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

[Anonymous Coward]

> 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.

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

[tsa]

It's not only the US that treats its Ph.D. students like that. Here in NL (and I think in most of the rest of Europe as well) it's the same. Besides, in most companies scientists are paid much less than for instance the marketing people.

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

[TheRaven64]

If an NSF grant spends $200,000 paying the stipends+tuition of 5 students

Then it's getting a ridiculously good deal. That's $40K/student. A typical PhD in the USA takes at least 5 years, so that's under $10K/student/year, which doesn't even cover stipend or tuition, let alone both.

For reference, the grant that I was on for my PhD was for £500,000 (around $1m at the time) and paid for four PhD students and one research assistant. Including office space, overheads (equipment, infrastructure maintenance, technicians salaries and so on) charged by the university, and my stipend and conference budget, the EPSRC paid around £100,000 per PhD. On top of this, I got an extra £25,000 grant (split between me and my supervisor) for travel, so the total cost to the EPSRC for my PhD was around £112,500.

Producing a PhD student costs around quarter of a million dollars, probably more[1]. The ROI that the funding bodies expect is a greater body of scientists doing research, which increases the amount of tax revenue available by increasing industrial output. If the students are leaving the country, then it's not a particularly good return. That's why it's much harder for students from outside of the EU to get funding for a PhD here.

[1] PhD students are paid more in the UK. When I finished, we got £12,000/year, but it had gone up every year. Unlike the USA, stipends are not taxable, so this is take-home pay and is pretty close to an entry level salary for a graduate after deducting tax and NI. On the flip side, PhDs here only take 3-4 years (in part because we don't need to work or teach while doing them), so the total stipend is probably about the same.

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.

Re:probably still makes sense

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

You know, like many countries the situation is simple. The probable answer is yes, but nobody knows for sure. It's quite an investment to find out for sure. There are not nearly enough discovery wells. Generally speaking, the foot of any young mountain range should have at least some oil (and older ones should have lots and lots of coal).

In America, Alaska, for example, should have much more oil than is presently discovered, as should california. In Latin America there are supposed to be many undiscovered oil giants.

Exploration for oil is, however, quite costly. Given what happens to a country once oil gets discovered, It'd probably be best to hope there is no oil in Ethiopia. And they have muslim neighbors. We all know what will happen if oil is discovered.

Re:probably still makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Well, I ain't no superstar but there's no scandal either.

And, I suppose in a certain sense, that was part of my point. The top PhDs - they're still going to get faculty positions at Harvard and Yale, so to speak. But "the people" here in the USA are really only willing to pony up to support a few of the Einsteins at the top. So, increasingly those of us who aren't superstars (both American and foreign) are finding better opportunities overseas.

That is, the lack of commitment to scientific research in the USA is causing a brain drain primarily from the bottom rather than from the top. I'm not saying that's wrong - just how it is.

Incidentally, as to why I've struggled to find a job in the USA, I took a couple years off after grad school to do some travelling, help my mom after my father died unexpectedly, and a few other things. I then did a three year stint as a scientific programmer and a year teaching part-time at a community college. So, at the moment, I just don't have the publication record to competitive for tenure track research faculty positions. But, I'm now also out past the 5 years since I did my PhD - so finding post-docs is also difficult.

If I keep doing part-time community college teaching I'll probably eventually land a full time community college gig. But, in the mean time, $30K/year is tough to support a family. Ideally, I'd get a job as a scientific programmer here in the USA paying $50K/year- but those jobs are very competitive. So when I got an offer for $45K/year doing a post-doc over in Asia - I really didn't have any choice but to take it.

And, that's my underlying point: for people like me who aren't superstars, moving out of the USA to pursue opportunities in places like Asia is looking better and better.

Re:probably still makes sense

[grepya]

There's nothing wrong with moving out the US to find jobs. That's precisely the sort of large geographical moves that are routine for grad students from India and China that allow them to compete on a global stage. It's an entrepreneurial move. That's precisely what America is (was?) all about. No ?

 

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.

