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The Disappearing American Grad Student (nytimes.com)
There are two very different pictures of the students roaming the hallways and labs at New York University's Tandon School of Engineering. At the undergraduate level, 80 percent of the students are United States residents. But that number, The New York Times reports, falls below the 20 percent mark when you move to the graduate level (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled). From the report: The Tandon School -- a consolidation of N.Y.U.'s science, technology, engineering and math programs on its Brooklyn campus -- is an extreme example of how scarce Americans are in graduate programs in STEM. Overall, these programs have the highest percentage of international students of any broad academic field. In the fall of 2015, about 55 percent of all graduate students in mathematics, computer sciences and engineering were from abroad, according to a survey by the Council of Graduate Schools and the Graduate Record Examinations Board. In arts and humanities, the figure was about 16 percent; in business, a little more than 18 percent. The dearth of Americans is even more pronounced in hot STEM fields like computer science, which serve as talent pipelines for the likes of Google, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft: About 64 percent of doctoral candidates and almost 68 percent in master's programs last year were international students, according to an annual survey of American and Canadian universities by the Computing Research Association. In comparison, only about 9 percent of undergraduates in computer science were international students (perhaps, deans posit, because families are nervous about sending offspring who are barely adults across the ocean to study).
Grad schools discriminate in favor of international students.
Two key factors why: 1) international students generally pay more money to the schools
At the undergrad level, where students are actually paying tuition, this is true: universities go out of their way to recruit international students who pay full freight. Without such students, domestic tuition would be even more than it is. Really.
However, this article is about graduate students in fields where most of them are supported by assistantships, so the school gets teaching or lab minion time out of them rather than money. So: not relevant to this discussion.
By the way, this is in no way news. In CS and engineering, even thirty years ago there was often only a "token US student" in many grad classes. Why? US students with an undergrad CS or engineering degree are hot to go get a real, well-paying job, not spend a few more years as an apprentice.
The job market is rather abysmal for grad school graduates right now, particularly if they go to grad school with the ambition of some day being faculty somewhere with their own research lab and a teaching appointment. There are plenty of good jobs in industry for those who finish their master's or PhD but a lot of grad school advisors look down on those positions and encourage their students to do the same (for both the positions and those who take them). On top of that grad students - at least STEM PhD students - are paid on average $20-35k / year as grad students at most US schools which is terrible pay. Few students are able to live on that kind of pay for the amount of time that it can take to earn a PhD - and it doesn't get a whole lot better as a postdoc either (for those who want to make an attempt at the academic route).
And on top of that a lot of grad schools conveniently forget to tell their students that junior faculty - not that many grad students make it that far - are averaging eighty hour work weeks at the big research universities right now when they are getting started. 40 hours goes in to the tasks you associate with junior faculty - teaching, research, assembling and running a lab - while another 40 hours per week goes in to preparing grant proposals. At many schools the junior faculty who don't pull in a substantial grant by their third or fourth year are promptly shown the door.
The money isn't there, the job security is nonexistent, the job prospects are slim. Not many Americans are masochistic enough to go that way any more. Plenty of job tracks exist for those with 4 year degrees (or even less) that pay better and have better job security than those that open up for those with advanced degrees.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
In the current GOP Tax plan, they are seeking to tax Grad students on the Tuition waiver (usually in the range of 25k to 50k). This would wipe out the meager stipends that middle-class and disadvantaged students require to live.
My son a Grad Student has a stipend of 20K at a school where the tuition waiver is worth 50k. He will have to pay taxes as if he were making 70K. He will have to drop out because he can't make it.
https://twitter.com/ClausWilke...
They are attacking the middle-class and education all the while giving the rich a huge tax break by repealing the Estate Tax.