Visas for Grads

I'm not a huge Tom Friedman fan, but this reaction to seeing a bunch of foreign-born newly minted PhDs seems just right:

Don’t get me wrong. I’m proud that our country continues to build universities and a culture of learning that attract the world’s best minds. My complaint — why I also wanted to cry — was that there wasn’t someone from the Immigration and Naturalization Service standing next to President Jackson stapling green cards to the diplomas of each of these foreign-born Ph.D.’s. I want them all to stay, become Americans and do their research and innovation here. If we can’t educate enough of our own kids to compete at this level, we’d better make sure we can import someone else’s, otherwise we will not maintain our standard of living.

It's really baffling that we would give someone a visa to pursue high-level education in the United States and then do anything other than automatically give them a visa to work here. If we're going to be stingy with anything, it should be with spots at our universities (in practice, there tend not to be Americans clamoring to get graduate schooled in technical disciplines), not spots in our labor force. Unlike the immigration of unskilled workers, immigration of highly skilled people is a totally uncomplicated balance of considerations. It's good for the immigrant, it boosts the American economy as a whole, and instead of putting mild downward pressure on the wages of the least-fortunate native born people, the costs are borne by better-off Americans. It's a total no-brainer.

Comments

Isn't the real issue that universities, nothing if not underfunded in most instances, look to foreign graduate students as (a) a source of revenue in the present and (b) a future source of contacts, influence, and...revenue?

Posted by Gene O'Grady | May 23, 2007 10:32 AM

No, it's not a total no-brainer because the draining of human capital harms the societies that many of these foreign students come from.

Posted by Bill | May 23, 2007 10:33 AM

'I'm not a huge Tom Friedman problem'

haha, retard.

Posted by pimp hand strikes! | May 23, 2007 10:37 AM

We could educate plenty of our own kids for this, it's just that higher education is too expensive for most Americans to afford. Before we start offering greencards to rich Indian kids, we should start giving a full ride to American ones.

Posted by soullite | May 23, 2007 10:37 AM

Before we start offering greencards to rich Indian kids, we should start giving a full ride to American ones.

These are not equivalent economic choices.

Posted by Steve | May 23, 2007 10:39 AM

No, it's not a total no-brainer because the draining of human capital harms the societies that many of these foreign students come from.

I think these concerns about the ethics of importing skilled workers are entirely misplaced. If we’re willing to give our own consumers (and our society in general) the benefits they receive from foreign competition, we shouldn’t deny other countries the benefits they’ll enjoy from having to compete with us for the talents of their best and brightest (chief among these being the necessity for them to get their acts together, lest they lose said best and brightest).

Moreover, there are the rights of the would-be immigrant to consider. China’s loss, in other words, is Mr Chang’s personal gain. Preventing him from immigrating in order to give some sort of benefit to China strikes me as an utterly unjust case of the ends justifying the means

Posted by Jasper | May 23, 2007 10:42 AM

I don't think Matt gets that most Americans can't afford 4 years in college, let along 6 or 8. It's not that there aren't Americans "clamoring for undergraduate degrees.", it's that there aren't any real opportunities

I'm not interested in solving any of socities problems if those solutions are used to keep in place the class system we have in this country. It's obvious the elite like to pretend that the class you're born into will be the class you die in 99.9% of the time. They prefer to think they got where they are by accomplishment, when it was always birth.

Posted by soullite | May 23, 2007 10:43 AM

...it's just that higher education is too expensive for most Americans to afford.

Surely this is not the case. It may be that private higher education is too expensive for a majority of Americans (at least without taking on substantial debt), but, if you throw public institutions into the mix, post secondary education and graduate school are within the means of a large majority.

Posted by Jasper | May 23, 2007 10:46 AM

Before we start offering greencards to rich Indian kids, we should start giving a full ride to American ones. - soullite

I'm not sure if this is true in all fields, but at least in the field I was in (biochemistry) and my friend was in (history), Ph.D. students get their tuition remitted and receive a stipend (and, depending on the fellowship/ ga-ship/ ta-ship/ ra-ship, often get their fees remitted or reimbursed as well). The stipend is peanuts (and thanks to Tax Reform, is taxed), but it isn't as if American kids aren't getting at least a 3 quarter full ride, at least at the grad school level. And, btw, the Indian kids I knew in grad school -- not all of them were rich. The majority of them were from solidly middle-class families.

Of course, there is the issue of funding for research -- my research field, which could someday perhaps result in intellectual property drug companies could steal (like they stole AZT), is well funded (knock wood). My brother's field, which could show the President is wrong about climate change and that it is the apocolyptic disaster our President's been banking on occuring in the Middle East (c.f. Darby), is not well funded. But his problems getting enough money to pursue his studies have nothing to do with money being used to pay for rich Indians vs. him -- they have to do with our government defunding some fields vs. funding more generously others.

Posted by DAS | May 23, 2007 10:48 AM

Yeah, I'm a little baffled myself. My father was a carpet cleaner, I had virtually no financial help getting through college, and yet somehow here I am with a degree. Nor did most of my colleagues at Michigan State come from the landed aristocracy, that I noticed.

Posted by Steve | May 23, 2007 10:49 AM

There seems to be some misunderstanding above.

In technical areas such as physics, both Americans and foreigners get a 'free ride.' (Or rather, they get a low salary and a tuition-free Ph.D. in exchange for their work as researchers and teaching assistants.) You don't really think that anyone goes into debt for a PhD in physics? There most certainly are not enough American graduate students to support the research programs.

Posted by John DE | May 23, 2007 10:53 AM

i have no idea why matthew is baffled: start increasing competition for white-collar jobs and who knows where it may lead! dean baker has been talking about this for years, the way in which "free trade" has come to be defined as "increasing competition for working class jobs but not for white collar jobs."

Posted by howard | May 23, 2007 10:54 AM

1) It's rather hypocritical for our wealthy billionaires to say that we have to have massive layoffs, "employment at will" and low wages so that the nation can "stay competitive" -- when 25% of the class in our US taxpayer-funded engineering programs are foreign students.

2) Which may explain why Michael Dell is laying off the US employees who made him a billionaire -- while his employment of foreign employees has soared -- over 10,000 according to SEC reports.

3) At least Dell is honest in its reports -- HP and IBM refuse to even report US vs foreign employment in their SEC reports. I doubt if they are any better than Dell.

4) As I've noted before, Bush gave our superrich $2 Trillion in tax cuts in order to "spur the US economy". But if you look at federal data -- at the figures for "Foreign Direct Investment" vs US investment -- you see that the superrich used the tax money to build factories and jobs in CHINA, not in the USA.

5) Meanwhile, Fox News and our other TV networks use our Public Airwaves to tell us all about the personal lives of Michael Jackson and Anne Nicole Smith. That, of course, is during those months when they can't charge our politicans hundreds of millions of dollars to discuss the national interest.

Posted by Don Williams | May 23, 2007 10:55 AM

"Unlike the immigration of unskilled workers, immigration of highly skilled people is a totally uncomplicated balance of considerations."

Matt, I often agree with you, but you're dead wrong on this one. Working in the field of international development/humaniatarian aid, I see on a daily basis how the brain drain from developing countries of their best and brightest minds to opportunities in America and other high-income countries is one of the biggest obstacles to development in these countries.

A link worth reading from a newspaper in Malawi:

http://allafrica.com/stories/200705071486.html

This is just one field in one country - there are millons of such examples. You can argue that skilled workers have a right to pursue economic opportunity outside their country - that's a different question. But to argue that such immigration is unproblematic for all involved ignores the devastation such movement inflicts on already struggling economies and infrastructures in the developing world.

