The monetary value proposition of grad school simply isn't very good if you're a US citizen. There is non-monetary value (like advancing human knowledge) that makes grad school worth it for some, but the pay is low.
Imagine you just graduated from a quality undergrad with high grades and strong recommendations from your professors. Maybe you had an internship or two or spent a summer doing research. Maybe you even have authorship on a published paper as an undergrad. You could be a very strong grad school candidate. Or you could just get a corporate job right out of undergrad.
Lets look at the options.
Option 1: You go to grad school and spend ~6 years working extremely long hours at nearly minimum wage with no benefits.
Option 2: You start at ~100K USD/year with benefits working for Big Tech/Finance/Big Oil/Pharma/Defense/etc. In those ~6 years you likely work fewer hours than a grad student. You have the free time to meet someone and the income to start a family.
Most people will chose Option 2. The two main types of people who chose Option 1 are those who are passionate about learning and advancing human knowledge and those who want a career where a PhD is required.
If instead you're a citizen of "India, China, Korea, Turkey and other foreign countries" (quoted from the article) then the calculus is completely different. Not only do you get to advance human knowledge, but you get to live and work (as a TA or RA) in the US for ~6 years. After graduation you have a good chance of landing a well paying job for a US-based firm or becoming a professor or research scientist.
There's also option 1.5: You start at a grad school in a PhD program (so that you have support and do not pile up debt), and you leave with a Masters as quickly as you can.
I managed to get my MS in CS back in the early 90s in one calendar year. I had full support via a fellowship since I was one of the top students, so I did not have to be an RA or TA, and could take additional classes. I finished all but my MS Thesis requirement in 2 semesters and owed nothing thanks to the fellowship. I then decided I was leaving with an MS, and paid for my MS Thesis credits over the summer.
This cost me only a year, and it happened immediately after undergrad when I was really good at studying anyhow. I am far enough into my career to realize that it strengthened my resume early on, and I think it has really helped my long-term career earnings.
The funny thing is that I didn't intend to be so mercenary. My original intent was to get my requirements out the way early to leave more time for research the second year. I realized part-way through the year that I was not as enamored with the topic that I wanted to study as I thought I was, and I hadn't hit it off with the only logical choice for an advisor in that topic, so I wanted to get out something totally different.
> I managed to get my MS in CS back in the early 90s in one calendar year.
I had a similar path, RIT has (or had) a dual degree program for Computer Science that only added a year to the regular undergrad program. Rather than take free electives, you swapped in the additional master's course you needed and all your undergrad classes became master's level courses (i.e. more work). I was suffering from depression at the time, so it took me a year to do my master's project (it's on Github, and it's not hard to find me there).
I thought about going back for my PhD, but then realized the cost wasn't worth it.
> The funny thing is that I didn't intend to be so mercenary.
I was and still am. I got my degree from the perspective it would help me get more money. I strongly believe the only thing my job is for is money.
I actually didn't know there really was a PhD program in Computer Science. I just found this page with a link to list of dissertation defenses[1] that I have never seen before; historically, I've always thought it was a big joke because of this page with the overview[2] link that just recurses on itself and just displays a different image... (go ahead, don't you want to read the overview? Just click again...)
TIL that RIT has actually given out a few PhDs in Computer Science! [3] Of course I feel like I earned a PhD by spending seven years there just to get my bachelor's degree.
Even that's likely worse than simply taking a MS at night for ~3 years while making ~100k. Painful yes, but having a MS slightly sooner is not going to make such a huge salary difference over 3 years. And you can get a feel for what the job is like.
The third option of a MS to simplify a mid career pivot point is also worth considering. Really, picking something you want to stick with for the next ~45 years at 20 is risky.
> I managed to get my MS in CS back in the early 90s in one calendar year. I had full support via a fellowship since I was one of the top students, so I did not have to be an RA or TA, and could take additional classes.
Unfortunately that strategy is only valid in the US, where higher education is inexplicably, absurdly and unjustifiably expensive. In countries where higher education is affordable, it still makes absolutely no sense to look at a PhD as anything other than a pastime that makes sense only as a personal pursuit.
I have actually seen some professors reluctant to take on US students. With foreign students they at least know for sure that they won’t be able to leave as easily
If you take some initiative, you can also learn a lot working in industry. It’s important to avoid being a code monkey stuck in a cubicle, only doing what you’re told and collecting a paycheck. Instead, be curious and enthusiastic about all aspects of the business and chat up all of your colleagues in different departments. Express interest and “help out” a little on your own time for projects out of your area of responsibility that appeal to you and that you want to learn more about. Assist someone by offering to do some research or putting together a slide deck for them. Offer to present it to their team. Offer your help in meetings. Get noticed, take more responsibility, and work cross-functionally. You’ll be amazed at the doors that open to you.
>If you take some initiative, you can also learn a lot working in industry. It’s important to avoid being a code monkey stuck in a cubicle, only doing what you’re told and collecting a paycheck. Instead, be curious and enthusiastic about all aspects of the business and chat up all of your colleagues in different departments.
Why would you want to be curious and enthusiastic about your industry job if your real interest was research? This whole thread seems to be discussing a Generic Excellent Student who's simply choosing between academia and industry based purely on remuneration, and who possesses the marvelous ability to direct their passions straight towards money by sheer force of will.
