Seems kind of unserious then. I would say I like a broad range of universities, some with a lot of international students, some with fewer. I don't want standardization across them nor do I want the federal government trying to social engineer the results at every single institution.
From a purely self-serving, perspective, if American institutions never sold goods and services to anyone but U.S. citizens, our economy would collapse. When it comes to colleges and universities, U.S. institutions are seeking a return far greater than just full-tuition--every international student contributes to the acquisition and expansion of greater knowledge, often in valuable STEM fields. This calculus doesn't even consider the priceless cultural exchange that enriches everyone involved. "America for Americans" is the kind of blinkered rhetoric typical of very small players in the big stage of life. (Apologies to Ryan if this is too aggressive for your comments section.)
Profoundly disingenuous to characterize a majority of the positions in top graduate programs in the US going to foreigners as being the result of ‘global competition’. Americans are at the top end of educational attainment in all preceding levels; there is no shortage of native talent! Keeping the academic job-sector perpetually flooded with employer-friendly visa-holders who lack full rights to respond to wage signals for the purposes of keeping labor costs down is and has been a matter of state and institutional policy for decades now.
This is a direct quote from the NSF study that birthed H1B visas (The Pipeline For Scientific and Technical Personnel: Past Lessons Applied to Future Changes of Interest to Policy-Makers and Human Resource Specialists), "A growing influx of foreign PhD's into U.S. labor markets will hold down the level of PhD salaries to the extent that foreign students are attracted to U.S. doctoral programs as a way of immigrating to the U.S."
And yes, I understand the realities of the terrible doctoral job market. I am the one person in higher ed media that even covered this issue last year: https://www.collegetowns.org/p/my-interview-with-the-homeless-professor. I constantly advise students to not do PhDs precisely because of this.
The article is mostly about undergrad, with some final clarifications on the numbers in graduate schools to ensure the other side of the story. Calling that "profoundly disingenuous" for actually showing the numbers is absurd.
If you don't see 65% of Graduate Electrical Engineering degrees going to foreigners (and a significant portion of those to citizens of an openly revisionist adversary) as an aberrant and disordered state of affairs *in an of itself* I really don't know what to tell you. If your assertion is that these people are just plainly *better performing* than Americans (demonstrably untrue when you distinguish academic attainment by race) then you're just anti-American. Brain-draining-the-third-world is all fine and dandy in theory but the extent to which these programs are dominated by foreigners makes it clear that that's not the full story here. Disincentivizing American talent from academia for the sake of employers is a needless choice that continues to have extensive corrosive effects on Americans and American innovative capacity. It's a vicious cycle where grad school becomes a less viable option for intelligent young people because of an artificially saturated labor market, which then leads to their absence being used as justification for further internationalization. How can you not see the obvious correlation between the state of affairs that led you to advise people not to do PhDs and the increasing proportion of international students? Why not advise universities to change their approach?
Also China and India literally can't get enough of their grad students here. So much so that they're making a point of attaching clauses about this to landmark trade deals with Trump. Not only are they *not* losing anything, they're actively gaining *something* from our supposed 'poaching' of their 'top talent'. Deepseek is exceptional *because* they are such a radical departure from the norm. More or less every other Chinese national champion is staffed primarily with erstwhile American grad students! Furnishing the competition with a full suite of Morris Changs in every sector where we've built an advantage *at the expense of our own talent* should be plainly, obviously, wrong and untenable to anyone, especially if we really are meant to be "competing on the world stage for research". America's best are left out to rot (https://www.sebjenseb.net/p/the-talent-that-gets-left-out) while our supposed competitors get to siphon the bounty of our knowledge and institutions, with the only clear beneficiaries being....idk, stakeholders in the education industry? Maybe?
Thanks for this helpful article. I just wrote about the "Compact" in my newsletter also: https://darbysaxbe.substack.com/p/shame-if-anything-happened-to-your
awesome! just had a read.
Thank you! I don’t think many people know what’s going on at universities since the media’s not really covering it…so it’s on us to get the word out
Great. Then lower the threshold. America for Americans.
Trump himself just now set the threshold. So he seems to think this is acceptable. What level would be acceptable to you?