Posted by Eighty-eight | May 23, 2007 10:56 AM

instead of putting mild downward pressure on the wages of the least-fortunate native born people, the costs are borne by better-off Americans

You really said it all right there...

Posted by dj moonbat | May 23, 2007 10:57 AM

Speaking of higher education, why don't we take up a collection and buy Matthew a T-Shirt printed with the following:

"I Went to Harvard and All I Got Was This Lousy Atlantic Job"

---------
Don Williams (Pimp Hand's Evil Twin Brother)

Posted by Don Williams | May 23, 2007 11:00 AM

Wait 'til you guys try to send your kids to college. Here in Texas only the top 10% of each graduating class is guaranteed admittance to UT and A&M. Each costs about $50k for a 4 year degree.

My take is that the high dollar private schools end up costing about $100K due to more generous financial aid.

As for out of state public universities, with rare exceptions they are in the ballpark of private schools in cost.

So, if you have 3 kids, figure dad eats $150-300k or the kids get to pay off loans for the first 20 years of their working life.

I concede community colleges are affordable, for now.

Posted by nat | May 23, 2007 11:02 AM

Of course, some developments in our population are driven by genetics and are beyond the reach of public policy.

For example, people appear to become Bloggers and develop a strong interest in working in the same office as Andrew Sullivan because of high estrogen levels. Since such verbal people can't handle calculus, they are blase about foreigners taking 25% of the slots in engineering schools.

See ,e.g, http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20070523/sc_livescience/fingerlengthpredictssatperformance

An excerpt:
----------
"A quick look at the lengths of children's index and ring fingers can be used to predict how well students will perform on SATs, new research claims.

Kids with longer ring fingers compared to index fingers are likely to have higher math scores than literacy or verbal scores on the college entrance exam, while children with the reverse finger-length ratio are likely to have higher reading and writing, or verbal, scores versus math scores.

Scientists have known that different levels of the hormones testosterone and estrogen in the womb account for the different finger lengths, which are a reflection of areas of the brain that are more highly developed than others, said psychologist Mark Brosnan of the University of Bath, who led the study.

Exposure to testosterone in the womb is said to promote development of areas of the brain often associated with spatial and mathematical skills, he said. That hormone makes the ring finger longer. Estrogen exposure does the same for areas of the brain associated with verbal ability and tends to lengthen the index finger relative to the ring finger."

Posted by Don Williams | May 23, 2007 11:15 AM

Jasper, no, college education at even a public school is too expensive for most people to afford. I'd suggest you get a little more familiar with how most people live; how low student loans are capped; how little most americans make; and how expensive even public universities are. Sure, most people can afford to go to community college, but few of them can afford to transfer out of them.

Posted by soullite | May 23, 2007 11:22 AM

Why the f**k should I spend 8 years getting a PhD in biochem or engineering when I have to compete with a bunch of Chinese and Indian immigrants who are happy to make $30,000 for the next ten years of postdoc purgatory?

No wonder Americans don't want science PhDs. You can make double the money selling real estate or mortgages, and you don't even have to be able to read to do that.

Posted by chris | May 23, 2007 11:25 AM

At issue is that there is no shortage of Ph.D.s in the basic sciences. Now, of all people who should be immigrated to the USA, it should be these people with Ph.D.s. HOWEVER, it's not as through the USA has some pressing need for freshly minted Ph.D.s in the basic sciences. Even though the Ph.D.s are free and come with a stipent, the entry level salaries for science Ph.D.s are rarely substantial enough to make payments on the loans taken out from undergraduate school.

Posted by Constantine | May 23, 2007 11:27 AM

... and I should add that many of these Ph.D.s can get green cards when they are sponsored based on their specifically needed skills. The mere act of have a Ph.D. in the sciences doesn't entitle one to permanent residency, but their specific area of specialty may make them a desireable candidate for a green card, and this is commonly seen as a pathway to permanent residency already-- the combination of education and professional necessity.

Friedman thinks that the Ph.D. itself should be the ticket, whereas in practice today, it serves as a chance to pursue the opportunity for permanent residency. I think that's fair.

Posted by Constantine | May 23, 2007 11:32 AM

This is one of the biggest problems I have with liberals. Most of them are much better off than they think they are, and have no clue how little most Americans make. I've had people tell me with a startling regularity that earning 100k a year isn't very much money. Few than 20% of all households make more than 100K (check the wikipedia entry for "U.S. household income"). One guy told me that only an idiot doesn't know how expensive truffles cost. Most Americans think a truffle is a chocolate Dessert. Jasper apparently thinks that only 27% of the adults over the age of 22 have a bachelor's degree because 73% of America just didn't want one. Sure, people drop out, but 1/2 of all college students would have to drop out to reach a majority having had the opportunity to go.

Posted by soullite | May 23, 2007 11:32 AM

A survey of the US News and World Report ratings shows that while Harvard is highly rated in verbal fields such as Law and English, Harvard's Graduate School of Engineering is rated pretty low -- around 27. WAY below Princeton (13) and Georgia Tech (5).

This suggests extremely high levels of estrogen within the Harvard community -- and a corresponding culture of effeminancy.

But we knew that already, didn't we?

Posted by Don Williams | May 23, 2007 11:37 AM

At issue is that there is no shortage of Ph.D.s in the basic sciences.

Exactly. Don't discourage these newly-minted Ph.D.s from returning home, where they might actually be able to get real jobs, instead of spending another decade as postdocs enabling tenured full professors who haven't dirtied their hands in the lab in twenty years.

Of course, they could go into industrial research, instead of academia, because that's where the shortages are. Right. Some biotech / pharmaceutical companies advertise for research positions that aren't actually available, just in case they might need someone. They can just turn everyone down in the meantime, since they know they'll have dozens of qualified applicants begging for the job.

Note that this Ph.D. "glut" is not the fault of immigration, but of more fundamental defects in the system (e.g., one tenured professor + 75 students and postdocs; sixty-five vice presidents + five structure-based drug designers).

Posted by mds | May 23, 2007 11:47 AM

As someone who recruits grad students in a technical field, all things equal, I would prefer Americans due to language, but there are very few Americans with the needed mathematics who are interested in science. This may well be because of the low pay. Since a lot of demand for basic science is driven by gov't and/or university funding this isn't really a market issue, its a public decision about how much the U.S. wants to invest in basic research.

so more foreign born ph.D.'s won't help inequality, but lots of foreign born M.D.'s and investment bankers etc. might.

Posted by CalDem | May 23, 2007 11:53 AM

mds, this is a good point. One of the flaws of the system of science funding is that with more grant money, scientists hire more graduate students and postdocs... which puts more of those PhDs (regardless of national origin) on the job market, which drives down salaries. It seems like having foreign PhD students and postdocs to do work for professors in the USA before heading back to their home countries where they can get a good job and don't crowd the already-flooded market might be a feature, not a bug.

Posted by Constantine | May 23, 2007 11:56 AM

[1] Most of them are much better off than they think they are, [2] and have no clue how little most Americans make. - soullite

Interestingly enough, the opposite can be said of many conservatives:

Most of them are much worse off than they think they are, and have no clue how much the richest Americans make.

...

