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).

Comments

Cost

[sqorbit]

The cost of education has skyrocketed to the point that it may have just become a bad investment. The cost of graduate degrees if one is required to get student loans to complete leaves you with years and years of debt. If you aren't lucky enough to land a high paying job as soon as you complete you degree you are left struggling to make the investment in education worth it. Basic economics-high cost means people won't buy. Numbers will most likely continue to fall as cost rises.

Re:Cost

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

The cost of education has skyrocketed to the point that it may have just become a bad investment. The cost of graduate degrees if one is required to get student loans to complete leaves you with years and years of debt. If you aren't lucky enough to land a high paying job as soon as you complete you degree you are left struggling to make the investment in education worth it. Basic economics-high cost means people won't buy. Numbers will most likely continue to fall as cost rises.

Wish I had mod points to mod this up. I think this is it plus I've worked my whole work career in IT after graduating with a BS in Computer Science and I've never seen a real need even for people with a master's degree, let alone a PhD. I've known of cases where PhDs actually can be detrimental and people won't get hired because they are "overqualified". So with no real pressure to have to get advanced degrees to get jobs and some pressure against the most advanced graduate degree, yeah, pretty much it's only going to be rich foreigners and a small number of really determined Americans who are going to do this. Of course if you want more Americans with advanced STEM degrees, actually stopping the devaluing of the American IT worker might be a really good way to accomplish that.

Re:Cost

[Anonymous Coward]

Cost is a factor, agreed 100%. I have a masters in Chemical Engineering, but couldn't get a job in that field. I've know 4 other Chem Eng. with the same problem. I now work it the IT field. And I'll tell you grad student is a fancy term for the word slave.

But even when I was in grad school and trying for the doctoral program, I ran into a cost problem. Not my cost either. The foreign students pay more than American. To get into the doctoral program at the school I went to (Texas A&M), you have to a take a multi-day exam on 4 subjects. The exams were randomized somewhat in that there were at least 3 different versions of each test, with different questions. On the kinetics section, I talked with a [chinese] classmate right afterwards. We had the same version. We then compared answers (there were only 4 questions). We got all the same answers. That left me feeling pretty confident I passed at least that section.

But when I was TOLD my results, I was told I failed all 4 subjects, while my classmate passed all 4. HUH! I asked to see the graded exam and was told no by the head of the department, and he further told me if I pushed it he would make sure I didn't get my masters (which turned out to be worthless anyway). One of the other professors, probably dead now, took me aside and told me what was going on: Since the foreign students pay more, the department gets more money if they keep them rather than Americans. So the foreigners got picked first, and any leftover slots when to Americans. Which is precisely what I saw. ALL the non-Americans that took the test passed, while only 2 Americans did.

It then made sense why they didn't return the graded tests. A lot easier to cover up discrimination if you can withhold the evidence.

Re:Cost

[Goldsmith]

Ah, this misconception keeps being put out there. I agree that graduate education is generally a poor investment, but it's not because of the cost.

A PhD in STEM typically does not require any student fees paid by the student. If your university is requiring you to pay fees out of pocket to do graduate research, you're at the wrong place. Run away very quickly. Not to put to fine a point on it, but in the US, the vast majority of STEM grad students are paid to go to grad school. More than that, if you're a potential immigrant to the US, the visa you need to be a student is much easier to get than what you need to work, and is almost always sponsored by the university.

There is a cost to getting a PhD, though. You'll spend 3-8 years making a very low salary, working on a project that may not go anywhere, for a degree that in the end you may not get. Your experience will not directly translate into marketable skills, and may not translate into a higher salary.

I have a PhD, and employ many scientists in PhD and non-PhD positions at a company. Our good junior scientists don't go to grad school because 1) they're paid at least double what they'd make as a grad researcher and 2) they see that in the real world, having a PhD does not translate directly into a better job.

There is a societal cost to subsidizing STEM grad students. First is an over-supply of labor. Again, very simply: we have too many PhDs. We produce many more PhDs than there are PhD level jobs available. This has been discussed many times on Slashdot in the last few years. Second, universities gain extraordinarily cheap labor that is generally paid for by external sources (grants). This creates a strong downward wage pressure. It's very easy for a company to go to a very good university and pay a research team a fraction of the market cost for performing a study. I have to justify the value of keeping our IP in house to maintain our internal professional science team.