Well, of course that person is going to go to industry, but there are many people whose actual interests will point them preferentially towards one or the other. I went to school with a guy (call him P) who was talented and could have taken some research experience at any time, but he just plain wanted to be an entrepreneur.
Your option 1 is incomplete. It should read more closely to:
You go to grad school and spend ~6 years working extremely long hours at nearly minimum wage with no benefits. You then spend 2-3 years on a postdoc still with relatively low compensation. There still are far too few academic positions available. You now either become an adjunct (and get caught in that vicious cycle) or you do another postdoc. Repeat ad nauseum (or until you give up and move to industry anyway)
Where were you 10 years ago. Well, I guess I was "passionate about learning and advancing human knowledge" but that didn't turn out to be all that practical.
I went for my MS and had a wonderful experience. Would do it again in a heartbeat. There are many positives about grad school if you enjoy learning and research.
There is definitely an opportunity cost and it is not surprising there are so few US citizens in grad school -- at least in technical fields. I hear it's a different story in the humanities.
For foreign citizens, option 2 is pretty much a no-brainer because a US green card implies societal respect, relatively high income and subsequently marriage proposals from their home country.
I'm effectively a nobody engineer at a large tech firm and I make three and a half times what I used to make as a postdoc at highly respected universities.
This is a wrong theory and wrong view. Being grad student pays unlike being masters or undergrad. Although the pay is not all that high, it's important to realize that vast majority of fresh out of the college students earns $55K or less. In fields like CS, grad students have phenomenal prospects. The reason American students are vanishing from grad schools is simply because (1) grad schools don't have quota system that forces them to accept only limited number of international students (2) they compete with best of the best of ALL countries. If you are going to compete with top students of China, India, Russia and other 200 countries then most likely you are going to lose.
I have a friend that went to John Hopkins for one year in CS and dropped out. Just did not think he was suited for college. For the last year he worked at low wages for a sensor board company doing electronics and firmware coding. He just got a job doing cloud programming at a bank for $80K. Sometimes you don't even need an undergraduate degree.
>Most people will chose Option 2. The two main types of people who chose Option 1 are those who are passionate about learning and advancing human knowledge and those who want a career where a PhD is required.
I was under the impression that "those two main types of people" are the only ones who're really supposed to go into PhD programs in the first place, so shouldn't we be talking about the incentives important to them? Not to say money isn't important, but to say that from their point of view, Big Tech/Finance/Oil/Pharma/Defense may simply be a slog.
There are also plenty of people who graduate with strong grades from a good undergrad and some nice experience and... simply don't get offered six-figure salaries right out of school. All my first job-offers were right around $80k/year.
I should have clarified my point better. Yes, those two main types of people are exactly who is supposed to go to grad school. But desire and qualifications are not enough. One also has to be willing to live in near poverty and delay starting a family for ~6 years.
It is hardly surprising few people take that option when instead they could be living comfortably (even 80K/year is well above median US income) at a job they're not passionate about.
>It is hardly surprising few people take that option when instead they could be living comfortably (even 80K/year is well above median US income) at a job they're not passionate about.
But we're talking about a "disappearing" American grad-student. What has actually changed about lucrative professions being more lucrative than a grad-student stipend?
This whole thread comes across as people just wanting to brag that they went into industry rather than think about the question.
You didn't hit on the shifting literal economics of academia.
I was interested in continuing further in academia. Publish or perish, combined with the devaluation of negative results in publication, was a deterrent but workable. The thing that killed all interest in academia for me was the revelations of Stefan Grimm. Measuring the value of research in dollar bills? I mean you can give practically countless examples of how absurd this is. The square root of negative numbers? What sort of nonsense is this? We need to be studying real, important science - like how to make a better horse saddle or boat sail.
Don't forget that in some industries (like tech) you can earn the same amount of money in a summer internship that you would have to work a whole year for in your home country.
Why not go for Option 2, but do your post-grad part time while working? It might take 10 years instead of 6, but by then you'd have 10 years work experience, capital, etc.
Part time PhD's are rare - most professors need their grad students to be working on their grant-related research projects as RAs. That work is then used as the basis for your dissertation. As a part time PhD student you'd need to either have your own research planned out (and separate from the professor's grant-related work) which also implies you're likely to be paying out of pocket for tuition. Or find a professor who was willing to accept a slower pace of work on something that's presumably backed by a grant, which is pretty unlikely as the funding agency is usually holding them to strict deadlines.
Part-time Masters degrees are more common (and what I did myself), but come with similar trade-offs and usually need to be paid for by yourself or by your employer. And as you're not committing to being a part of a professor's research group for the next 5+ years, it's harder to find a good match for an advisor and a good thesis.
Co-terminal degrees (B.S. + M.S. all at once, with an extra year after undergrad to do your thesis) mitigate this, but you're going to be out of pocket for that extra year of tuition on top of the bachelor's.
I live in Switzerland where privately funded PhDs are possible (though also rare) and things work a bit differently since tuition is about $500 a semester. Yet, it's typically not a good deal (for you, that is, for the school it's an incredible deal). You're typically hired at a 50-60% rate by your employer, and while that's comparable to a university salary, overall it's a lot more work, you have to deal with your boss plus your supervisor, the school and the company fight over ownership of your work, and you still have some obligations as a student in terms of credit and TA hours. The worst of both worlds :)
Most programs also have a time limit for completion, around 4 years for a Masters and 7 for a PhD.