[Totenglocke]

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

It has nothing to do with their education and everything to do with taxpayers money being used (in the form of grants) to pay for that education. But apparently you're just one of the many billions who think that the US exists solely to be the global sugar daddy.

Re:Simple question...simple answer.

[wizardforce]

Simple. Give them a good reason to stay. The fact that so many are choosing to return to China is strongly indicative that the US has done something very very wrong in terms of making these students want to remain here. If we want to stay in the lead in terms of scientific research we'd better find a way to up the Chinese government's ante or else we risk getting pwned.

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.

[sznupi]

the US exists solely to be the global sugar daddy.

It's kinda implied by the US itself, with the amount of influence it wants to have in the world.

Re:Simple question...simple answer.

[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.

[tsa]

That doesn't have to be the case. When I worked as a Post-Doc in Utrecht, the Netherlands, in 2000, we had a Chinese co-worker who just got his Ph.D. and was working also as a post-doc. He got a letter from the Chinese authorities in which he was invited to come back to China. He was promised a job as a professor at a university there. I don't remember wether he went there to have a look before he moved, but after he moved we got a heartbreaking email from his wife who told us that this so-called 'professorship' didn't exist, and the authorities had given them room to live in a house together with 9(!) other families. This was a big setback for her, being used to the standard of living here in NL. Her husband had a better job here than he had gotten in China. And of course there was no way this poor guy and his family were allowed to come back to the Netherlands. I wouldn't be surprised if this happens a lot with Chinese people who are drawn back to China by their government.

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.

[tsa]

It's often not about the knowledge published in the publications, but about the way the scientists do the research. And a publication can make very difficult things seem very easy. You often need the scientists involved in the research to replicate the results.

Re:Simple question...simple answer.

[hey!]

It's an interesting thought experiment.

If you take a brilliant, highly educated person out of a country with political freedom and put him a politically repressive country, he doesn't stop being brilliant or highly educated. But does it affect his productivity?

I don't think it does. However, the chances of something stupid being done with him and his work is higher. There's a wonderfully ironic example of this from the US Red Scare in the late 40s, when our government engaged in political witch hunts of intellectuals.

Qian Xuesen was a brilliant young rocket scientist, one of the founders of the JPL, one of the key brains behind early US rocketry, and a giant in the field of aerodynamics and jet propulsion theory. When he applied for citizenship in 1949 he was turned down, on fears that he might be Communist. The only evidence: he was Chinese. At one point he was arrested by the FBI for carrying a table of logarithms on a trip outside the US. His security clearance was revoked, making it impossible for him to continue his crucial rocketry work for the US.

Unable to work in the homeland he'd wanted to adopt, Qian would have been forced to move back to China, which would have been delighted to take him back. But this wasn't a case of some low level researcher who might smuggle the crown jewels of America's defense technology out of the country. Qian's brains *were* the crown jewels. High level defense department officials immediately realized this was a horrible mistake. Unfortunately, it wasn't politically possible to back away from that mistake at the height of the Red Scare. Qian was put under house arrest for five years, for no other crime than applying to become an American citizen.

Eventually he was allowed to return to China, which welcomed him with open arms even though he was not a Communist. After several years there the self-fulfilling prophecy came true and Qian joined the party. He was allowed to pursue his work unfettered by political interference, training a new generation of Chinese rocket engineers and advancing Chinese ICBM capabilities by decades. With Qian's help, China went from having no modern domestic rocketry technology to designing and building its own ICBMs in ten years. In fifteen years China was able to put payloads into orbit.

Note the abundant ironies here. The supposedly "free" US government oppresses a brilliant individual, but the supposedly "oppressive" one welcomes him with open arms and lets him do the kind of work he's born to do. The US government, by catering to fear and paranoia, provided a bitter enemy with the ability to strike US soil with nuclear weapons.

You could argue that the secretive, non-democratic government was actually at an advantage here, not having to worry about being re-elected and able to simply squelch any kind of organized public scare mongering by its political enemies. Qian apparently sailed through the Cultural Revolution because he was obviously too valuable to mess with. Too bad the FBI wasn't able to realize that during *our* Cultural Revolution.

