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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).
I know so many people who graduated in a STEM field who then go for an MBA to advance their career.
Boss doesn't have one and he's a VP. Why should I pay for one?
"Persistence is annoying success." - ghee22 11:28:1999 - 10:53:PM
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.
Sent from my TARDIS
Grad schools discriminate in favor of international students.
Two key factors why:
1) international students generally pay more money to the schools
2) the people selecting admissions for grad school think "if I admit this unfortunate international student then they won't be sent back to their home country where conditions are much worse than the US"
I have heard that second one straight from the mouth of an Associate Dean in a large US university's CS department.
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.
We'll make great pets
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.
It's cheaper to go to Germany and get it than it is to get it here in the USA, for example. And there's universities all over central and south america that are also excellent and maybe a goddamned order of magnitude cheaper. Maybe back when our schools were the envy of the world, it was worth it, but they were also a lot cheaper then, and that was also a long time ago.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
When I was in EE grad school, back in the early 1980s, I was one of six US-born EE graduate students, out of 102 grad students at my major state university. When a friend of mine went through the same program in the late 1980s, he was the only US-born Ph.D. candidate in the same EE department.
As a rule, the foreign-born graduate students with which I was familiar were smarter than I was and worked like dogs, frequently sleeping in the lab to avoid wasting the time needed to travel back to married student housing. They had and have my complete respect.
Anyone who's been in the educational system knows that virtually everything "resets" when you hit grad school. Therefore, assuming Grad School is something you absolutely want to do, it makes virtually no difference where you get your undergraduate degree (so long as it's an appropriately accredited institution) - use that to then get your undergraduate degree at a reasonable price, then get your graduate degree from the desired institution. Of course, by then you'll realize that there's only a very small percentage of the time when you TRULY need to get that degree at the "prestigious institution," and you've just saved yourself even more money. The educational system as a whole is a crapshoot anyway - in the vast majority of the cases you get out of a program what you put into it, regardless of what school you go to. This is why when I do interviewing I always like to ask, "so what do you do for fun?" - the students who tell me about their side projects are going to be a hell of a lot better contributors than those who regale me about their XBox addiction.
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.
Lot's universities still have at least some level of the ivory tower / teaching you to work in the universities / ivory tower system.
But at the same time real job skills don't really fit with the loads of theory and you have lots of professors that have been in the ivory tower there full life and have little real work place exp in there fields.
At the same the the trade / tech schools have been both push to offer degrees and get held down by the accreditation systems as they do poorly with the gen edu / theory based classes. Now if HR did not put so much of an need to have a degree then the trade / tech schools can dump the degrees and tech real skills for the work force in less time.
With so many foreigners in the hard sciences, and the graduate students in charge of classes and labs, it makes it very difficult for US students to learn because they often can NOT understand what the grad students are saying!!
This was a problem even way back in my college days. I had grad lab students and even a couple of professors trying to teach me that had accents so thick that I couldn't understand a fucking word they said.
Its bad enough when you're on the phone with tech support and can't understand them, but when you are in a class trying to learn some very difficult subjects (this really killed me in physics) and you spend most of your time just trying to translate what they are saying into Engrish, it is hard to learn the concepts.
I know it frustrated me in so many ways. It is even worse today in schools due to the situation mentioned in the article where the overwhelming majority of grad students and instructors in US colleges are foreign.
It's a vicious circle.
I won't even go into the cultural differences that often make things even more difficult.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Personally I'm getting paid too much to go back to school to get a graduate degree that "is required" to do what I do.
gop fix is to make us students pay the same and have uncapped loans with no bad credit discrimination
It's just economics: Grad school has become an export commodity. Since it's one of the few areas where the US has a positive trade balance with the world, I wouldn't complain too much. From my experience, foreign grad students are frequently paid for in their entirety by their government. Meanwhile as a US student, funding grad school was entirely my responsibility.
It really depends on whether we are producing enough grad students, and if we feel grad degrees are important for our economy going forward. Foreign governments obviously feel American grad degrees are important to their economic growth and are willing to invest in them. If we agree, then we have to invest as well. If we don't, then we can consider grad degrees as mostly an export product, which is the direction we are headed in.
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.
Fixed it, thank you so much. Sincere apologies for the error.
I found that a Master's degree helped me get jobs. Especially early on when I didn't have a ton of experience. My tuition was free, since (at the time) was a Ph.D. seeker with a fellowship. Only cost was the opportunity cost of not working an industry job, which was further offset by the fact that I had a (small) stipend.
Most people pursue Ph.D.'s because they want to do academic research as their "day job" or because they're eying one of those fancy NFL money jobs in AI or finance.
One of the main causes is that overseas transcripts are often outright lies. Bought and paid for, no questions asked.
