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

[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

[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.

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.

[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.

[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.

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.

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: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: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.

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: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?

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!

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.