China Luring Scientists Back Home

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?"

Comments

probably still makes sense

[Trepidity]

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

[Daniel Dvorkin]

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.

Re:probably still makes sense

[wizardforce]

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.

Re:probably still makes sense

[Tycho]

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.

Re:probably still makes sense

[rve]

> 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

Re:probably still makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

...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 more taxes to support scientific research? Do they hold forth that the one true function of government is science?

For me, it's personal. I've got a PhD in biochemistry and a solid working knowledge of half a dozen different programming languages. You'd think that the USA would be banging down my door - asking me to write computer programs to help sift out new discoveries from that vast maze of accumulated biological knowledge. But, no. Turns out, the one place that's willing to give me a job that pays enough to support my family is over in Asia - and it's a meager living at that.

Government by the people. Well, by and large, the people don't really want science. That's not to say that they would object to having the fruits of scientific research handed to them on a silver platter. But, like a couch potato who wouldn't object to receiving an Olympic medal - but who isn't willing to do the work of earning one - the people really just aren't willing to pony up and pay for the actual scientific research.

Science is not the national priority. But that's OK because, in the end, democracy is about giving the people wht they want. And, whatever it is that the people want, it sure doesn't seem to be science.

Re:probably still makes sense

[TheKidWho]

If you can't find a job with a PhD in Biochemistry in the entire USA, you're not telling the whole story.

Simple question...simple answer.

[djupedal]

> "Does it make sense to invest in their training if they will do their major work elsewhere?"

What goes around comes around.

Grad students don't have to reside in North America to do good....get over it.

Re:Simple question...simple answer.

[HybridJeff]

On the other hand, sending back western educated scientists and engineers to China can't help but better relations between the east and the west. People accustomed to western culture who have move back to China to fill high paying positions in Chinese academia and industry are much more likely to think well of the west than those who were fully brought up, raised, and educated under the Communist Party of China. (Not to say that relations between China and the west are bad at the moment, they're probably near as good as they ever have been at the moment).

Re:Simple question...simple answer.

[interkin3tic]

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.

[slawekk]

It's not necessarily something "very wrong" that USA did, it's just that China is catching up and the reasons for leaving the family, adjusting to a different culture and starting from close to zero in America are disappearing. This will accelerate in the future, especially when the realization that the US is a bankrupt country sinks in (heard that laughter when Geithner told Chinese students that dollar assets are safe?).

Re:Simple question...simple answer.

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, because Western educated Muslims never go back to their countries resenting America or Britain!

Re:Simple question...simple answer.

[MidnightBrewer]

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.

Re:Simple question...simple answer.

[Kjella]

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.

Re:Simple question...simple answer.

[timeOday]

apparently you're just one of the many billions who think that the US exists solely to be the global sugar daddy.

Could you be any more wrong about the US/China relationship? We owe them $800,000,000,000. It's pretty obvious who's the sugar daddy.

I think the worse problem is the other way around

[clong83]

I've always thought that if they want to go home afterwards, let them. If it becomes a large scale trend that nobody Chinese (or any other particular nationality) wants to stay afterwards, then people may just stop hiring as many. 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.

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.

The Worm Turns

[hyades1]

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

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:The Worm Turns

[CAIMLAS]

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.

Re:The Worm Turns

[Anonymous Coward]

"he basically wasted his life."

I guess someone wants to justify how they lived or their current lives. A waste is doing shit everyone else is capable of doing with ill or no regard to the consequences. Nothing wrong with eating, drinking, and fucking, but it doesn't make you special or your life meaningful, even amongst /.ers. It makes you like everyone else, which is okay, but as a response to TFA, is hardly a response to why we might be getting our asses kicked.

Any wonder anymore why the US is seemingly falling behind? Not only are people screwing around, but hard work is a point of derision. There's also an immense failing in understanding that the sum of society can also accomplish something based on individual strivings, such as this Vietnamese kid contributing an idea or part that someone else sees and puts together to do something minor, which pays people to live their lives. He may do something as pass on an idea, teach, or raise his children a certain way based on his experiences who then in turn accomplish. It's a silly thing, and something people look down on these days, but these things add up and are interconnected.

Re:The Worm Turns

[Anonymous Coward]

America is quite diverse, where I live there are people who can barely speak English, or have thick accents, and they proudly call themselves American. Here's a nice analogy America (and really, most nations) are not a mass of like-thinking people, rather a mass of individuals; on Slashdot it's safe to assume everyone has heard of C++ ipv6 and linux, (I personally know little about ipv6 other than the obvious, there will be people who can't program at all, and there'll be those who know it all), yet every topic shows brilliantly differing opinions, an arguments about it (we may of all heard about c++, but some of us think it's a work of art, others think it's shitty compared to other languages, others don't know enough about c++ to actually have a real opinion, and still others take an opinion without knowing what they're talking about). So we know Americans have heard of Jerry Springer, majority have even seen an episode or two (myself included), I personally hate the show, yet I have watched it, I know what goes on, because I'm an American. Another American may think the show is amazingly funny/interesting, and we are still both American (this logic applies to every culture group you can imagine, not just American).

To be culturally American is hard to define, I have a friend who wouldn't ever dream of moving to china and only visits every so often on family trips, yet she speaks the language, her house has a calendar in chinese, and random decorations culturally tied to china right next to the xbox360/guitar hero setup, I consider her Culturally American. I have another friend, everything is the same (down to the guitar hero setup) except she yearns to visit China in the summer out of her own will, moved her when she was about 13ish, and the only thing keeping her from definitely moving to china after graduation is money issues, and rarely uses English when speaking to anyone who knows her language aswell, she identifies with Chinese culture more strongly than American.