I did my Master's part-time while working and it was brutal to work full-time then head to class for 3+ hours several times a week, or have to make special arrangements so I could leave work early to make a specific class. I also remember desperately preparing for a defense scheduled days before the birth of my second child (I finished up 2 days before he was born!).
I found that FT grad students and some profs treat you poorly because you're "a PT industry" student, and your co-workers, boss, etc. treat you like you're taking a continuing ed course from the learning annex. It's the worst of both worlds.
This is basically not feasible. At part time, you'd barely have time enough to read the literature to keep current, let alone get actual research done, apply for grants, write papers, give talks and presentations, go to conferences, and teach classes.
Those countries also pay significant amounts of money to place those students in our graduate programs, thus making this calculus even easier for them.
They make a single mention of what could be a significant contributing factor; student debt. A quick google search for India and China show that many of their top public universities charge ~$300 and ~$800/year while UC Berkeley is over $14,000.
After 4 years, with on-campus housing the first year, the Berkeley student owes about $72,000 while the Indian student owes $1,200.
As far as the income differences between the countries, the average Indian saves 31.4% [1] of an average $6,490/yr which means $2,037. While in the US it's 5.7% [2] of $58,030 which means $3,307.
So stated another way, the Indian education costs 0yr/7mon of average savings while the US one costs 21yr/9mon. By the time the American child has their bachelors, the American parents are already broke while the Indian parent's savings reserves haven't been depleted - a 2 year graduate program is something they still have the cash for.
I think I should give you direct values, instead of simple speculation. I am masters student in one of the US citizens, and am being funded by my parents savings, so this is all very relevant.
I grew up in an above middle class Indian household with an income of about $10,000 a year. My parents lived very frugally (I lived in possibly the highest Indian COL area) and my parents started saving early. Over about 25 years, my parents have managed to save about $80k, which they are fully using to fund my Masters.
Funding your child's masters is a huge risk to an Indian parent. The deal is that I fund my brother's masters and take care of my parents after their retirement. Should I bail after my Masters, that would leave my whole family in financial ruin. At the same time, the blind trust between family is one thing that I think helps Indians manage debt better than Americans where family members usually manage finances independently. (for better or for worse)
Now most Indians aren't above middle class or frugal/economically aware to start saving at the rate my parents did. Loans at 10-15% interest rate are very common.
If you look at the odds in this sense, it is absolutely vital that an Indian gets a job in the US after graduation. The person might not settle there, but they would usually work there for at least 5 years to pay off their debts or responsibilities. I am fortunate enough to be in a well ranked university with generally decent career prospects at the end of my Masters (sadly no funding). But, if Trump were to change immigration and h1B policies the ones at less prestigious places would possibly have their lives overturned. If such a change does happen, I hope it does not retroactively affect those already in the US and rather is applied to those who will be coming. (so students can avoid US as an expensive destination for higher studies, all together)
It’s very sad actually that in the US my parents saved absolutely nothing for college because when my one parent that attended did it they could afford it with a summer job.
My parents (when in Canada) saved hard for a scheme that would pay for university for me. In the end the fund performed so badly compared to its promise that it just about bought me some nice textbooks 30 years ago in the UK. (I came across some of the paperwork when 'archiving' the other day.)
Equally, I punt money into my kids' pensions, but at that distance it is a huge punt economically! I mean, some politician somewhere could do something stupid and destroy their value before my kids get to cash in in 50 years' time, just imagine! B^>
Since governments spend in the now, maybe it's rational for parents to also.
I think my parents ended up being really surprised that college couldn't be paid for with a summer job. I don't think Boomers realize the price increases we've seen in college tuition prices.
Yeah except for the tons of people who help out their parents on minimum wage jobs because family is family. And those parents "contributed nothing" (except for you know, labour and care and such).
It's nice when people have it together but you'll go crazy if you try to "add it up".
I hope I'm lucky and consistently organised enough that my children feel entitled to believe that their success was planned for them. Working on it. They'll probably hate me for it and have some point of view where it is "stifling". Still cool, get it.
I have a very different perspective but I also had some advantages and a particular “character roll” of genetics and upbringing (much was not positive). One thing - nobody is required to have kids!
Not sure you can compare them so directly. $800 is an unobtainable sum (?) for 1 billion Chinese/Indians. I'd also wonder about the difference in quality between UC Berkeley and a lot of those colleges. They are probably very good but US colleges tend to dominate world rankings (partially why everyone goes to them). If outsiders are willing to spend money in your schools, what happens to prices?
I'm also unsure about the comparison between averages (500 billion impoverished + 500 billion wealthy makes for an uninformative average), or savings rate. If US families save less (for cultural reasons or they don't need to), it's not relevant. Or it might be late.
Savings is used because looking at per capita income is a disingenuous metric.
Since making 10 times more than someone doesn't get you very far if you live in a place that's 20 times more expensive, savings rate was used as a rough proxy for "how much can an average person set aside for this considering all other factors".