That's why in the US the power of the federal judiciary to be a check on the elected branches is so important. If the executive branch, for example, is allowed to define it's own para-judicial system for politically sensitive cases, it *will* screw up, even though it *knows* at the time it's screwing up. Had Qian had been able contest the accusation in a forum that was not charged with political calculation, his clearance would have been restored and citizenship granted, to the enormous benefit of the United States. Instead his destiny was put in the hands of politics, and the politicians *knowingly* caused all the bad things they were ostensibly preventing, just to get through the next elections.

Re:Simple question...simple answer.

[Anonymous Coward]

He actually died 2 months ago... Still, a very sobering story.

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]

Ever watched Jerry Springer?

Re:The Worm Turns

[misexistentialist]

It's hard to see how "having the time of their lives" is a bad thing. Unless the Vietnamese kid ends up engineering/programming something significant in terms of human accomplishment or at least lucrative, he basically wasted his life.

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.

[timmarhy]

the chinese don't tend to be terribly inventive is their problem. from what i've seen, they tend to suffer a cultural thing "it's been done this way for 1000 years, it's how we will continue". what they are good at is taking an idea and doing it for 1/10th the price and in 1/2 the time.

as their exposure to the west increases this will change i'm sure, but for now most of the innovatino is still going to come from the USA and other western countries.

Re:I predict a boom in Chinese research.

[15Bit]

My experience echoes this - i review for a number of materials science journals and i've noticed a steady increase in the quality of work coming from the chinese universities. Its becoming well written (in english, which is not easy for them i think) and increasingly relevant. I would predict that before long they will need us less than we need them. The only case of blatant cheating (copying and pasting "nano particles" all over a SEM picture) came from india, not 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.

still some issues for china's progress

[chentiangemalc]

I lived in China for one year teaching high school students and one thing I noticed in general while students were brilliant at chemistry, maths, physics, etc. when solving text book problems, many seemed to be struggling with coming up with new concepts, and in some cases applying what they learnt into new areas. Many struggled when told 'I want x as the end result' without any explanation of the process to achieve the end result. It seems most of the science study was just pure memorizing of facts and figures. I found the same later on when managing some staff from Asia, although very dedicated and hard working they required additional guidance on what processes to use to achieve a goal. There seemed to be a strong sense of 'copy wherever possible' (why re-create it, if somebody already has?) My students had to do 'school', 'city', and 'provincial exams' The complained the provincial exams 'didn't allow copying' Another instance of this was when a foreign professor in Chinese university was fired when failing students for work that had obviously been copied from another source. I think US / Europe still had lead on creativity which can be an important factor when coming up with new solutions / ideas. Not to say the Chinese can't, and it will be interesting to see how they go, but I don't think the number of PhD's alone will decide whether US or China has technology lead. It will also depend on how much further China restricts internet access as the number of internet sites being blocked continues to increase, it certainly frustrates me that even though I have a large network of friends in China working in technology social networking / YouTube continues to be blocked there, and alternatives to access these sites such as proxies / VPN are illegal - and often if detected are blocked. For my friends in China who have studied overseas and since moved back to China they are constantly complaining about fact sites like facebook,twitter, youtube no longer work.

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.

Re:still some issues for china's progress

[Krahar]

I've been noticing this reliance on rote memorization in everything I've done that comes from Asia. E.g., if you read a Chess book, you will be given examples with explanations and a lot of text. If you read a Go book (a game from China), you will be given absolutely no explanation of any kind, and you are expected to pick up the concepts yourself from being presented with a large amount of examples that aren't explained - the concepts aren't even named. These books literally have no text in them, just images of Go boards. This is the wax-on-wax-off philosophy at work - do not question why you are being set a task, simply do it and trust that your better's have a good reason for having you do it. I saw a documentary where Chinese people were expected to learn English by repeating given sentences over and over until they could do so extremely quickly. Then they had to keep at it until they could say them backwards!

Re:still some issues for china's progress

[Malc]

If you haven't read it yet, then you might like read Peter Hessler's "River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze". It makes particular sense to those of us who've had the privilege to live in China, and for you, having taught there, will probably really resonate.