But I'm not so sure if [1] is true even though [2] certainly is. And this gets to the "coastal"/"heartland" divide of liberals vs. conservatives nowadays (and to the extent that your point [1] does go with [2] it's why liberalism doesn't get traction, comments about Edwards' lifestyle do get traction and why people like M. Lind compare today's Dems. with the McKinley/Taft GOP) -- because in cities there is more demand for everything (more people in a given area), prices are higher so a $100K salary in a city, where Joe Liberal lives, doesn't mean the same as a $100K salary in exurbia (where Josephine Conservative lives).

The cultural (what's a truffle) and wage calibration aspects of liberalism vs. conservatism have a lot to do with an urban vs. rural divide which the GOP has been very skilled at demogoguing. The issue isn't that liberals have no clue as to "how the other half lives", but they appear to have no clue due to the fact that even as they are, pace soullite, in "the other half", their income makes their rural other-half brethren think Joe Liberal is rich when he isn't.

Any immigrant can tell you of a similar phenomenon : people back in the motherland think you are rich if you make $30K a year and wonder why you can't afford to live as well as even they do. But the fact is that $30K doesn't buy you nearly as much in the USA as $30K worth of motherland's currency will buy you in the motherland.

The reasons for these disparities are beyond the scope of this thread, but they are important in considering issues of immigration, etc.

Posted by DAS | May 23, 2007 11:59 AM

"I Went to Harvard and All I Got Was This Lousy Atlantic Job"

Actually, I think that would have to be "Lousey."

I dunno whether the Ivies are like this, but when I was a grad student in English at CUNY, the comp TA's were much more interested in exposing the ideology of prescriptive writing than they were in equipping students to compete within that ideology (i.e., to write a letter or a resume without embarrassing themselves).

Posted by Anderson | May 23, 2007 11:59 AM

"Total no brainer". More so for which party!

But...

Though they would cause a like effect privately will such people have a demand for 'income redistribution' via the State. No. Which party would they tend to vote for?

Will they ever create demand for the services provided for by unionized govt employees? Will they not be able to afford private school? Will they increase demand for 'welfare workers'? Unionized prison guards? Maybe unionized tax auditors but how many of them could there be.

Maybe it's not a total no brainer.

Posted by j mct | May 23, 2007 12:02 PM

Matthew does not know the difference between supply and demand. Or maybe he thinks that every field is like opinion journalism, where pay scales are of dubious relevance.

There aren't "enough" native-born techies for the same reason there aren't "enough" native-born truckers: we don't pay them enough. There are plenty of native-born lawyers and MBAs.

If you think that there is a supply bottleneck in the education system, you're wrong. High-school math standards have been going up in the last 30 years (junior-year calculus is now standard for very bright students, whereas it was senior-year back in the day). More to the point, consider the Carter-Reagan military buildup. The demand for engineers shot up, salaries went with it, and so did engineering enrollments. And--guess what? The math SATS of engineering students also went up. Talented people go where the money is. And why pay American techies, when you can hire braceros?

Posted by Joe S. | May 23, 2007 12:06 PM

Anderson, part of the problem is that as a grad student (or a professor), you're likely intellectually bored by the grunge work of teaching prescriptive writing and find dealing with the ideology of prescriptive writing much more intellectually challenging and stimulating topics to teach. I doubt people go get PhDs because they find the process of personal-essay-writing to be an intellectual achievement. I'm sure they find having to teach the subject rather frustrating. Which probably explains why the professors don't teach it themselves and farm it out to their peons.

Also, shorter Don Williams: Pay Attention to Me! Somebody, Please, PAY ATTENTION TO ME!

Posted by Constantine | May 23, 2007 12:09 PM

The reason why there are so few American-born science and engineering PhDs is simple.

Anyone smart enough to qualify for an advanced degree in these fields is also smart enough to see what a lousy deal it is financially. These high-IQ individuals know they will be far better off applying their talents towards medical school (often focusing on high-income specialties), a top-tier law school, or an MBA.

Scientists and engineers face job shortages, rampant competition from cut-rate overseas labor, and terrible age discrimination (most IT employees are out of work by age 40). All this means that only desperate foreigners will have any desire to fill these slots. This hurts American competitiveness. When a gifted American who should be designing new medicines decides instead to go into patent law because it pays better, our society as a whole suffers.

Any American with a PhD in the hard sciences should be guaranteed a job at $100,000+ a year. If there are no private sector jobs willing to pay that, put them to work at something similar to the old Bell Labs. In time, it will pay for itself.

Posted by Josh G. | May 23, 2007 12:13 PM

no, I'm pretty sure most Liberals think "oh, I have problems with money sometimes. I must not be have much income.".

I'm not a conservative, I'm much further to the left than anyone else here. I'm not singing a paean to the wonders of rural life, I don't even like trees. It's not really an urban vs Rural thing. That's something the media spouts on about so that they can ignore class issues in this country. We talk about conservatives making up their own reality, and liberals being "reality based", but it's not really true. In reality, both are part of the elite, and they live within an entirely different country than the rest of us. They don't get harassed by the police. They can afford to send their kids to college (even if they find it difficult), they shop at different stores (even for food), they have access to a justice system that works because they can afford lawyers. Everyone else lives a completely different life. They get harassed by the police with no recourse, they are lucky if they're kid even graduates college, they buy crap food at wal-mart, and if they ever get arrested they will go to jail regardless of their guilt or innocence.

No matter what you do to try and deny this, that's the reality most of us live in. It isn't urban vs rural, because most people are clustered in population centers. If the income disparity online were simply the result of the increased cost of urban life, most than just 17.7% of Americans would be making at least 100k a year. 100k in the city might be about 70k in the country, but that's still twice what most Americans make. Hell, they're lucky if they don't have to work 2 jobs to make that much.

The GOP isn't that skillful, liberals and democrats are just that clueless. They've ceded the field on class issues a long time ago. It's obvious that they've got nothing to lose in this debate, or they'd actually try. It's not just that the GOP pursues a path of emphasizing social issues. The Democratic party has chosen the path of emphasizing social issues and ignoring class issues. Compare how many blogposts exist in the left blogosphere that cover abortion to how many cover the inability of Americans to afford college, the minimum wage, or income disparities. They cover these issues, but social issues obviously interest them a great deal more. When neither party will do anything real, just a few token measures here and there that will help a little bit in the short term, then Americans are left with no choice but to judge based on social issues.

Posted by soullite | May 23, 2007 12:47 PM

Chris and Josh G are absolutely right about why US citizens don't major in science and math. Those are subjects that foreigners can study and do well in without knowing the culture of the US, in contrast to jobs in law, journalism and, to some degree business in the US.

What most of these foreigners want is the ticket to live in the US. This is worth about $500K according to one economic estimate I saw. So they are willing to study and work in any field at low pay to get that benefit for them and their children.

The result is that US citizens who want to work in science and engineering have that career path curtailed. And those who are in science and engineering are not those who are really interested in the field. Just look at the winners of science and math prizes; contrary to "steet" belief they continue to be almost all of European origin. The result of this is that the US economy will suffer in the long run.

Posted by Robert Hume | May 23, 2007 12:50 PM

The Democratic party has chosen the path of emphasizing social issues and ignoring class issues. Compare how many blogposts exist in the left blogosphere that cover abortion to how many cover the inability of Americans to afford college, the minimum wage, or income disparities. - soullite

I agree with you here. Of course, part of the problem is that the Dems. pay too much attention to what the elite media (which has its own, well, elite agenda) is saying (e.g. look at the Dems' caving on Iraq -- they've obviously been listening to the media rather than actual voters about what is politically strategic and what "the people" want). And the media is saying that "the Dems. shouldn't start a class war" (I wonder why? ... not!).