You could certainly factor in GINI coefficients and quintile distributions for a more accurate analysis, but I don't think it will change the fundamental nature of the results:
The capital a parent earmarks for their child's college education takes more time to accumulate and is more quickly exhausted in the United States than in many other countries. This means that the United States parents may be less able to afford a secondary program for their child in the United States than their counterparts abroad who didn't have to bare the same initial cost burdens.
800$ is a very big sum for a lot of my countrymen. Also it is true that a lot of Indian schools operate with very few resources, that would be required to appropriately educate all the students they serve. And this makes them noncompetitive in international university rankings. And to be frank it is not in our interest to pander to the rankings, because they encourage expenditure of a large amount of resources to train a few people who may or may not directly help the nation's economy.
I don't think rankings are as important to even individuals as access to employment opportunities. The cost of college education has to be weighed against the return on investment. If for example, the H1B restrictions are tightened to the extent that foreign students aren't able to find job opportunities, then the ranking of the university would be irrelevant in absence of decent return on investment.
I believe the same holds true for the native students seeking graduate education. If the cost of education is too high, be it monetary cost or opportunity cost, the people will not seek it.
" train a few people who may or may not directly help the nation's economy."
The words "who may or may not directly help the nation's economy" makes me think they mean this: IITs are considered the top institutions in India. I have heard that the people who come out of these IITs don't really help India. Most of them end up working in developed countries and contribute to those economies. Nothing much for India. So, it doesn't make sense to spend money on them. If I have to choose between funding for one IIT or 5-10 low grade engineering colleges, I would choose the latter because in some way, it is still benefiting India. IITs, I don't know.
You need top scientists to get publications in Nature, Science etc. These scientists (and the equipment they need) cost a lot, and it's unclear whether it's actually a reasonable investment for a country where so many basic needs (ex. reliable electricity) are still unmet.
Except the American scientists we're paying aren't publishing their statistical code or data just an advertisement of scholarship. I'm not convinced it's a good deal. In fact, I think it's probably a huge waste considering the opportunity cost of the money.
Some people argue that US government’s generous spending on sciences is in big part for security reasons - so that, if the next deadly weapon is to be discovered, US will have it first. In such case, sharing code and data is be counterproductive.
Can confirm, 800 dollars is nothing for average Chinese family, consider how highly the value education. The money they send their kids to cramp school for college entrance exam can easily top that. The bigger question here, is how to earn to ticket to get into top schools.
In 2016,the average Chinese GDP per capita is 8,123.18 US dollars, it is almost as much as Russia ($8,748.18) or Mexico ($8.201.31). This really surprised me.
In 2010, only 11.2 percent (almost 150 million people) lived on less than $1.90 a day. Not shown above is that 27.2 percent (almost 360 million people) lived on less than $3.10 a day.
So that's what, a bigger population than the US who live on less than $1k a year?
Even in that 27.2 percent, a family of 3 lives on $3k a year. I don’t think 4 months of living expenses is unobtainable, especially when we take into account Chinese people high savings rate.
I didn't understand your math, but your comment about 0 year/7 month prompted me to write this. For my bachelor's education in India, my parents took a loan of 200k (2 lakhs) rs that took them I think 4 years to pay off. Unless we can get into a government college, a lot of us cannot afford private education.
In India, I didn't see anyone taking out debt to pay for their undergrad. The cultural norms were such that parents paid for their kids education until graduation. On the flip side, neither was there a culture of summer jobs (apart from a handful of universities) where one can earn money to pay for college.
As sibling comment mentions, the deal is that when parents turn old, kids are expected to take care of them.
What I don't understand is that top universities in US receive grants, hold patents, receive royalties and contributions from alumni. They seem to have a lot of money. Is it not self-serving to reduce the costs for fees so that eligible students can join the university and be a factor in it's march ahead?
Or do these universities go bankrupt without such high student fees??
The article misses something I think makes part of it: grad school is a ticket to establishing some level of connection in the US for foreigners, and some use it as a spring board to getting a job in the US. They need this because a graduate degree actually is losing its value given the poor job market for PhDs. The prospects of a job after graduate school are diminishing the closer you get to a PhD; it just makes less sense to go to grad school when you can get good jobs with just a BS in CS for example...unless there is something else to make the ROI better.
Finally, the stats mentioned are merely fractions, not overall numbers. What could merely be happening is the growth is coming from international students, not that less Americans are headed to grad school.
Foreigners who went to grad school are very heavily represented in Silicon Valley. Perhaps going all the way for a PhD is not worth it (debatable, some of my CS PhD friends have done incredibly well) but a Masters is definitely a strong path to success.
The latest fad among most of the engineering graduates in India is going for an M.S degree, as you said most of them go to US not for the top quality education but mostly as an entry to the job market there. In that case M.S makes the most sense instead of phd, because if you are anyways going for a job might as well finish the most basic requirement and go job hunting. The banks here are happy to offer loans, which when compared to the higher salaries in US are easily payable in 2-3 years.
It just gives you an additional chance. 250k apply for a total of 85k h1-b visas. Of which 20k is for masters/PHD. Probably 100k grads are languishing in the US withought getting an h1b and that number continues to increase every year.
So if the 80k oh the 100k who don’t get it in masters quota, they just are same as the rest of the 150k interns of getting picked in a lottery
Grad students from foreign countries are not crippled with debt. They get affordable educations and can afford to be in school longer in America. Comparable American students have been consumed by debt and must get real jobs to pay it off.