Re:still some issues for china's progress

[Tellarin]

It is definitely very common to find this "memorizing-stuff-is-education" in developing countries. Brazil for example, used to be very much like this in the 80s. Even Richard Feynman complained about it when he taught in Brazil for a year. It is still somewhat like that, but has improved. My experience with China (and Singapore, for that matter) is that the issue is more of a "no challenge allowed", so students don't have a say and have to do exactly what is asked of them. Maybe due to this, most students from Asia are less autonomous, needing more guidance to pursue solutions to problems.

From the educational systems I know something about, the "copy culture" is not so specific to countries. I'd say it is more of a global thing, with occasional countries where it seem to happen more often.

My impression from the US is that there is a lack of interest in students to really study hard, and this is amplified by policies that keep lowering the bar. But the US still has the best options for grad school. I'd say that on average they are better than most in Europe.

Overall I think basic education is the biggest influence in determining students behaviour at grad school. In this sense, northern europe seems to take a great lead (specially the Finnish system), as well as Cuba (at least basic education they do right if not much else). I've also heard good things about Canada, but have no experience in this regard.

What inducement would it take?

[symbolset]

What incentive could they offer for scientists who crave discovery and publication to go and live behind the Great Firewall? They must be sellng it hard.

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.)

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.

they go home - Because there is no Visas to stay

[Anonymous Coward]

I know from personal experience that it has become increasingly difficult to stay in the US (or Immigrate) since the late 90es.

At this time, even highly skilled individuals with several post graduate degrees have no chance to get a Visa and move to the US.

Unless a student was lucky and managed to marry a US citizen during their school time, they have NO OTHER CHOICE than to leave the US once their student visa expires, and they cannot get a work (H1) visa in time.

Supposedly this is all for your own good, to protect the country and the domestic job market.

Re:intellagence gathering..

[ShiftyOne]

Good idea, but the DoD realizes this. They don't allow foreign nationals clearance to work on their top secret projects.

Re:intellagence gathering..

[ShiftyOne]

Forgot to post a link with this. A 71 year old professor was sentenced to jail for among other things, allowing foreign nationals to work on a DoD project. http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2009/jul/02/prison-for-ex-ut-professor/

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:I think the worse problem is the other way arou

[interkin3tic]

In general until that point, it's still worth it to fund their education just for the work they do as a grad student, and the likely work they will do in the US afterwards, even if a few end up going home and working and contributing heavily in another economy.

Speaking as a grad student, it's not like we're paid that much, less than unemployment on average apparently. Cheaper in many cases than hiring a non-grad student to do the same work. The lab gets cheap labor, and the student gets an education. Even if those students don't stay, I expect it adds up to a net benefit for us.

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?

Re:I think the worse problem is the other way arou

[Raisey-raison]

I think the whole situation is ironic. Quite often when I hear stories about immigrants with degrees getting jobs in the USA, people go ballistic about how they are stealing Americans' jobs and depressing wages.

When they go back to their home country, people then complain about a brain drain and about how they should make a 'contribution' to the country that educated them (never mind that they paid highly inflated tuition and quite often even their graduate education was paid for by moneys outside of the USA + grad students essentially work for $10 an hour - slave wages).

So they are damned if they do and damned if they don't.

Re:intellagence gathering..

[iccaros]

a lot of top secret projects are not so until they go from research to production. sounds stupid but I know of a few, the people working on them do not know they are for a DoD customer. But if you really look at what they are doing.. While the US does have policy not allowing foreign nationals to work on SCI projects.. TS, no problem. just have to have a clean nose. Let alone secret or unclass but sensitive. http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20050519_1.htm

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".

zquad

[ackim]

As an international student who had four of my friends having to leave the US for China in 2009 and one a few weeks ago, I have to say that the US does not give graduate-degree carrying international students many options. In the US, my friend was forced to work as a web developer soliciting jobs on craigslist; however, back in China he began an IT consulting company and is currently on his way to doing $100,000+ is revenue at the end of the second quarter. Not bad for a guy that was denied work authorization in the country that trained him and paid him ~25k/yr to work at the prestigious college. It was pretty depressing when we spoke about his options and he is far from alone. I hear stories of masters technology students forced to return home and go into high school education and local banking. In my opinion, this country's policy on work authorization for well-experienced and well educated students – THAT THEY THEMSELVES TRAINED - is the reason for the drain. Not only do I see it as anti-capitalist to not compete for graduate talent regardless of status, but the current policy to prefer, on occasions, less educated and less skilled (but national) sounds more like a social program. Consider that in a world where competition is no longer national, but global. So NO, it makes sense to invest in their training if they will do their major work elsewhere but the US is not allowing them to do their major work within its borders.