I have had many classmates and colleagues over the years whom I trust who were originally international transplants. Each any everyone of them when asked about the credibility or overseas transcripts of resumes has simply laughed and indicated they have no credibility. One of my friends recently had an issue with someone he hired from his own school back in India. The resume turned out to be fake, and the person who interviewed and showed up on day 1 were different people.
I'm an IT guy with a background in science...got a BS in chemistry way back in the day. The problem is that science is losing a lot of smart domestic people to investment banking, web startups, management consulting, etc. Foreign students come from places where scientists are revered, and that just doesn't happen in the US. When I graduated, there still was some room for a good career in the sciences, and I did consider it. But ultimately, I was kind of done with school at that point, had relevant work experience and chose to go with IT -- rather than slog through years of Ph. D. work to maybe possibly get a tenured faculty position.
Tell your average 22 year old that they have the choice of spending years as a researcher and a tiny sliver of hope for a permanent position, OR, go spend 2 years getting an MBA, work for Goldman Sachs and never worry about money again, OR, go work for Facebook/Google and devise new algorithms for getting people to click on ads, OR, go work for Accenture/PwC/other management consulting firm and get paid handsomely to deliver PowerPoints to executives. Which would you choose?
The only thing I can think of that might change this is a major world war with China or India that cuts off the supply of scientific talent willing to pursue this path.
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.
It's just more postgrad students tend to be foreign exchange. I work in a UK University and the bulk of first year UG Students are British but by the 3rd year you tend to see a lot more foreign exchange students. By the time they are doing Postgrad, Postdoc or a PHD a lot of them already have a taste for Foreign Exchange. I certainly have a taste for Foreign Exchange Students :D
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
"Harvard's idea of diversity is to have everybody look different but think the same" -- Harvey Silverglate
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
This was a problem even way back in my college days. I had grad lab students and even a couple of professors trying to teach me that had accents so thick that I couldn't understand a fucking word they said.
It's always fun when the entire class sits in stunned silence trying to figure out what the "taten o' the coo" is and how it relates to differential equations. Great use of our tuition dollars. Or would it be tooten doos?
US employers suspect (for good reason) that an undergraduate degree from many overseas universities means someone bought the degree, doesn't have a great education, and doesn't speak very good English. Picking up a graduate degree proves they are somewhat qualified and speak at least enough of the language to get by.
I agree. I was at Rutgers Engineering (A state school, no less) back in the early 90s and they made sure the Teach Assistant jobs went to their cronies from their own alma-maters, Peking University, etc (one even wore that t-shirt).
They also made it clear that they weren't interested in undergrads applying as we weren't competitive with the foreign students. So they taught us poorly and made then told us we weren't competitive.
I managed to have a good career despite my education, and they wonder why I won't donate...
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.
In Computer Science, I think this reflects the value of the degrees to the populations in question. US Citizens don't need a graduate degree to get a good job. Foreigners do. All those tech companies mentioned in the article hire BS candidates in droves, but are not able to get government approval to hire foreigners with the same paperwork, so the foreigners need an MS to get the same job. It is crap for rules and I'm not defending it, but I think that is all that lies behind this difference in the CS field.
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?
The economy is doing relatively well now and employers are hiring STEM students with a bachelor's degree, so the expense of getting an MS doesn't make the person much more competitive in the job market. I work for an engineering company and have been involved in hiring new staff prior to and after the 2007 recession. Prior to 2007 when the economy was doing well, entry-level applicants and hires were mainly BS degrees. Post-recession entry-level applicants and hires were mainly MS degrees, because students were riding out the economic recovery period in grad school school and the MS degree made them more competitive in a tough job market. The economy has is doing well again and we're back to seeing mainly BS degree entry-level applicants and hires.
It's also possible that the increased number of foreign grad students despite the economy doing well is because if they want to work at an American company they may need the MS to compensate for a lack in communication soft-skills of native speakers (e.g. language, writing, the interview, etc.), and/or overcome some degree of unconscious [or overt] employer bias/racism.
My employer offers tuition reimbursement so they paid for most of my Master's. The process wasn't to onerous, I had to get my department VP to sign a form and I had to take "job related" classes, pay for them upfront and then get reimbursed when the grade came in. So I used my credit card, paid a little interest and did night school. At the rate of one class a semester it took a few years to get through, but the "sacrifice" was a couple of nights a week of not watching TV and playing video games. Honestly, compared to an undergrad degree where I had 18-20 hours a semester it was not hard -- work doesn't assign homework and projects outside of business hours, and I only had to contend with having a baby around for the last semester -- I was married, but no kids. So it was some effort but not a lot of effort to get my Master's, and effectively no money out of pocket. I probably ended up paying about $400.