If undergrads were paying $7K / year for those degrees instead of $50k, things would be very different.
Second, universities who are rich from plundering their undergrads by way of massive administrative overhead resulting in skyrocketing loans...grad students are a source of labor for the schools at low cost.
By importing foreign students who are desperate and cheap, these universities are able to continue adding administrative bloat while exploiting foreign workers for the research tasks they once gave to their American contemporaries.
You want American grad students? Reform the loan situation, stop allowing universities to have their cake and eat it too. If they charge astronomical fees, they shouldn’t get to outsource that work to foreign students and then whine about not having more Americans.
Affordable to students from America maybe, but many students take loans to complete their studies in the foreign countries as well(yes even for "public" universities) and it is very competitive environment if you want to get into public universities that cost a lot less.
There’s been lots of interest here in grad school articles recently, especially where it is a relatively bad deal or career decision. They’re all related somehow, but I think this is probably more about immigrant/native dynamics than anything else.
In the late 80s, my Mum did a PHD in the US and we lived there for 5 years. Many of her friends were foreign grad students. Others, Texan academics.
Migration via academia has always been a good option. There are special visas. Sometimes financial support. A foreign students application form. More importantly, there’s a structured and welcoming subculture you join by default. You will have a place in university society.
I’m reminded of a provocative (to me) Tyler Cowen bit about formal dress and class mobility. When culture (corporate culture in that case) is formalised, it is easier for outsider to adopt and participate in. You can buy a good suit. You can’t easily adopt ways of speaking, casual fashion, and such. They’re too subtle for outsiders. Cultural signals are still important, but the subtle ones are more exclusive because they are subtle.
Anyway, something similar is probably happening here. Academia is formal. It’s meritocracy is formalised. You can talk funny and think funny, but you’re still a PHD candidate, professor or whatnot. You can access that “social capital” to put it in annoying modern terms.
Like tyoma suggests in this thread, natives have more options to choose from.
There are other reasons, of course. I suspect this is one of the top ones.
Grad school for Americans is not a good investment, except maybe MBA, but that should belong to its own category. Often too short, less than 2 years, not really enough time for decent research, yet expensive, the chance of getting sponsorship is slim.
Grad school in US, thus is made for foreign students to get their foot on this country. It has a few attractions: It is short. Cost less than Bachelor Degree. It offers a chance to get familiar with the culture . Count as advanced degree so bigger chance to land a H1-B visa under condition you have a job offer. And most importantly, American Universities know this. They specifically design the programs to target foreigners, and made a shit load of money out of it.
If you look at it from a purely economics perspective, sure. But many grad programs are not that expensive. It's hard to overestimate how valuable it is to get the grad class experience (much smaller classes, direct interaction and discussion with world experts in their fields, and really interesting discussions/viewpoints due to those foreign students). There's no learning experience quite like it.
I'd say my experience at a top school in a STEM PhD was the opposite, classes were largely useless, often superficial and the priority was clearly to do independent research.
Those programs, with the mentioned quality would not be cheap. But that might be true for US citizens, because usually the school charges less from them. I think I missed somewhat the definition of the grad school here. Majority of the grad students come here for Masters not PhDs, and for the former, the stuff you mentioned, like smaller classes, interaction with professors cannot really be taken for granted, and from my anecdotal experience, it is not true.
PhD students don’t take ‘classes’ - they do their own independent research. It’s a research degree. If someone else can teach you a class on it then it’s clearly not cutting edge enough to do a PhD on!
You learn about what's come before by reading papers and reproducing experiments.
I can't imagine how a class for PhD students works - everyone has such focused research topics that how can you find something relevant to teach to more than one person at a time?
When I did my PhD on optimising dynamic programming languages I would guess there were maybe ten other students in the entire world doing something vaguely similar at the same time. How do you do a class for that in one institution?
Most PhD programs involve some classes at the beginning - especially programs which don't require a master's degree first. The classes are graduate-level progressions from similar undergraduate classes. Typically, PhD research goes on more slowly during the first year or two of the program while classes are taken, and the dissertation research topic is not completely fixed. For example, a PhD student planning to research programming languages would take the most advanced language classes available, plus math and optimization classes, for at least a year while doing preliminary research before choosing a dissertation subject.
I could see how CS/similar degrees would be that way. I'd assume most STEM are?
For political science in at least one program it was 30-36 credit hours for a master's degree. PhD was the same thing with an additional 18+ elective hours and another 30+ combined class/dissertation hours, and then the actual dissertation. Classes with few exceptions consisted of "workshops" and "seminars" over various topics (terrorism, multinational corporations, etc), which almost all involved weekly topical readings (5-7 journal articles and book selections) and weekly/frequent writings on those readings with a substantial paper for the final, sometimes with a midterm. Independent hours were also common with 1 on 1 work with one of the professors over a chosen paper topic.
As I said, discussion in class was expected, so you couldn't really wing it, and you had to be prepared or it would be obvious in front of your professor an another 5-20 students. I'm guessing this format is semi-common in the humanities/social sciences, it was for a linguistics program I looked into. Tons of reading and writing with the intent of guiding your towards a weird unexplored niche.
Of course PhD students take classes. Most universities make you do 36 credit hours before you can pass your qualification exams. They just don't have courses on specialized topics but there are plenty of relevant graduate level courses you can take in the department that end up being very useful for you.
