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

Gibberish much?

[Desler]

Even as at the undergraduate level, 80 percent of the students are United States residents, that number, The New York Times reports, falls below 20 percent mark at the undergraduate level in several universities (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled).

Could this sentence be written more poorly? Does msmash have a 2 year old’s mastery of English?

Re:Figures

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand why OP was modded down, but not you. You are 100% correct. Political correctness at universities has made them a highly toxic environment for anyone that's not part of the SocJus cult. Why would anyone willingly take on tons of student loan debt to then be bullied and marginalized for the high crime of thinking differently?

Re:It's all cost/benefit analysis

[buddyglass]

Education is no longer about advancing human knowledge or you making a contribution to that unless you started out independently wealthy.

Disagree. If you're brilliant and interested in academic research as a career then you can live reasonably comfortably by getting a Ph.D. and pursuing that goal, even if you aren't starting from a position of wealth. "Reasonably comfortably" does not mean lavishly.

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.

Many Ph.D. students are on fellowships that take care of their tuition, and they get paid to work as T.A.'s or be part of a research team. For such a person, the only cost is the opportunity cost of not being in industry. If your goal is a job in industry then a graduate degree can help with some jobs, but for most it's only a marginal benefit. Master's is the best use of time in that it only delays your entry into the job market by two years, but it's also typically the most expensive since fellowship money is usually only available to Ph.D. seekers.