Who was attending my classes? Keep in mind these were night school classes geared toward working professionals. Maybe some where here on H1B but these were people like me with full time jobs, most young and newly married, some with young kids at home. We had effectively zero full time students. The classes were overwhelmingly attended by other Indian and Chinese working professionals, with a few US-born people sprinkled in. Their attitude was pretty much the mirror of mine -- my employer will pay thousands out of their pocket to pay for my education, so why not spend a couple nights a week here? It's better than doing nothing, and I get something that is a great add to my resume. My other US-born friends and colleagues were in awe of my "effort". "YOU WENT AND FOUND THE VP AND GOT HIM TO SIGN YOUR FORM?" (yes, I checked his Outlook calendar and dropped by when I knew he was present), "HOW DID YOU FIND THE TIME!?!?!" (One night a week and some time on the weekend is not a huge time commitment)
In Asian countries an advanced degree carries far more prestige than it does in the US. In the US, practical skills and team/people skills are weighed more heavily. Titles carry lasting bragging power over there. They tend to defer more to hierarchies and titles. Our "cowboy culture" is that if you can't stay on your horse, you'll eventually be booted off the farm. Loser PhD's still get prestigious do-nothing positions over there, especially in gov't jobs, which there are a lot of because gov't and industry are heavily intertwined. Some say Chinese and Singapore-style governments keep it that way on purpose so that people respect the gov't. Others say it's just cultural respect for hierarchies and authority. Perhaps it's a combo.
And raw research is often outsourced overseas such that hands-on knowledge is seen as more valuable here. The foreigners getting those advanced degrees will probably be doing the outsourced R&D. If you don't need heavy interaction with other employees, clients, and internal processes; brains are simply cheaper to outsource overseas. Define the issue to research, and email it over to have $10/hr PhD's work on a project. A PhD living in the US cannot compete with $10/hr. The research is then integrated into the company's system/product in the US; so they want practical integrators here, not raw researchers. Advanced degrees don't give you much of that.
Some also argue Asian govt's rig their currency to keep their wages low. It's hard to really say since the non-democratic systems there are far less transparent than ours. There are a lot of subtle ways to rig the market that are hard to spot by outside inspectors.
By rigging the currency for cheap labor, the cost of many products will be higher in such countries, but the governments there believe that it gives more people jobs so that they don't riot and overthrow the gov't: less stuff, but more jobs. Defenders of their system sometimes point to the election of Trump as an example of what happens when you let jobs go overseas; the Rust Belt being the sacrificial lambs of "Free Trade".
Table-ized A.I.
I found that a Master's degree helped me get jobs. Especially early on when I didn't have a ton of experience.
This is even more true when the economy is doing poorly and the job market is competitive, like it was for ~4-7 years after the 2007 recession (depending on the field). Students then were riding out the economic recovery period in grad school and improving their resume with an MS. The economy is doing relatively well again and STEM-field companies are hiring BS degrees, so having an MS in today's job market isn't as valuable.
No, the point is, that the foreign students can understand the foreign instructors better than US students can....and it creates a vicious circle.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I just graduated with a CS Masters from a mid-tier state school. The program was 95% Indian, mostly from the Hyderabad region.
The vast majority of the grad students were "box of rocks" dumb, incapable of writing basic C/C++/Java code, but the school received a $5000/semester/student tuition bonus from the foreign students.
I am glad that I am at an age that I do not have to compete with foreign scholars. Family pressures, cultural expectations and a huge urge to get away from poverty creates eager students with an unreasonable drive to place highly in every field. They make fine scholars. I am also rather shocked that the US does not understand just how excellent foreign universities may be. Even in the US schools shine in places we would not expect to produce good schools. The U. of Texas has been active in bleeding edge technology lately. I find that astounding in a state with such rancid political beliefs and actions.
For those that don't know, this was a common practice in Ancient Greek civilization. If the people of Plato's time felt that you no longer deserved to be a citizen, you could have your citizenship revoked by the collective and thus be banished from civilization and treated as if you were dead.
Not really. Ostracism in ancient Athens was for a limited period. And it was not because somebody didn't deserve to be a citizen, it was used to prevent somebody from gaining too much power and as a way of conflict resolution. One did not need to be guilty of anything or unworthy to be exiled. The property of the man banished was not confiscated and there was no loss of status. After the ten years, he was allowed to return without stigma.
/. refugees on Usenet: news:comp.misc
Not only that, but often the grad students often don't actually know much about the subject being taught, at least when it comes to practical/lab courses.
Back in the days of yore, I was hired by my University to serve as an undergrad TA for a couple of the hands-on/practical courses in our Engineering department. I had done really well in those courses the year before, and the instructor respected my knowledge. It was a pretty good gig for me as well, given that I was one of the lab geeks who hung out at all hours of the night, and I have this soft spot for teaching/helping out those who are genuinely interested. The money they paid me was an added bonus, as it covered my beer for the semester.
