Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Most US citizens with PhDs are underemployed.
The Ph.D. Glut Revisited
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
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.
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.
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!
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.