I know in a few graduate medical labs international students are seen as a big labor plus. No family, no friends, in a foreign environment, under a lot of pressure to succeed. You can pretty much ask them to work 80+ hour weeks easily. Americans have family, friends, marriages, maybe children! It's not this way in a majority of labs, but I definitely have friends in labs just like this.
Also I agree with the points many others have made, debt is a major factor. I got a undergrad stem degree at a UC and only went back to great school after working for three years and paying that debt off.
Plus: I'm enjoying the research.
Negative: I'm the oldest student and halving my salary for several years is not a great experience!
I see the chance to draw lottery twice in H1B visa mentioned, but a more important benefit is the OPT visa. Any STEM graduates from an American school can apply for this visa, which lasts for about two years. During this two years you can work and draw the lotteries repeatedly.
For some of us, the major value proposition of a MS degree in US is not its teaching, but the gateway to US employment market. Those luckily born in the US doesn’t need to spend time and money on such privileges.
FYI, many top schools (MIT, Harvard, etc.) have explicit quota on how many international undergrads are admitted per year (at MIT it's about 120 students, or 10 percent of undergrads). There is no such limit at grad level, since the money typically comes from research groups and grants, so the limiting factor is really the research group's budget.
I didn't know about this quota, but it doesn't really matter. The main point, which the article didn't mention, is that being an undergrad international student is far more difficult. First, the high schools exams can be different and students might not be eligible to apply. Then there's tuition cost. How many Chinese and Indians can afford ~40K/year not including room and other expenses? Foreign students cannot apply for scholarship.
It makes much more sense to study almost for free in India/China/Finland/etc. and then do a GRE and apply to grad school in the US. PhD students don't need to pay tuition and even get a monthly stipend. Also many MS students get some sort of scholarship (but not all).
Check UT Austin, they admit a ton of international students every year. Undoubtedly UT Austin is a decent school, but it also milks a lot of money from international students.
There are two parts in your point. One, the exam. SAT/high school grade is basically a joke for India/China students, which can send a town of 2400 kids. Spending one or two years preparing and you can pass whatever exam set, SAT or ACT or anything. Two, the tuition fee. You clearly underestimate the financial ability of wealthy Asian families, and I had talked to people who pay the entire tuition fee (200k+) for kids to study in four years. Of course not everyone can pay that, but schools also offer partial scholarship (and thus it's quite common for students to come with 50 or 75 percent scholarship).
b) they were forced to offer more livable stipends
c) the odds to get tenure track increased?
Grad school is a pretty bad deal for US citizens, and so much of that is the highly pyramidal structure of over hiring cheap grad students as below market labor for a shrinking pool of tenured professors.
I went to pretty good school in India for my undergrad and grad. It was not sufficiently challenging. I did another masters in the US from a middle tier University. I found it more challenging and engaging. I've been motivated to continue learning and taking class (both via MOOCs and on prem) when necessary to learn new concepts. I love the passion here, the library system and the access to star performances and innovators via meet ups and conferences.
Do we have any numbers of how many of these foreign individuals stay in the country after graduation? When you think about how immigration works, immigrants are very disproportionately likely to be high-performing individuals, given the criteria for them to enter the country. If they stay in the country to contribute to the economy after graduation, then all I can say is that I'm glad they still think that this is a desirable country to come to.
I can't speak to overall statistical numbers, but of the 75+ international graduate students that I've spoken to, I would estimate at least 85% plan to stay in the U.S.
I find this particularly surprising given that their status is essentially that of indentured servants; their advisors can deport them at any time with only 14 days of notice. This one-way power dynamic can produce cruel, callous treatment and merciless working hours, both of which I've observed first-hand. And yet, these same professors will turn around and collaborate politely and respectfully with American students (assuming that they will take on American students in their labs; many will not!).
My friend quit his postdoc with a prestigious researcher in his field after witnessing the abuse the international students in the same group were subjected to.
My friend stopped graduate school at a MS and didn’t pursue a PhD because all the American grad students were forced to take teaching assistantships while the foreign grad students were given research assistantships.
Indeed, I think this is one of the biggest strengths of the US. Think about many of the smartest minds in science of the 20th century— many were immigrants to the US.
The hidden assumption in the article and most of the comments I see is that Americans are not applying to these graduate schools. It's also possible that Americans are applying, but the international students are simply much better qualified and are therefore admitted in greater proportion.
My stepfather has done PhD admissions for his department for many years. Most of their applications don't come from Americans, and some portion of foreign undergrad programs are sometimes more rigorous. They basically implement affirmative action, almost, for the Americans who apply.
> In the fall of 2015, about 55 percent of all graduate students in mathematics, computer sciences and engineering were from abroad. The dearth of Americans is even more pronounced in hot STEM fields: About 64 percent of doctoral candidates and almost 68 percent in master’s programs last year were international students.
The NYT is trying to vaguely suggest that Americans are being crowded out by foreigners and that Americans can't get advanced degrees because foreigners take all the spots.
But it could be BOTH true that foreigners make up the majority and that Americans do get many more advanced degrees than in the past -- because university education has expanded greatly in the last few decades.