Not that I'm a social conservative (far from it) or even think the Dems. should abandon the commitment to social liberalism (it'd be seen as something done for "political expedience" and hence a loser for the Dems. But I'm with you -- there does need to be more of an emphasis placed on economic issues and the neo-feudalism absorbing this country as of late.

But I don't think your run-of-the-mill netroots liberal is quite as clueless as you might think or even as we might sometimes appear, due to cost of living and cultural differentials, etc.

Posted by DAS | May 23, 2007 1:02 PM

Re Josh's comment "Any American with a PhD in the hard sciences should be guaranteed a job at $100,000+ a year. If there are no private sector jobs willing to pay that, put them to work at something similar to the old Bell Labs. In time, it will pay for itself."
-----------
1) I concur. We are currently spending about $9 per gallon for Middle Eastern gasoline -- $3 at the pump and $6 in taxes to pay for military operations to keep control of the Middle East.

If we took even a small part of the $600 BILLION we spend every year on Military CONSUMPTION and INVESTED it in Research, we could develop alternative energy technology of great value.

2) Instead, we have a malign distortion of market economics because the US government's huge subsidy to the Oil Companies doesn't show up in the market price at the pump.

3) The number of Doctorates awarded in Physics FELL from 1479 in 1995 to 1080 in 2003. I don't have the breakout by foreign vs US , but in 2003, 40% of the Doctorates in Physical Sciences went to foreign students and only 60% went to Americans.
Ref: Page 536-537 of Statistical Abstract of the United States:2006

4) From 1980 to 2003, our federal spending on research --in constant dollars -- only increased slightly for the physical sciences: from $3.6 billion to $4.6 billion. From 1995 to 2003, it was basically flat: $4.3 billion to $4.6 billion.

As a share of GDP, our spending on research in the physical sciences fell.

By contrast, federal spending on the life sciences rose almost 350% --from 7.5 billion to 25.5 billion. In math and computer science, it increased by almost 600% --from .4 billion to 2.6 billion.

5) According to the Abstract, the median wage for a graduate with a Masters in the Physical Sciences
in 2001 was 45,000.

Posted by Don Williams | May 23, 2007 1:23 PM

What most of these foreigners want is the ticket to live in the US. . . The result is that US citizens who want to work in science and engineering have that career path curtailed. And those who are in science and engineering are not those who are really interested in the field.

The last sentence, in my experience and judgment, doesn't follow what precedes it. It might be the case that American students who might be interested in science and engineering don't go in that direction because they know they won't make a lot of money. Which leaves us with a couple of possibilities: it's only the lesser-qualified Americans who enter science and engineering (does anyone believe this?) or it's those Americans who really are interested in science and engineering who are doing the work, even though they know they could make more money doing something else. Myself, I'm in the latter camp.

Posted by RSA | May 23, 2007 1:24 PM

I find paternalistic concerns re:"brain drainage" to be utterly misguided. I am a citizen of a third world country, and I have gotten a PhD in a specialized field here in the US. What in the world could I ever do back home with the degree I have gotten here? And why on Earth would I want to go back home to become an unproductive intellectual symbol, when by living in the US I can have a more meaningful and substantive impact both here and there? Brain drainage, shmbrain drainage.

Posted by pedro | May 23, 2007 1:37 PM

I find paternalistic concerns re:"brain drainage" to be utterly misguided

It comes from the same kind of patronizing instinct that worries that poor people who get scholarships to become professionals won't "come back to work in their communities." It annoys me to no end.

Posted by Constantine | May 23, 2007 1:49 PM

My roommate is an Australian PhD who worked in a premier Boston-area university's cancer research lab under an academic visa. When his most recent project ended, he had numerous private companies tell him they'd pay him $80k...if he only had an industrial visa. No dice, since the backlog for industrial visas was at least a year. So instead he has worked as a bouncer for the last six months under the table (the university extended his academic visa, but had no job for him).

What a logical system we have, were PhD cancer researchers are forced to work as bouncers to make ends meet.

Posted by owenz | May 23, 2007 1:51 PM

Tom Friedman:

"My complaint — why I also wanted to cry — was that there wasn’t someone from the Immigration and Naturalization Service..."

Little detail, perhaps, but doesn't Friedman know that it's not called the Immigration and Naturalization Service anymore? What was it Pascal said about details again?

Owenz:

"When his most recent project ended, he had numerous private companies tell him they'd pay him $80k...if he only had an industrial visa."

Interesting how these "numerous private companies" are expected (and able) to verify employment eligibility but this is somehow an unrealistic burden for restaurants, bars, meatpacking companies, landscapers, etc.

Posted by Fred | May 23, 2007 2:15 PM

A clarification: A PhD degree in a technical field at a top school is usually free. The students' tuition and living expenses are funded by research grants. So cost is not a barrier.

Posted by Jim | May 23, 2007 2:17 PM

Which leaves us with a couple of possibilities: it's only the lesser-qualified Americans who enter science and engineering (does anyone believe this?) or it's those Americans who really are interested in science and engineering who are doing the work, even though they know they could make more money doing something else. Myself, I'm in the latter camp. - RSA

You missed a possibility: not everyone who is "science smart" could do well in business or law (or hack the lack of sleep required for a medical residency). Some of us are savants who require a lot of sleep and don't have much business sense -- so we couldn't make much more money doing something else (well, I guess we could get industrial scientific positions, but c.f. some of the comments earlier about those) ...

BTW -- the converse is also not true: not everyone who does well in business or such is necessarily "smart" ...

Posted by DAS | May 23, 2007 2:18 PM

DAS:

"Some of us are savants who require a lot of sleep and don't have much business sense..."

Some of you have the best of both worlds -- academia and business. Like, say, Dr. Bose.

Posted by Fred | May 23, 2007 2:57 PM

"Interesting how these "numerous private companies" are expected (and able) to verify employment eligibility but this is somehow an unrealistic burden for restaurants, bars, meatpacking companies, landscapers, etc."

The first line of defense here is that a pharmaceutical research company doesn't run on the narrow margins that many small business do, and can thus afford the (presumably expensive) process of verifying eligibility. (I confess I have no idea how statistically valid this argument is.)

But you're entirely right, Fred: there's some deep hypocrisy at work here.

Posted by James Gary | May 23, 2007 3:12 PM

Re: Jasper, no, college education at even a public school is too expensive for most people to afford.

And yet, a large, and growing, fraction of our non-immigrant population has a college degree.

Posted by JonF | May 23, 2007 3:24 PM

A response to DAS:

I'm science smart: Ph.D. in chemistry in 3 1/2 years from undergrad. I'm a social moron: my wife's pet name for me is "nerd."

I'm also a lawyer, a science dropout who wanted higher pay and less competition. There is plenty of room in the legal profession for my type. I couldn't do a trial in a million years: the jury would run away screaming. But there is lots of legal work for folk without social skills: tax law, Uniform Commercial Code, antitrust, briefwriting.

Posted by Joe S. | May 23, 2007 3:32 PM

This is all such horseshit it's unbelievable.

1. The reason why there are so many foreign doctoral students in the US is pretty simple: most countries don't allow public funding of non-citizen grad students. US universities, on the other hand, are perfectly free to use their public funds to have all their grad students be foreign students, if they so wish.

