance and move to London.
Cheers,
Old Engineer
cursethedarkness
The opportunity cost is much higher for US students who can directly enter the high paying US workforce after a Bachelors. The opportunity cost for overseas students is lower. Graduate school is a ticket to get into the US and stay in the US for some foreign students.
Being a scientist does not preclude one from believing things that are outside the domain of science. It's important to know what fits inside the domain of science and what doesn't, and not to confuse those things (especially when attempting to convince other scientists of the correctness of one's own research). However, there is no requirement whatsoever that a person has to believe that science is the only form of truth in order to be a scientist. Science is powerful but is also quite limiting. Science only provides insight into how the world works, it does not tell you what to do about it, or provide distinctions like good or bad or right or wrong. We need other belief systems for that.
You are attacking a straw man. I am not Catholic, I don't pay much attention to the pope, and I don't approve of religious intolerance, whether it is done by Christians, atheists, muslims, agnostics, whoever. I don't agree with the pope (in fact if I correctly understand what he is saying I think he's being intolerant) but if he wants to say I'm not part of the real church, that's his business. He's entitled to his opinions. And you and I are free to criticize them. But please don't make the mistake of thinking he speaks for all religious people, or all Christians. I don't even think it's safe to assume he speaks for all Catholics.
I don't really see why that has to be the case. Some religions may be incompatible with science. Many practice religion in a way that is not incompatible. If I believe that Jesus died for my sins, what difference does that make to my scientific beliefs? None at all, as far as I can tell.
So, this really isn't about science at all, it's about the perception of science within popular culture. I agree that most people don't understand science very well, and if they are unable to recognize that non-falsifiable theories (such as that the universe was made by an intelligent creator) are not real science, then we really need a better understanding of science in this country. The solution is better education, not telling religious people they aren't welcome in the sciences.
...yes, I can confirm that is true. Market rate at top law firms these days is $160,000 plus a $30,000 bonus for a first-year associate. Three years of law school, heavily subsidized by government grants and payed with government loans locked in at a sub-3% interest rate via a loophole that has since closed, made it an exceptionally good deal for me. It would be a good deal even if I paid with credit card debt.