Re:I think the worse problem is the other way arou

[Kjella]

I think the whole situation is ironic. Quite often when I hear stories about immigrants with degrees getting jobs in the USA, people go ballistic about how they are stealing Americans' jobs and depressing wages.

When they go back to their home country, people then complain about a brain drain and about how they should make a 'contribution' to the country that educated them

Those who are taking expensive western jobs are the Indian call center guys, because wall clock time can be bought much cheaper where the living costs are lower. I've hung out with quite a few foreign students and for the most parts they were very bright, granted there were a few playboys whose parents simply had the money but they outpaced most of the domestic slackers who were just looking to get an easy degree. They heightened the standard more than anything else, if you wanted to compete for the same jobs they did you'd have to be a very talented and hard-working person. I'm sure Americans lost jobs to that too but that's more fair competition and those people would only feed further high tech dominance. It's far more dangerous to think that you can outsource the bottom of the pyramid and don't think the juniors will eventually become seniors and team leads and architects and managers and take over. That already started with the outsourcing wave and now the bright people are going home too to sit on top of that pyramid. That they're leaving is only great if you want to work at Wal-Mart or be Bill Gates' manservant, there won't be much except retail and services left.

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.

view of a biotech scientist

[cinnamon colbert]

In a historical view, the post WWII, and in the longer view, the post industrial revolution era, are anomolous, in that there was an unusual conc of science in the us and western europe; for large swaths of human history, China was the dominant, or at least a co dominant science technology country.
There are still living people who remember when Germany was THE leading science power, and if you were a serious scientitst, you went to Germany to finish your education; people like Willard Gibbs were celebrated precisely because genuwine US science hereos were so rare.

The post WWII period, when our wealth dominated world science, is coming to an end. So, the correct view is not that we are loosing our dominance, but that an unusual situtation, where an unusual amount of science was concentrated in the US, is coming to an end.
That we offer free training at what are still the best universitys in the world, because of the specious theoretical economic arguments infavor of globiliazation (see samuleson) certainly doesn't help the US.

I don't know about physics or chemistry, but life science is a labor intensive field. Right now, I make a pretty good living as a PhD scientist in boston area biotech; how on earth am i going to compete with someone from china, just as smart and well educated, a lot hardworking, and a lot cheaper ?
And this is not theory - it is happening; all of the major pharma and RnD firms (eg, Invitrogen) are setting up shop in china with large numbers of scientists.

One other point, which people outside of life science research may not understand. Life science research - basic science as practiced at our universitys - is almost a pyramid scheme; it is based on the idea that very hardworking, intelligent people willl spend 4-8 years at very low salary (graduate school/postdoc) and the carrot for this low wage job is that you can become an independent researcher - similar to the idea behind interns and residents.
So, every university professor depends, critically, on having a group of graduate students to do the actual work; if you are a prof, you must find young people willing to work long hours at relatively low pay.
The problem is that independent researchers are very exspensive, so most of the people who go into phd programs will wind up trashed - they will not have a career in science, at least not a good paying one.
so a large part of the driver for chinese scientists at our universitys is as cheap labor that is "expendable" - you can send them back to china at the end of their grad work; I emphasize that this is driven by the selfish economic needs of university profs; basically, chinese and indian grad students are guest workers, and the great thing is, you can send them back, so you can get new pools of young, cheap labor.
Thus, in the univeristy community, there is tremendous pressure to maintain the flow, and you have people claiming that there is a "shortage" of scientists; of course, in a free market system, by definition, a shortage means you are not paying enough..

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.