The majority of your argument has little to do with your initial complaint about China and India. What does poaching less of the world's best and brightest to contribute to our market and universities have to do with ensuring people are working on meaningful projects?

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onetimeusename 3 hours ago | parent [-]

They are about 50% of all foreign grad students. Can you explain why the disproportionate representation? Why aren't more US citizens in grad school for STEM if it is so valuable to us?

The thing about the academic job market is it's paper thin. I argue we produce too many PhDs. People seek out prestigious degrees. Our immigration system rewards more highly educated foreign students, sensibly, but that means there's more incentive to get advanced degrees. There's absolutely not just pure science going on in academia. Grad student wages are depressed and more foreign grad students does not help that.[1] There's a lot of careerism. I would argue some people exploit grad students. I don't think this is even very debatable. So I think put together, we likely print too many PhDs. One could argue that's not true relative to the overall job market but relative to tenure track positions, it is absolutely a fact.

[1]: https://www.nber.org/digest/dec06/impact-foreign-students-ea...

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watersb an hour ago | parent [-]

> Why aren't more US citizens in grad school for STEM if it is so valuable to us?

Graduate research in the United States is often an exercise in exploitation of cheap labor.

China and India have a large pool of highly educated workers who can qualify for graduate research. Their visas specifically prohibit them for seeking alternative employment in the United States.

You can demand long hours and very low pay. The payoff to them is a chance at long-term employment in the US for more money than they could earn at home, and in any event increased status and employment opportunities when they return.

The payoff for native-born kids is not at all the same. Even for those who can afford graduate school, opportunity cost may be prohibitive.

The US has decided that creating new scientists out of its own citizens has no economic value.

	▲	onetimeusename an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Ya that's a big part of my point. I think there's very obviously economic exploitation going on which comes from putting degrees on a stick. I mentioned it in a different comment, there's even a link to a (2006!) paper about depressed grad student wages.