2. American undergrads generally have more difficulty, not less, getting into a top doctoral (science) program than the elite of foreign students. By now, there are lots of foreign-born (even the vast majority, in some cases) professors at most schools. That's fine, but these professors often (or usually) have a network back in the homeland, intensively recruiting students from the old friends, family and colleagues there (and they're not doing the same for American students). American students, especially those going to non-elite US schools, are often entirely shut out of those networks.

3. Grad student stipends in the US are often 12 times the average income in the main source-countries of grad students (China, India, Russia and a few others). It's not really that bad of a deal for them. Of course, the stipends are about 1/2 to 1/3 of the average American income, so it's not such a great deal for a US citizen.

4. Pure capitalism reasons. There's really no massive monetary (or even social status) advantage that accrues to most Americans by having a science or engineering PhD. There's a few who really want to be scientists never mind what else. And the exact same thing is true of the foreign doctoral students. They're in the American doctoral programs mostly to get various visas, get contacts, get side-contracts and so on.

5. I see no particular reason why foreign doctoral students are particularly and necessarily valuable as citizens. They're ALL so incredibly valuable, we should just hand out visas? No - first, most of them end up here anyway so it's not that massive of a hurdle. But we can review our needs upon their graduation.

Posted by burritoboy | May 23, 2007 3:33 PM

JonF, only 27% of all adults have at least a bachelor's degree. That's minuscule. That's not a "large" portion of our non-immigrant population. It's barely even a quarter of it. You can believe wikipedia (article titled: Education in the United States), or you can sift through the census and find it yourself. It's pretty clear that only a small fraction of our non-immigrant population has a college degree.

Posted by soullite | May 23, 2007 3:34 PM

This is complete and total nonsense.

I work in hightech, and most of my friends have been fired so that they can be replaced by cheap H1B imports from India.

There is no "shortage" in hightech nor engineering. This is a myth created by Bill Gates who wants to import a ton of cheap labor to drive down wages.

Are people going to continue to buy into this corporate propaganda? The imported Ph.D. is but a way for big business to further drive down American wages. I see it happening everyday in hightech and engineering. Companies are firing American employees and replacing them with cheap Indian graduates from American universities. At a buddy's company, they just fired 32 Americans are replaced them all with cheap Indian graduates (making about 1/2 what the Americans were making).

Posted by Liberal Patriot | May 23, 2007 3:39 PM

Jasper, no, college education at even a public school is too expensive for most people to afford.

An anecdotal comparison: Average price for a new car today: about $28,000 (with the average new car buyer trading in every four years). Tuition, fees, and books for an in-state undergrad at the local state university for this coming academic year: about $6,000. Now, this is apples and oranges, but I think I'd have to see real numbers to believe that a public college education is too expensive for most people.

Posted by RSA | May 23, 2007 3:47 PM

"Now, this is apples and oranges, but I think I'd have to see real numbers to believe that a public college education is too expensive for most people."

Also, one has to pay one's living expenses. So add ~$15,000/yr to that.

Posted by James Gary | May 23, 2007 4:01 PM

my wife's pet name for me is "nerd."

I'm also a lawyer, a science dropout who wanted higher pay and less competition. There is plenty of room in the legal profession for my type. I couldn't do a trial in a million years: the jury would run away screaming. But there is lots of legal work for folk without social skills: tax law, Uniform Commercial Code, antitrust, briefwriting. - Joe S.

I am a fellow nerd. And I would like to think I could do a trial (actually my problem is that I would be too showy for a trial -- there can only be one Johnny Cochran in this world). I just don't normally think of lawyers as raking in the dough. Most of the lawyers I know are making a decent living, but hardly richer than I'll be if I can manage to get a decent position after this post-doc (a big if, that's true) ... especially when factoring in law school bills.

Posted by DAS | May 23, 2007 4:06 PM

American undergrads generally have more difficulty, not less, getting into a top doctoral (science) program than the elite of foreign students.

In so far as "American undergrads" are a large group of all sorts of undergrads interested in graduate school are competing with "the elite of foreign students," this is true. The top sliver from all over the world are going to beat out the average in America any day. However, in general, at top schools, the acceptance rate for foreign students is much much lower than the acceptance rate for American students, though I'd argue that the caliber of students evens out (since the schools choose both the elite of Americans and elite of foreigners). I'd even argue that the foreign students are probably higher caliber compared to the American students in the same top PhD program, because it IS harder for them to get in. Why? Professors in America favor students who have connections and recommendations from other professors in America. That selects for American-educated students.

However, at lower-tier doctoral programs (and by this I mean the tier of the university, not the quality of the faculty advisor), not only are there going to be far fewer Americans interested in attending them, but the caliber of foreign students they're able to attract is much, much higher than the caliber of American students, so in the sciences, these doctoral programs are more heavily foreign.

soullite, Jasper is making the argument that American-born adults have a relatively high rate of having college degrees. You are saying that 27% of ALL adults (American born and foreign born) have college degrees. While Jasper didn't provide any statistical basis to back up his claims, the truth is that he is talking about a different group of people than you are.

Posted by Constantine | May 23, 2007 4:10 PM

3. Grad student stipends in the US are often 12 times the average income in the main source-countries of grad students (China, India, Russia and a few others). It's not really that bad of a deal for them. - burritoboy

In general, I agree with you, but as to this, while certainly this is how these students perceive the stipends going in, the "12 times the average income" figure is based on exchange rates, nu? Factoring in differences in cost of living, does a U.S. grad student earning a stipend of $X dollars really have any more wealth than what that student would earn (which is different than numbers relative to mean income, of course) in some job in, say India, for Yrupees ... even if the "equivalent" of Yrupees in dollars is less than $X?

And this, btw, is why foreign labor is so cheap, nu?

Posted by DAS | May 23, 2007 4:11 PM

"JonF, only 27% of all adults have at least a bachelor's degree. That's minuscule. That's not a "large" portion of our non-immigrant population. It's barely even a quarter of it. You can believe wikipedia (article titled: Education in the United States), or you can sift through the census and find it yourself. It's pretty clear that only a small fraction of our non-immigrant population has a college degree."

I believe that's substantially higher than most other countries (and may possibly higher than ANY other country). Only 20% of Swedes have completed their first university degree. In Switzerland (a country whose per capita income is higher than the US), 25% of the population has completed a university degree. The average among OECD countries is 23%.

Posted by burritoboy | May 23, 2007 4:29 PM

"I'd even argue that the foreign students are probably higher caliber compared to the American students in the same top PhD program, because it IS harder for them to get in."

That's simply not proven to be the case. If you look at prizes in economics for instance, the field I know best, one would assume that most of the prizes would be won by foreign students from China, India and Russia (who form the bulk of foreign students - and the bulk of all students simply - in economics doctoral programs). Instead, most prizes are either won by Americans or by Israeli or French students. All of the best dissertation award winners in history of economics (John Dorfman Prize) are various Northern Europeans or Americans. In economic history, no Chinese, Russian or Indian students in America have ever won the best dissertation prizes. Even in finance prizes (finance being a field Chinese, Russian and Indian students predominate in), Americans / Israelis/ French/ Italians take most of the prizes, even though there are only comparatively small numbers of American doctoral candidates in finance. Only one John Bates Clark Medal winner has ever been Chinese, Russian or Indian (Andrei Shliefer).

Posted by burritoboy | May 23, 2007 4:56 PM

"Professors in America favor students who have connections and recommendations from other professors in America. That selects for American-educated students."