The result is a job market that disadvantages higher education, and a higher education system that values grant winning more than job skills. In my field (physics) we've been on this downward spiral of growing disconnect between market and academy since the 1970s.

It's all cost/benefit analysis

[zifn4b]

Education is no longer about advancing human knowledge or you making a contribution to that unless you started out independently wealthy. Getting a higher education is largely about being more valuable in the job marketplace to obtain more income. The value proposition of a PhD or a Doctorate in this context is suffering due to the Law of Diminishing returns. The cost of college education has increased dramatically due to the high availability of student loans and the amount of additional income you get from having such a credential is not proportional to the cost. It seems to me, some people depending on their needs consider a Bachelors Degree or an MBA to be the sweet spot in terms of garnering the income for their life's needs.

And you know... college is not the uber source of knowledge. If what you really seek is knowledge, you will always learn more from self-directed, focused study on the areas that you want to know more about. College is actually not the best source of information in my experience. Those with self drive will accumulate more knowledge faster without the college curriculum getting in their way.

Re:It's all cost/benefit analysis

[Streetlight]

The cost of college education has increased dramatically due to the high availability of student loans and the amount of additional income you get from having such a credential is not proportional to the cost.

I think you've got it a bit backwards. The increase in the need for student loans is because of the reduction in state support for public universities and colleges and a concomitant increase in the tuition necessary to pay for the education. Back in the early '70s and before, state government support paid for 70 to 75% of the cost of the education of in-state students with the remaining coming from tuition. Tuition was generally affordable by middle class families and there was not very costly financial aid for qualified students from less wealthy families. Out of state students paid the full cost, though some may have had scholarships to pay some of the tuition. For in-state students the largest cost was probably for housing and food. Things have changed dramatically since then with state government support generally amounting to about 20% of the cost of an education, if not less. Obviously, tuition for both in-state and out-of-state students has increased to make up the balance. Universities have also found a revenue source from international students who pay the full cost of their education who often get complete support from their governments. This source of income is particularly important for graduate programs in the laboratory natural sciences. Private schools have similar situations and students from not wealthy families need to find some kind of financial aid to attend them.

When state governments find that revenue projections can't meet proposed expenditures the first thing that faces cuts is support for higher education. IIRC, this is exactly what happened last year in my home state, Colorado, when the proposed expenditures were something like $300 million short on the revenue side. This was the first thing out of the mouth of our Democratic governor. I guess legislature and governor managed the situation somehow.

It's the visas

[kent.dickey]

Let's say you're in China/India, and want to work in the US.

You get your undergrad degree locally, and then come to the US to get a Masters. You then get to work for a few years on a visa (I think OPT-1), after paying for just 2 years of school. They could come as an undergrad in the US, but then you have to pay for 4 years of US school, which is not as good of a deal. This is the cheapest way to get a guaranteed work visa in the US--I would expect for some students, the schooling itself doesn't really matter, they are basically paying for the visa. And schools love it since they can get these students to pay full price for their Masters programs. The article itself mentions this visa program at the end in passing--but they miss the whole point.

Re:Grad schools discriminate

[Desler]

Well if one person said so then clearly evey grad school program in every college must be exactly the same. *rolls eyes*

Re:Grad schools discriminate

[SirSlud]

I have heard that second one straight from the mouth of an Associate Dean in a large US university's CS department.

Good old anecdata.

If it's not going to increase my pay, why get it?

[jeff4747]

If I got a CS Masters degree, it wouldn't significantly affect my pay or my ability to get another job. If I got a PhD, it might, but the odds are not all that good.

So why get one? "Love of learning" is handled by side projects that don't require sending off large tuition checks, and I can do that on a schedule that fits with the rest of my life.

Want more STEM graduate students? You're gonna have to pay them more when they're done.

keep these guys

[buddyglass]

Completing a Master's or Ph.D. in a STEM field at a reasonably accredited U.S. university should guarantee a near-automatic offer of citizenship. To analogize to picking teams on the playground, these are the "ringers" you want on your team. They drive growth, and they're almost guaranteed to be net contributors with respect to taxes vs. social benefits.

Re:Gibberish much?

[msmash]

Fixed it, thank you so much. Sincere apologies for the error.

Re:Gibberish much?

[edtice1559]

So the premise of this post is that the US students couldn't understand the foreign accents but somehow all of the foreign students (for whom English was a second language) could magically understand it since students from Beijing have a magical ability to understand English spoken with an Indian accent or something like that?