Re:The Worm Turns

[xirusmom]

Top-down models? I do not know the Chinese system but I would guess it is pretty much "top-down"as well. Maybe that is a problem but not the main reason US schools are failing. I think the main reason, is self-indulgence, parents who are not interested in their kid's education and expect the school will do the entire job alone. That will never happen. Behavior, attitude towards life and education comes from home, not from schools. Plus, a culture where we praise criminals who write songs about beating people up or worse (and make a lot of money from it), professors who are paid crap so the school can pay millions to football coaches, I can go on and on... but the bottom line is: if people do not value education, individually or as a nation, the system will fail.

I predict a boom in Chinese research.

[Interoperable]

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.

Re:I predict a boom in Chinese research.

[Dorsai65]

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.

Re:I predict a boom in Chinese research.

[NeutronCowboy]

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.

Re:I predict a boom in Chinese research.

[sznupi]

Large part of our world is built on Chinese ingenuity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_inventions

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.

[aspelling]

Chinese are willing to spend their money on fundamental research without immediate financial reward.
This is against our culture of quarter-per-quarter results.
Friend of mine who is in the top pack of string theorists was invited for a tenured position to teach/research in China. I always make fun of him working on something he couldn't even experimentally proof, but they were willing to pay for it.
He hasn't accepted the offer because he got the same position in UK, which is much closer culturally to us.

We are asking the same in India

[Rsriram]

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 simply about more money/resources/power. It is about being a "leader" and behaving like one.

Re:We are asking the same in India

[Dorsai65]

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

[AardvarkCelery]

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.)

Re:We are asking the same in India

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Right, because if anything, history is flush with leading powers failing due to their refusal to help their rivals!

Get out of the clouds and pick up a history book- global politics and commerce were never driven by The Golden Rule. It's as ruthless a race as any.

summary is economically confused

[philgross]

The summary makes it sounds like the US is doing a favor and donating generously to the rest of the world by funding foreign PhDs. A more accurate description would be that we taking the extreme cream of the crop, educated at great expense in other countries, and then luring them to the United States, where they further strengthen our already best-in-the-world universities, and the great majority stay permanently. The article describes a slight moderation in this trend, with a few more scholars choosing to return (although also describing the obstacles they face when they do).

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.

Re:still some issues for china's progress

[plasticsquirrel]

This is very common in other countries as well. I'd venture to guess that it is the most common method in developing countries. I discussed this once with Uzbek and Nepalese students who couldn't understand why other students were bothered when they wanted to copy answers from them. I mentioned that the other person had to do work to study the material and learn it, but they wouldn't have any of that. I was really taken aback by the attitude and by the lack of basic educational spirit reflected in it. "Why learn anything, when you can just copy from someone else?"

In China, I also see that many students just memorize English sentences and regurgitate them like robots to get a good grade. This is not just a bad teaching habit here, but rather the standard way of teaching. Give students a dialogue and then have them regurgitate it later. "If they can pronounce everything correctly, they must know what it all means."

The U.S. has many problems, but I think two good things we have are a sense of educational honesty, and good sensibilities about fairness and loyalty. I still believe we are generally good-natured and honest people, but our culture is often naive, and this hurts us (and others) in many ways.

Green card

[seifried]

Seriously. Anyone earning a bachelors (let alone a masters or a PhD) in a "hard" science or a list of accepted majors (CS, EE/ME/etc.) should have a green card stapled to their diploma at their commencement ceremony. Perhaps for Masters you get to bring your significant other over and for a PhD you get up to 5 additional family members (mom+dad and any siblings/brother/sister in law with no criminal record), whatever, if you're going to lure the best and brightest, train them, etc, you should bloody well hang on to them (it's just common sense!). This from a Canadian no less (personally I think we should give automatic landed immigrant status to anyone that speaks English or French, has no criminal record and has a 4 year degree in anything remotely useful). Our countries are founded on immigration, this seems like a no-brainer to me!

Re:Fixed the story for you

[Anonymous Coward]

So...once someone works for an American company, it becomes unethical for them to work in any other country is it? Self pity much?

Yet another article

[dorpus]

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

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

[Haitian]

I think if every country was smart as China, they would have done the same things.. Trying to get their good ones back to their country. I do not think a country with better pay job is that matter than how someone can feel when he/ she working in his/ her own country.

Grapes turned sour?

[jandersen]

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

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.

Re:(+) infuluence of USA students on China

[slawekk]

I don't think you ever met personally any people who returned to their home country from the USA. I have met a couple of them (and I am one myself) and the tendency among them is rather to dislike America. I call it a "Pol Pot syndrome".

Educating the Chinese

[Lonewolf666]

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:Educating the Chinese

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

I wish (for the love of God) that for once no-one invokes Godwin's law.

But (here goes nothing) : a communist (centrally controlled economy) country that allows big companies to exist as juridically separate entities, but controls them directly by controlling upper management ... that style of government has a name : fascism. It generally fails after the first wave of technologies that get exploited by those large companies becomes obsolete. The companies are unwilling to invest in change, and prefer to use legal and physical force to keep inefficient business models going (and before anyone claims how "rightist" this is, in Germany this was done as least as much by the unions as by the government)

I wouldn't like living in a govt. like that, but then again I hear it makes the trains run on time. Of course it has the same problem as any centrally controlled system : if the central control doesn't like you, it might be wise to develop an obsessive fear of showering.

Different people make different arguments

[weston]

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.