Not true. Many foreign-born professors will intensively look for students from their home countries - often using recommendations from trusted colleagues at their own foreign alma maters (the well-known Technion to Stanford road, for just one example). They often do NOT do the same for their American undergrads (the people they're actually being paid to assist) and generally not for random American students. Native-born American professors usually do not, in the sciences, heavily promote their American students either, tending to believe in meritocracy. That's admirable, but somewhat delusional.

Posted by burritoboy | May 23, 2007 5:04 PM

"Science" is a pretty broad term. I have friends with masters degrees in microbiology (one a Ph.D. dropout) who make good livings in big pharma. Seems like the real money -- if you're in a science or technology field where this is possible -- is to take a shot at a high-tech or drug start-up. If that works out, you're golden; if not, getting a professorship somewhere is a pretty sweet life, even if it isn't hugely remunerative. Or, you can have the best of both worlds, like MIT professor Yet-Ming Chiang, or, back in the day, MIT professor Amar Bose, who founded Bose.

Posted by Fred | May 23, 2007 5:18 PM

"does a U.S. grad student earning a stipend of $X dollars really have any more wealth than what that student would earn (which is different than numbers relative to mean income, of course) in some job in, say India, for Yrupees ..."

You just don't understand the pratical economics of India, China or Russia, DAS. Communist / Socialist systems produce extremely large intelligensia classes (large for those countries' economic level). Being a university professor denotes extraordinarily high social status in that environment. In the USSR, in fact, a full professor with his own lab or institute at a major university occupied a social status just below the very topmost heights of society. An assistant professor in the US occupies a fairly low social status (roughly equivalent to a dentist) while even an assistant professor in those nations occupies a comparatively high social status.

Students who are doing well enough to get to the US would invariably continue to the doctoral level in those countries anyway. They're going to get a doctorate either way (where they're going to do it is a different issue). There are simply no jobs in industry that would pay them much of anything - besides which, all good jobs in industry in those nations hire solely by nepotism, familial connections or political pull.

Their practical options are small stiped at a native university, 10 times larger stiped in the US or being a garbageman or the like.

Posted by burritoboy | May 23, 2007 5:19 PM

burritoboy, while I will take your comments about prize statistics for granted, I can't say I've found any prejudice against American students at top-rated doctoral programs, at least not to the detriment of the said American students. After all, even in the case of a Stanford-to-Technion pathway (and, keep in mind, there was a MIT-to-Technion path when it came to feeding theory postdocs to Technion-- it worked both ways), you do concede that some of the top award-winners were of Israeli background. Insofar as a students from Technion get into PhD programs at stanford, that's because Technion is one of the best technical universities in the world.

But burritoboy, I'm not seeing it, as far as trends. Many professors are foreign, but I certainly didn't see the dutch profs stocking their grad students with fellow Netherlanders (this is in computer science). I'm really trying to go through the list of the top programs I can think of, and I'm not really seeing it here. I'd hesitate to accuse the 1 or 2 students in any group who went to the professor's foreign alma mater of being less qualified, any more than I'd accuse a student from a professor's American alma mater of same. In part because the professors in the USA are majority American-born. I think you're way overstating your case. The students who get into the best graduate programs are the ones who went to the best undergraduate universities and have recommendations from the undergraduate professors that they did good research. In some cases, that undergraduate professor might made a recommendation to the student of good places to apply/work. We're talking about the top doctoral programs--
professors really do have their pick of students from across the country, and the acceptance rate for american students is much, much higher than the acceptance rate of foreign applicants (at least, the last time I saw a numerical breakdown which was in the fall of 1996).
The phenom your talking about does occur at lower-tier universities, but that's because your average foreign applicant is much better than your average ammerican born applicant to these programs, and professors are always happy to admit good students. As a consequence, a "shorthand" method for gauging a department/university's prestige is generally to look at the number of american-born graduate students it has.

Posted by Constantine | May 23, 2007 5:28 PM

An assistant professor in the US occupies a fairly low social status (roughly equivalent to a dentist)

Dentists make much more money and have more job stability than an assistant professor.

getting a professorship somewhere is a pretty sweet life

Oh, yeah, because, you know, professorships just drop out of the sky like candy. And that waking-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night-in-a-sweat for 7 years because you're worried about getting tenure is just wonderful. Oh, waking up at 4 in the morning to work on your grant application to keep yourself funded, that's pretty sweet, too. The top few become professors. And even they have to stay funded. I have a feeling that anyone who says that being a professor is a "sweet life" is very, very disconnected from academia.

Posted by Constantine | May 23, 2007 5:35 PM

I am a foreign born professor.

burritoboy said:

"Not true. Many foreign-born professors will intensively look for students from their home countries - often using recommendations from trusted colleagues at their own foreign alma maters (the well-known Technion to Stanford road, for just one example)."

Not true where I work. We can much more easily assess records of American born students who apply to our school; they have an edge. But the best American born students are out making money, or going to a professional school rather applying to a PhD. And by best students, I mean students with test scores in at least the 95th percentile, great grades in a tough undergraduate degree, and so on---those are the students we end up with.

We end up with mainly foreign students, because they are the better applicants--higher test scores, better technical skills, etc.

And contrary to that Friedman quote, most of the graduates end up staying in the US, at least for their first few years after grad school.

Posted by did_admisssions_in_PhD_program | May 23, 2007 5:48 PM

"but I certainly didn't see the dutch profs stocking their grad students with fellow Netherlanders (this is in computer science)."

Don't be intentionally stupid. Dutch students don't, as a group, need to study in the US. That's why there are only a trivial number of Dutch graduate students in America. The same goes for most other developed countries.

"The students who get into the best graduate programs are the ones who went to the best undergraduate universities and have recommendations from the undergraduate professors that they did good research. In some cases, that undergraduate professor might made a recommendation to the student of good places to apply/work."

That's how the American grad students got into their programs. It's simply not how a large number of foreign students got there. If you don't want to lift that rock, don't - but don't assert you know what is going on either.

Posted by burritoboy | May 23, 2007 6:08 PM

Constantine:

"Oh, yeah, because, you know, professorships just drop out of the sky like candy."

As a great philosopher who once turned down a professorship at Heidelberg said, "All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare".

"And that waking-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night-in-a-sweat for 7 years because you're worried about getting tenure is just wonderful."

It's no worse than the waking-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night-in-a-sweat of any salesman in corporate America who needs to make his monthly or quarterly numbers -- except they never get tenure.

Posted by Fred | May 23, 2007 6:22 PM

"We end up with mainly foreign students, because they are the better applicants--higher test scores, better technical skills, etc."

No, you don't. First, a large number of your foreign students are not there because they really are desperate to create new knowledge. They're from under-developed economies (and largely from less than a handful of those countries). If you really were searching the world for the absolute best......somehow the best ends up being inordinately Russian, for instance (and Russia isn't even a large country population-wise anymore!).

Second, at least in the fields I know, Americans are clearly the better students - because they're there to actually break new ground and discover things. The Americans who actually are in doctoral programs are much more motivated and creative than large numbers of the foreign students - too many of whom are in programs primarily because they want the visa. Test scores and getting high scores in classes is precisely what people in communist / socialist countries are drilled to do. Doesn't lead to much actual progress as a researcher though. Wanting a visa is fine, but that's not the purpose of graduate study.

The performance of foreign students that I'm knowledgeable about is generally mediocre (their performance, not their backgrounds). This is supported both by my own experience, the experience of many of my friends and by foreign students winning comparatively few prizes.