For sake of example: Suppose in 1950, there was 100,000 advanced degrees awarded in the US per year and they were all Americans. Suppose today that there are 1,000,000 advanced degrees of which 45% are Americans (and 55% foreigners). In my contrived example, it's still true that foreigners make up the majority, but the number of Americans getting advanced degrees has jumped from 100,000 to 450,000.
I don't know if I'm right about this, but just saying that the NYT hasn't proved their point.
> The NYT is trying to vaguely suggest that Americans are being crowded out by foreigners and that Americans can't get advanced degrees because foreigners take all the spots.
No, the article never suggests this, that sounds like your own bias.
First you set up a strawman---and then you don't even bother knocking it down! You don't need to make up numbers "for sake of example." All this is information is available, just Google it.
Finally, it is not "the NYT" making an argument. The author is Nick Wingfield, it says so right there on top.
Grad school is an immigration pathway these days that in my experience brings zero benefit to most jobs.
Where it matters, you see a more normal/typical level of diversity.
For most things tech, it’s meaningless. I literally give it zero weight for hiring unless the candidate had a non-qualifying bachelors degree, needed a couple of years of experience, or they went to a foreign school for undergrad and a US grad school (less paperwork).
It's interesting - when OMSCS started, there was so much speculation that it would be flooded with overseas students who would use it to get a cheap US degree that would ultimately help them to migrate.
Instead, OMSCS actually has a far, far higher proportion of American students than GATech's on-campus MSCS program...
Fellow Georgia Tech OMSCS student! I'm currently taking Reinforcement Learning (CS 7642). It's a pretty great program and have enjoyed balancing work with 1 class per semester.
Best of luck and power through the last 1/3 of the semester + finals!
Edit: FYI for those curious the OMSCS degree will cost most students $8,110 (10 classes * $811 semester).[1]
Yes, I am doing OMSCS while working. However, my current employer doesn't have tuition reimbursement. Though if you employer does cover tuition (like a previous employer of mine) you could absolutely get it for no cost to the student.
Also yes you are correct in many are pursuing the degree while employed. Usually taking 1 class per semester.
I remember 20 some years ago... that I had asked a few grad students about their GPA and GRE scores before applying. I remember having a decent recommendation, gpa .5 higher than a couple of guys, and OK GRE. Didn't get into the masters program. As a supposedly privileged white guy, I think there is much more to it. I think the schools prefer foreign students as they will take the shit pay and long hours much like H1B slavery.
I think there are two reasons why you would see a spike in internationals in a graduate cohort and their number being less in an undergraduate class:
1) experience. most of the international students mentioned in the article from India, China, Turkey, Korea want to have that experience of going to a school in a different country, meeting students from around the globe, listen to lectures and work with people from different background and skills, I think this is something you would certainly lack if you choose to go to grad school in the same geography you got your undergraduate education. Think about this for an American student, who is not so motivated to go to grad school because environment wise it is not going to be a whole lot different than the professors you had for your undergrad class. I'm curious to see numbers for American undergrads who have gone to Europe or Japan to get their graduate degrees for the experience, this might actually be skewed because half the students here in America gets that experience through study abroad programs.
2) cost. the article says there is a very small number of undergraduate internationals compared to graduate student population, it comes down to cost. if you were coming from India, China or the other foreign countries mentioned in the article money wise it would be very expensive for you to pay for 4 years of undergraduate degree compared to 2 years of masters, PhD can be an outlier here, but it has its own benefits. so if you can get an undergraduate degree without causing a dent in your bank account and if you are almost certain that you will eventually go get a masters degree in another country, budget wise that's the most smart thing to do. by the time you are done with your undergrad you'd have a good school experience to go to another country, blend in, and go through school. The reason I mentioned about PhD being an outlier is, with a doctoral degree you might end up being a professor or a research scientist, but when it comes to a masters vs bachelors, chances are, for most of them, you both will likely end up in a similar job at Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and others. so why pay twice to get there. not to forget, you might end up with some sort of funding while doing a graduate degree compared to undergraduate.
What about non-STEM fields? Are Americans well represented in other graduate programs?
Plus, if schools want more Americans in graduate STEM programs, couldn't they just use affirmative action to tilt the demographics in the direction they want?
I got my phd in communications in 2014 from a Big 10 school. International students were around 10-15% of the grad students and most of those were from eastern europe. So at least our department was very different than the STEM departments discussed in the article.
This is everywhere, not just here. My wife is Chinese and she tells me in China, ppl don’t see the need for grad school unless you go abroad. They rather work or make their own business if they stay in China. The reason they go abroad is to try to find a job in the foreign country, have a degree in USA and go back to find a job easier. All the stupid programs usa universities are making up just to get more students is useless for real life. I hope universities becomes useless in a decade or so and we find a better way to get knowledge.
The aspect the article did not raise was that according to the recent Kaggle survey, a majority of people practicing in data science work have graduate degrees (57.4%). This will likely drive a new interest amongst Americans.
It is a bit out of topic, but anyway: Is it possible to defend a PhD thesis without taking a graduate program at all? Imagine an industry researcher without a PhD degree who is willing to obtain one.
Great article and conversation. The important factor for average US undergrad student not opting for graduate school is definitely due to the astronomical loans they accumulate during undergrad years.