Anyhow, after 2 years of doing this, a complaint was filed with the department that too many grad students weren't getting these TA gigs, and thus were being denied their rightful income. The next time the course rolled around, a new grad student was hired to TA these courses, who didn't know the material and I honestly don't know how he passed the TOEFL. In the end, because I'm a nice guy, I wound up doing half the TA work anyway because I'm a nice guy, but I didn't get paid for it.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
Also seems silly to talk about grad students are disappearing when the GOP is proposing to tax them into oblivion.
In grad school, I got paid a stipend of about $25k a year. There was also $25k my school required in "tuition" from my mentor's federal grants. The proposals coming out of the "We love the poorly educated" party would have me paying taxes as if I owed $50k.
Grad students are cheap labor that America's cutting edge science depends on for it's preeminence. It's already priced out of reach for way too many bright minds. People working to put themselves through college likely can't take the required time to volunteer in a lab, a prerequisite to get into grad school. By making a STEM degree so costly AND tightening the screws on student loans, republicans are going to ensure those foreign PhD students stay overseas and only wealthy kids get their PhD.
I guess it balances out though. Sure, we won't do any science in the next ten years, nor will we keep ahead of everyone else in terms of science, but at least trust fund kids will be able to inherit more of their parents' wealth.
You really don't need to spend three/four years analysing whether Jane Austen was a closet lesbian to be able to construct a correct sentence and write one coherent paragraph.
Get off my lawn, but when I was at college I didn't know anyone, irrespective of their subject, who couldn't write properly.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The biggest impact this will have is on work being done by companies who can only hire US citizens who can obtain a security clearance. Supply and demand are making it increasingly difficult to get a STEM graduate who wants to and can obtain a clearance, and who can be solid contributors early in their careers. I just returned from a small technical conference and about 95% of the grad students presenting their work were foreign students. They are doing good work and even with a language barrier, it was not hard to see the rigor and technical strength of their research. US universities and other institutions do attract the best from around the world.
This is the modern right anti science, anti education policies in action/
Trump is the the last straw that will break America, sad.
No, our attitude is that science is for Asians, while we're the hipsters off campus shopping for food labeled No GMO.
I had a teacher that insisted that we "shouldn't worry about memory bloat, because memory is so cheap".
That was when I realized the difference between teachers who only worked in academia, vs those with real world experience.
US students just aren't globally competitive for those spots. Their whole education has been dumbed down, and by the time they finish a STEM undergrad their GPAs are too low to apply to grad school.
This is just a consequence of 15 years of No Child Left Behind. The pipeline was sabotaged. Instead of 15%-25% of a graduating class that can actually handle college level classes, they've all infantalized nincompoops who have no more ambition in life than to netflix and chill and tell people they're triggered.
it fail at professional athlete then can make the college team and get free schooling.
But fail at becoming an tenured professor end up on food stamps with big loans over your head.
http://www.chronicle.com/artic...
Only if the students and instructors come from the same country. If not I can guarantee you the opposite is actually the case.
Right and unless all of the students and instructors are from the same country (unlikely), the advantage that a student gets in one class will be more than offset by the disadvantage in other classes. So if you have a foreign TA who is hard to understand, it sucks, but it sucks equally for everybody and you aren't getting good value for your education money. It doesn't suck in a way that explains the abundance of foreign students.
student loans need bankruptcy and then you will see lot's of change for the better.
...but explain to me how Republicans are making Grad school expensive?
Did they set the compensation rate?
Did they set the tuition for undergrads?
Maybe you should instead look to the University. THEY are the ones that are taking you for all you have as an undergrad and then pay a pittance for your doing the bulk of the research work in the lab.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
So if you have a foreign TA who is hard to understand, it sucks, but it sucks equally for everybody and you aren't getting good value for your education money.
No it doesn't suck equally. English native speakers are much better at dealing with broken english than english non-native speakers unless that english is equally broken. E.g. the language traits of slavic language speakers speaking english as a second language are similar in style due to comparison with their own language. They can understand each other fine. English speakers can understand them with difficulty. Romance language speakers with english as a second language think they can't form a sentence which contains a thought.
The differences between them are incredible.
It doesn't suck in a way that explains the abundance of foreign students.
I didn't say it did. Quite the opposite. I was only calling out language as having nothing to do with it in the slightest.
It's all about Organized Mafia https://qz.com/889524/the-us-s...
Casteism
If they can work out how to understand your accents, why can't you understand theirs? American accents can be pretty hard for even English-speaking foreigners to grasp.