Posted by burritoboy | May 23, 2007 6:24 PM

Fred, you said, "oh, if being an entrepeneur doesn't work out, just become a professor, it's a sweet life." Doesn't work that way. It's actually no better a life than any other job. There are tradeoffs. It doesn't make your life any sweeter, and the positions aren't easy to get. As I said, your comments reveal a deep disconnect from academia.

And burritoboy, people get admitted based on their backgrounds. If you're arguing that their performance is mediocre (dude, the average person's performance is mediocre. It's the nature of mediocrity), at issue is that they're already admitted. Are they worse than most students? I really don't think so. Are they better than most applicants? Probably yes, which is why they were admitted.

Check out the list of awards in the MIT CS department and do a search for "best student paper." It reveals a variety of nationalities. I wouldn't say that foreign students (and you seem to mean students from Asia, here) are underrepresented in numbers related to their department.

Finally, it's simply a fact that the top few PhD programs have their choice of students around the US and around the world. At the next tier, they're begging for American students. The supply of foreign PhD applicants is practically infinite, but when your department is all foreign, it is a sign that your department is widely ignored by Americans, which doesn't make your department look good. The foreign students are going to have better test scores and such. What do you expect those universities to do? They're already more than happy to have American students, but a lot more foreign students with, as you admit superior backgrounds want to come.

Yes, top foreign students are well-conencted just like top domestic students.

Posted by Constantine | May 23, 2007 6:44 PM

burritoboy, I wasn't going to mention this, but your comments remind me of a "the rich conspire to keep people from making money" argument you were making over at ezra klein's blog. Not only did it reveal a rank ignorance of what wealthy people were like (you actually claimed they played polo), but you tend to misinterpret structural issues as conspiracies. In this case, you regard lack of interest by Americans from wanting to go into Ph.D. programs, which is caused by a lack of good salary prospects and better economic opportunities elsewhere, as a conspiracy of foreign professors to admit a flood of underqualified foreign students of their own nationality.

Posted by Constantine | May 23, 2007 6:52 PM

"Yes, top foreign students are well-conencted just like top domestic students."

No, that's precisely what you do not understand. Top domestic students are only weakly connected - getting an American-born prof to call someone at another department to recommend you for admittance is a very rare honor. Nepotism, social connections to your family and so on have essentially nil input. Very few American professors at research universities will intentionally solely scout their own alma maters for grad students. Simply does not happen.

That's simply absolutely not true in the three countries where most foreign graduate students come from (Russia, China and India). Members of my own family are high in Russian academia, so I do know a little something about it. There are a good number of professors from those countries who will only take students from their own foreign alma maters (and usually are also students connected to them familialy, socially or have studied with various friends/gang members of theirs back home). Further, there is a massive amount of purely social networking and nepotism going on with some foreign-born professors.

Posted by burritoboy | May 23, 2007 7:01 PM

The reason why there are so few American-born science and engineering PhDs is simple.
Anyone smart enough to qualify for an advanced degree in these fields is also smart enough to see what a lousy deal it is financially.

Philip Greenspun made the point that prospective income plummets between the masters and doctoral level for engineers and computer scientists.

Foreign PhDs keep university doctoral programs running while American candidates are heading to biz/med/law, where at least they stand to make enough money afterwards to pay off the mortgage-sized loans that they needed to pay tuition.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | May 23, 2007 7:22 PM

Constantine,

Why put words in my mouth? I never said it's easy to become a professor or get tenure, just that being a professor was a sweet gig. It is. That's one reason there is a lot of competition for Ph.D. programs. You many moan that "It's actually no better a life than any other job", but based on a combination of pay, stress level, work hours, creativity, etc., Money Magazine ranks college professor as the second-best job in America.

For a lot of the downsides you feel are unique to academia (the stress of getting grants, tenure, etc.) there are similar and worse downsides in the private sector, where there's no chance of ever getting tenure. Maybe you need to work a soul-crushing permatemp call center or cube farm job somewhere so you can get some perspective and realize that being a college professor is not like breaking rocks for a living.

Posted by Fred | May 23, 2007 7:31 PM

I never said it's easy to become a professor or get tenure, just that being a professor was a sweet gig.

Don't you call me a liar. You precisely said "take a shot at a high-tech or drug start-up. If that works out, you're golden; if not, getting a professorship somewhere is a pretty sweet life," completely ignoring that getting a professorship isn't just something you do because some other option didn't work out. Professorships don't just fall out of the sky, and you acted like they did-- as someone who's very isolated from academia would (and I bet you think profs in the sciences get summers off, too, right?).

For a lot of the downsides you feel are unique to academia (the stress of getting grants, tenure, etc.) there are similar and worse downsides in the private sector, where there's no chance of ever getting tenure

Fred, first of all, someone with a PhD isn't choosing between "tenure track faculty position" and "sales job" or "permatemp." That's hugely disingenuous of you to make that comparison.

At issue is the various options someone with the ability of a PhD has in front of him. If you have the intellectual and academic background to get a PhD, your choices are basically "be lucky enough to score a decent faculty position" or "take any number of other better paid career options or jobs with a better money-to-stress ratio." Which gets back to one of the original points-- Americans don't want to get PhDs in the sciences because their other options are much better. And professorships don't fall out of the sky.

Money Magazine ranks college professor as the second-best job in America.

I really don't think Money magazine's opinion is relevant here. Being a professor is a tradeoff. In exchange for independence and (the CHANCE at) stability, you take a pay cut, the probability of having to move to an isolated location, and the problem of chasing after a smaller and smaller piece of the research pie.

If you're ALREADY a tenured professor with a steady stream of research funding, then yes, it's a pretty nice deal. But that's more of a compliment you give someone who's already made it.

Being a Jesuit priest is a pretty sweet gig, too, but it's not something you do because, "hey, it looks like a decent living." Like everything, it involves tradeoffs. And when evaluating your options in life, the tradeoffs and risks you assume to become a professor as opposed to other professions are huge.

Posted by Constantine | May 23, 2007 7:53 PM

Money Magazine ranks college professor as the second-best job in America.

Their summary is actually pretty ludicrous:

2. College professor

Why it's great: While competition for tenure-track jobs will always be stiff, enrollment is rising in professional programs, community colleges and technical schools -- which means higher demand for faculty.

It's easier to break in at this level, and often you can teach with a master's and professional experience. Demand is especially strong in fields that compete with the private sector (health science and business, for example).

The category includes moonlighting adjuncts, graduate TAs and college administrators.

What's cool: Professors have near-total flexibility in their schedules. Creative thinking is the coin of the realm. No dress code!

What's not: The tick-tick-tick of the tenure clock; grading papers; salaries at the low end are indeed low.

Top-paying job: University presidents' pay can hit $550,000 or more, but most make about half that.

Education: Master's or professional degree; Ph.D. for most tenured jobs.

Money Magazine has it that there are 95,000 job openings for "College Professors" in the average year, compared with 45,000 openings for Software Engineer, their top job. They also say that "professors" earn $81.5K a year, on average. Their numbers are just not believable. Maybe including grad student TAs with a 20 hour work week and pro-rated annual income brings the numbers up, but really. . . It strikes me as being completely misleading.

Posted by RSA | May 23, 2007 8:07 PM

"Americans don't want to get PhDs in the sciences because their other options are much better."