I simply couldn't for the life of me comprehend why majority of US undergrads are OK taking on such a huge amount liability and jeopardizing their future prospect? It perhaps could be because "Everyone is doing it" or because "There are no other avenues.." I believe the system is setup in such a way that it's unavoidable and unfair to the students in the name of getting an "education".
Here is a different path/perspective.
I came to the US from one of the poor south Asian countries at 18 to do my undergrad despite my parents telling me to go for my graduate school in the early 2000s. For grad school you don't pay tuition and you are paid for your expenses too working on a research or as a TA. I said to myself, US is the land of opportunity, possibilities are limitless, go early and figure out the specifics later. I was very young so yeah "let's do it" attitude prevailed. My parents were not wealthy either but they had assets enough to cough up tuition fees. I intentionally selected a small public university in the middle of nowhere that offered partial scholarship (more on this later). My tuition fees per year was 9k after scholarship if I remember correctly.
After I landed, I registered for 15- 18 credits per semester and also took a job part time and that was enough to cover my living expenses and then some. I believe poverty or coming from a background of family without a lot of means or a support system to fallback on is a great motivating factor to not accumulate any debt. I had to hustle pretty much throughout my undergrad years, if I wasn't in a class, I'd be in the library doing assignment and if I wasn't in the library I'd be at my job. I wasn't at a frat house partying or playing sports or joining meetup groups or doing the normal things any regular undergrad students would do. I consider myself an average student too, nothing close to the best and the brightest but managed to maintain a 3.7 GPA and graduated with a Computer Science degree.
In my last semester, I did two internships (Summer/Fall) in small companies because when I went to couple of job fairs just to check it out, I noticed that companies really wanted to see some hands on experience. I couldn't believe they would pay for internship too and better than my part time job. I worked out a deal with my professor to allow me to work in my final semester at a local company which counted towards a seminar credit too.
When I graduated, I had 0 debt, three job offers from mid size companies starting at 50k - 65K in a mid size market (not Silicon Valley). My colleges at work include Ivy League graduates along with those from top private/public colleges that cost 30k - 80k per year in tuition and they were all in student debt. So in hindsight, I think I made a good choice going to a middle of a nowhere school. It really made no different in getting a Job or acquiring skills. Sure I didn't have a brand recognition but I could hold my own during the the interviews to get offers.
Once again, I'm not the smartest guy but I had strong determination not ask my parents for money on take on loans. Whatever, they offered me initially for tuition, I paid back after I started working full time and then some. Someone pointed out about culture in Asian family where parents do anything they can to invest in their Child's education and that's because it's what they believe is a way to a better life.
After being in the industry for couple of years, I wanted to increase my depth/breadth of knowledge in my field so I found a Masters program that I could pursue part time (nights/weekend). I got my new employer to pony up half of the tuition (I tried for full tuition reimbursemnt) as well which I required to accept their job offer. Total cost was $20k tuition for 3 years at a so called "top 20 nationally ranked engineering school." I could care less about the ranking...
By 27 I had both undergrad/masters and 5+ years of experience in the industry. Once again I had no debt.
I believe the system is setup in a such a way that it's so easy to take on a huge loans for the majority of population without fully understanding the implications for the future. I mean kids are 18. It feels as if it's almost similar to using one credit card to pay for the minimum payment of another credit card.
Also cost of education keep on going higher and higher. I think anytime government gets involved the price balloons astronomically. Take a look here https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/price-changes-in-consumer... #1 is college tuition followed by Medicare and child care.
I think 20 years from now, it really wouldn't matter which school you go to as the market is going to put higher emphasis on, what you have done or can do (skill wise) as opposed to which school you go to. Until then us US tax payers are going to foot the bill for all these student loans that are eventually going to blow up like the housing bubble.
So I leave you with some food thought, if a kid from a very poor country can come to the US with little to no means but dedicated enough not take any loans to pursue higher education and pursue the American dream, I think it should be far more easier to native US born students.
The Economist found that between 2012 and 2015 the three biggest Indian outsourcing firms—TCS, Wipro and Infosys—submitted over 150,000 visa applications for positions that paid a median salary of $69,500. In contrast, America’s five biggest tech firms—Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft—submitted just 31,000 applications, and proposed to pay their workers a median salary of $117,000
Imagine you just graduated from a quality undergrad with high grades and strong recommendations from your professors. Maybe you had an internship or two or spent a summer doing research. Maybe you even have authorship on a published paper as an undergrad. You could be a very strong grad school candidate. Or you could just get a corporate job right out of undergrad.
Lets look at the options.
Option 1: You go to grad school and spend ~6 years working extremely long hours at nearly minimum wage with no benefits.
Option 2: You start at ~100K USD/year with benefits working for Big Tech/Finance/Big Oil/Pharma/Defense/etc. In those ~6 years you likely work fewer hours than a grad student. You have the free time to meet someone and the income to start a family.
Most people will chose Option 2. The two main types of people who chose Option 1 are those who are passionate about learning and advancing human knowledge and those who want a career where a PhD is required.
If instead you're a citizen of "India, China, Korea, Turkey and other foreign countries" (quoted from the article) then the calculus is completely different. Not only do you get to advance human knowledge, but you get to live and work (as a TA or RA) in the US for ~6 years. After graduation you have a good chance of landing a well paying job for a US-based firm or becoming a professor or research scientist.