Whatever number is at each respective institution, booting 25% out is a good start.
Why? How do you come up with that?
Symbolic action. What, you want 50%?
Seems kind of unserious then. I would say I like a broad range of universities, some with a lot of international students, some with fewer. I don't want standardization across them nor do I want the federal government trying to social engineer the results at every single institution.
From a purely self-serving, perspective, if American institutions never sold goods and services to anyone but U.S. citizens, our economy would collapse. When it comes to colleges and universities, U.S. institutions are seeking a return far greater than just full-tuition--every international student contributes to the acquisition and expansion of greater knowledge, often in valuable STEM fields. This calculus doesn't even consider the priceless cultural exchange that enriches everyone involved. "America for Americans" is the kind of blinkered rhetoric typical of very small players in the big stage of life. (Apologies to Ryan if this is too aggressive for your comments section.)
Cultural dispossession is before us, Mike. Running out of time to play the "melting pot" game. America always for Americans, never forget that.
Profoundly disingenuous to characterize a majority of the positions in top graduate programs in the US going to foreigners as being the result of ‘global competition’. Americans are at the top end of educational attainment in all preceding levels; there is no shortage of native talent! Keeping the academic job-sector perpetually flooded with employer-friendly visa-holders who lack full rights to respond to wage signals for the purposes of keeping labor costs down is and has been a matter of state and institutional policy for decades now.
This is a direct quote from the NSF study that birthed H1B visas (The Pipeline For Scientific and Technical Personnel: Past Lessons Applied to Future Changes of Interest to Policy-Makers and Human Resource Specialists), "A growing influx of foreign PhD's into U.S. labor markets will hold down the level of PhD salaries to the extent that foreign students are attracted to U.S. doctoral programs as a way of immigrating to the U.S."
Wrong. It is global competition. Yes, Americans are on the higher end of educational attainment, but the world has caught up. This isn't the Boomers era anymore. https://www.collegetowns.org/p/where-did-the-deepseek-team-study
And yes, I understand the realities of the terrible doctoral job market. I am the one person in higher ed media that even covered this issue last year: https://www.collegetowns.org/p/my-interview-with-the-homeless-professor. I constantly advise students to not do PhDs precisely because of this.
The article is mostly about undergrad, with some final clarifications on the numbers in graduate schools to ensure the other side of the story. Calling that "profoundly disingenuous" for actually showing the numbers is absurd.
If you don't see 65% of Graduate Electrical Engineering degrees going to foreigners (and a significant portion of those to citizens of an openly revisionist adversary) as an aberrant and disordered state of affairs *in an of itself* I really don't know what to tell you. If your assertion is that these people are just plainly *better performing* than Americans (demonstrably untrue when you distinguish academic attainment by race) then you're just anti-American. Brain-draining-the-third-world is all fine and dandy in theory but the extent to which these programs are dominated by foreigners makes it clear that that's not the full story here. Disincentivizing American talent from academia for the sake of employers is a needless choice that continues to have extensive corrosive effects on Americans and American innovative capacity. It's a vicious cycle where grad school becomes a less viable option for intelligent young people because of an artificially saturated labor market, which then leads to their absence being used as justification for further internationalization. How can you not see the obvious correlation between the state of affairs that led you to advise people not to do PhDs and the increasing proportion of international students? Why not advise universities to change their approach?
Also China and India literally can't get enough of their grad students here. So much so that they're making a point of attaching clauses about this to landmark trade deals with Trump. Not only are they *not* losing anything, they're actively gaining *something* from our supposed 'poaching' of their 'top talent'. Deepseek is exceptional *because* they are such a radical departure from the norm. More or less every other Chinese national champion is staffed primarily with erstwhile American grad students! Furnishing the competition with a full suite of Morris Changs in every sector where we've built an advantage *at the expense of our own talent* should be plainly, obviously, wrong and untenable to anyone, especially if we really are meant to be "competing on the world stage for research". America's best are left out to rot (https://www.sebjenseb.net/p/the-talent-that-gets-left-out) while our supposed competitors get to siphon the bounty of our knowledge and institutions, with the only clear beneficiaries being....idk, stakeholders in the education industry? Maybe?