I'm kicking myself for not getting my doctorate in the social sciences (far below the exalted heights of real science)not just because of the intellectual aspects......but because, simply, I would have had a more stable career with less student loans than my professional degree cost me and likely made more money, not less. (of course, if I didn't get a tenure-track job, that would have been bad. But frankly, my jobs between 22 and 27 sucked anyway and paid badly. I would have better spent the time studying rather than having to pretend filing was my life's joy)

My father, too, is kicking himself for not going into academia. He thought his engineering career would make him more money - the problem is, the widespread age discrimination in engineering made him unemployable after 50, and he was forced to retire entirely at 53. Whatever extra money he made as a private sector engineer is negated by at least 12 years of missed income (more like at least 14 years with periods of unemployment).

(Both my father and I were admitted - in different decades obviously - to top-tier schools, so this isn't solely idle dreaming).

What some academics don't understand is that the massive instability, forced periods of unemployment and total unpredictability of American business life (as well as now nonexistant pension benefits) simply reduce your income by a huge percentage.

Posted by burritoboy | May 23, 2007 8:29 PM

An anecdotal comparison: Average price for a new car today: about $28,000 (with the average new car buyer trading in every four years). Tuition, fees, and books for an in-state undergrad at the local state university for this coming academic year: about $6,000. Now, this is apples and oranges, but I think I'd have to see real numbers to believe that a public college education is too expensive for most people.

Right. The claim is absurd on its face. If one adds community colleges to the mix the figures goes even lower. Indeed, if one truly finds oneself on a particularly low rung on the socioeconomic scale, there is plenty of scholarship money and government aid to be had.

This does not mean being poor isn't an impediment to getting a college degree. It surely is. One of the biggest reasons folks without money don't get college degrees in the same frequency as the wealthy is that the former are much more poorly served by the K-12 system. But the cost of tuition relative to income by itself keeps few from getting a sheepskin.

Posted by Jasper | May 23, 2007 8:42 PM

Constantine's exactly right about this: Professorships don't just fall out of the sky.

A few numbers, from my field: The 2006 Taulbee survey got responses from 155 computer science and 12 computer engineering departments (about 80% of all such departments in the U.S., almost certainly covering the top 50 or so CS departments). Imagine that you have a freshly minted Ph.D. in computer science, one of the hottest fields in academia. What are your odds of getting a tenure-track job? You're one of about 1,700 new candidates for a grand total of 94 offers made by those departments. That's 5%. Not everyone's applying for those jobs, of course, but not all of those jobs are actually worth taking, either.

I don't know why anyone would point to the potential cushiness of a tenured professorship as shedding light on what happens to Ph.D. students. It just doesn't describe the career paths of the vast majority of them. (Not that most of the professors I know take advantage of that potential cushiness.)

Posted by RSA | May 23, 2007 8:53 PM

Constantine:

"Don't you call me a liar."

Are you always this petulant? I didn't call you a liar. I said don't put words in my mouth. Which you had done in your previous post:

"Fred, you said, "oh, if being an entrepeneur doesn't work out, just become a professor, it's a sweet life."

Then, in your next post, you at least refer to my actual words:

"You precisely said "take a shot at a high-tech or drug start-up. If that works out, you're golden; if not, getting a professorship somewhere is a pretty sweet life,"

If you wanted to be precise, you would have added ellipses on both sides of that quote, to indicate that you weren't including everything I wrote in that sentence: for example, where I added that being a professor "...isn't hugely remunerative". In any case, the salient point is that nowhere did I say it was easy to become a professor. I stand by my belief that it's a great job, if you can get it.

"I really don't think Money magazine's opinion is relevant here."

Let's see: a magazine study of the best jobs in America which lists "college professor" as the second-best one -- in response to your statement that "It's actually no better a life than any other job." Nope, no relevance.

Posted by Fred | May 23, 2007 8:55 PM

RSA,

"Constantine's exactly right about this: Professorships don't just fall out of the sky."

Availability of professorships does vary by field. I recently explored the prospect of getting a Ph.D. in finance at a local state university, and was told by the Ph.D. coordinator that all of their grads get job offers, some before they finish their theses. Of course, there may be more academic positions available in finance because there are higher-paying private sector employers competing to hire finance Ph.D.s. Nevertheless, 50% of finance Ph.D.s from the university I visited stay in academia. Why? Because being a professor is a good job if you can get it.

If you are in computer science you might appreciate the song "Code Monkey" here

Posted by Fred | May 23, 2007 9:18 PM

I'll re-iterate what others have said -- the job market for PhDs isn't very hot, and probably never will be. Increasing the labor pool for the relatively few good advanced positions would only drive wages down even further and have the effect of *decreasing* the number of native science/ engineering students for lack of incentive.

This is a systemic problem. Research professors have numerous incentives to advise as many good PhDs as possible. This is great for science on the whole, but it produces a glut on the other end. Industry, national labs, and research universities have little incentive to create permanent, well-paying, positions when it's easy to hire postdocs for 50 cents on the dollar for two years at a time.

Posted by Matt B | May 23, 2007 9:27 PM

not that it matters much this late in the thread, but, i would just note that the JB Clark medal in economics is reserved for Americans, so, this obviously explains the low foreign penetration rate of winners.

Posted by josh bivens | May 23, 2007 10:14 PM

Jasper, you're beyond out of touch, deal with it. Like I said, the only think absurd about this is that you seem to think the vast majority of Americans are simply lazy and deserve what they get. I truly suggest you rethink your political alignment, because you don't belong on the left. It's people like you that are killing this party. You refuse to accept reality because then you'd have a hard to justifying your entire world view. You're accepting a personal anecdote from a guy on the computer who mentions a figure for a school that isn't even named. You're trying not to believe the truth because people like you prefer to stay blind to reality.

Posted by soullite | May 23, 2007 10:18 PM

One more thing, even if the figures above were accurate, 12k a year is half of what most americans get after taxes. A car's cost is ammortized over several years. Student Loans don't cover 12k a year, so unless a kids parents have collateral or good credit it's not really doable. What do you think the state of the Average American's credit is?

Posted by soullite | May 23, 2007 10:22 PM

"but, i would just note that the JB Clark medal in economics is reserved for Americans, so, this obviously explains the low foreign penetration rate of winners."

The American Economics Association seems to define American as anybody employed by an American university (or American government agency).

Examples:

Kenneth Boulding - born Liverpool, education Oxford University

Jerry Hausmann - American, but got his doctorate from Oxford

Daron Acemoglu - born Istanbul, doctorate from LSE

David Card - Canadian, BA from Queen's, doctorate from Princeton

Andrei Shleifer - Russian, though all university education in US

Zvi Griliches - Lithuanian, part of undergrad education at Hebrew University

Hendrik Houthakker - Dutch, graduate education at University of Amsterdam

any person with a graduate degree from an American institution teaching at an American university would certainly count (David Card's exact description).

Posted by burritoboy | May 24, 2007 11:29 AM

"instead of putting mild downward pressure on the wages of the least-fortunate native born people, the costs are borne by better-off Americans. It’s a total no-brainer."

Only if by "better-off Americans" you mean 20-something grads with B.S's and Ph.D's in engineering who have zero equity and $100,000 in student loan debt to repay, and who took those loans and worked hard for years in the expectation that our economy would provide good jobs for them. It's a total no-brainer - let's betray our promises to the hard-working children of the middle class and push their standard of living down for their lifetimes so that Bill Gates and his investors can get even richer!!!

Matt, of course, has never met an engineer or an engineering student in his life and went through Harvard with the full freight paid by his parents and not a student loan in sight.

I thought it might take him a year or two upon joining the Atlantic to turn into mini-Joe Klein. But look, it's barely a month and he's already mini-Tom Friedman.

Posted by Bloix | May 24, 2007 2:03 PM