Abstract: "Using newly-assembled data from 1980 through 2024, we show that 25% of scientifically-active, US-trained STEM PhD graduates leave the US within 15 years of graduating. Leave rates are lower in the life sciences and higher in AI and quantum science but overall have been stable for decades. Contrary to common perceptions, US technology benefits from these graduates' work even if they leave: though the US share of global patent citations to graduates' science drops from 70% to 50% after migrating, it remains five times larger than the destination country share, and as large as all other countries combined. These results highlight the value that the US derives from training foreign scientists - not only when they stay, but even when they leave."
Do you really, actually, not comprehend the difference between a national STEM economy and a fast food restaurant, and how the two situations are not at all analogous, or were you just trying to come up with something snappy?
What does it mean to "leave" the US? I know several people with advanced degrees in the sciences who had children in Europe and raised their kids there for years, but eventually came back. One family returned to Europe a second time. When you have a company or university sponsoring you it's not too difficult to move freely, so "leaving" feels like a moving target for this particular socioeconomic group.
Well. Duh. The US PERM process is a nightmare. And it's not just the requirements and regional quotas. It's also the complete opacity of the process, with the USCIS taking _years_ to process straightforward applications in some cases.
My understanding is that scientific research has a dual problem, where the number of students needed to carry out existing professors' research is much larger than the number of junior faculty positions generally available. The result being that most trained PhDs must leave (US) academia because there are no jobs for them. In fact, I've heard scientists complain that universities owe it to students to provide more help finding a job in industry after they graduate.
Given all that, where are professors supposed to find and hire students who don't want to stay in academia themselves? I think a lot of these students wind up being aspiring immigrants, and I'm not surprised that a lot of them would also have a hard time finding a place for themselves after graduating and that many of them would leave. Also, the abstract seems to argue that that US still benefits greatly from this arrangement: "though the US share of global patent citations to graduates' science drops from 70% to 50% after migrating, it remains five times larger than the destination country share."
10-15 years ago my foreign grad students all wanted to stay. Only question was how.
There was always a big crowd who found the process of staying in the US painful, random, humiliating, and sometimes even downright abusive, so they went home.
What has really changed is China. That's what this paper shows too. Many of the Chinese students want go back home.
10-15 years ago when I would talk to grad students from China most wanted freedom and democracy. Now most tell me about how the Western system has failed and how a centralized government is more efficient.
Between making it harder to stay, China changing the narrative on dictatorships, and the West doing a horrific job in the last decade on pretty much every front, yeah, we're going to see a lot of folks move back.
I’m a US sixth generation or more citizen and a scientist and I want to leave if the next election doesn’t go wildly different than the 2024 one. The brain drain is real. It’s sad to see it happen in your own country.
Daughter in the Material Science Phd progam at major state university with "world class" MS program. Vast majority of her peers are from abroad. Met some. All were the nicest, smartest folks you have ever met. I guess a benefit is that the probability of them leaving may help to increase the teamwork aspect in the program. But that is a guess. Great group of folks who hopefully might help change the world. Went to the recent Phd presentation where recent Phd graduates were honored. Let me tell you... hard to describe how inspiring these folks are. (MS is a pretty hard subject, with amazing applications. You may be thanking one guy who recently got his Phd should you ever get cancer.) Glad our universities welcome talent not demographics. HTH, RF.
It's the second (so far bc he hasn't ruled out a third) presidential term for a strongly anti-immigrant / anti-immigration president who has a lot of support domestically.
Immigrants are being chased out of the US in record numbers. Many of my friends with brown skin (second generation immigrants) are worried their kids will be harrassed by ICE, etc.
The sad fact is that there are a LOT of Americans who deeply resent when someone from another country comes to the US, works hard, and earns a prosperous and happy life.
The US is now led by an emotional revenge-driven crusade against the American Dream, against capitalism, against the "melting pot" that fuels culture and innovation. It's a weird kind of revenge idiocracy going on right now.
In case it's not obvious, many of us here are deeply ashamed of what is going on and we will make it right eventually. I'm personally looking forward to the lawsuits that end up paying people mistreated by ICE significant sums of money, give them flights back to the US, etc. The US has a labor shortage and a talent shortage right now, we need the best and brightest, the most hard working, etc., not the lazy ones who think they are owed something and believe the orange clown.
Knowledge and intelligence are wasted outside of the US. You could build great stuff but if you're not in the US, your chance of success is extremely low because the media algorithms will work against you. Not to mention regulations. In Europe, it felt like politicians were being paid to suppress tech.
I'm jealous of tech people who live in media-sovereign countries like the US, China or Russia who don't have to experience algorithm discrimination.
IMO, tech/science people who leave the US before accumulating big money are making a mistake. They underestimate how rigged the tech industry is. You've got to leverage the rigging. You either benefit from the rigging or you are victim of it. I cannot wrap my mind around people who are born in the US and leave. People don't understand how lucky and privileged they are before it's gone.
I wonder how much generational impacts there are here. My son is a PhD student at an ivy. The most lucrative tuition source for the university is foreign students (as in, they bring in far more tuition dollars for each foreign student than they do native). He has also observed that the payers of these tuitions are usually the parents, who tend to be people who rose through the ideal of "the dream of american education" that is now 20+ years old. As the students (children) go through the programs, they are finding it increasingly more hostile to live and study here. So they end up wanting to "go back home". The Xenophobic rhetoric, as well as the policies, are having an effect. He does not see this as a good thing at all.
Multiple of my children have considered moving abroad to study. It's weird to sit between them and their frustration of the system, and their grandparents (our parents) who seem to think that the crap they're embibing off of fox news, all so that advertisers can target/fleece the older generation, will actually lead to good for their grandchildren.
my view for a long time has been that the usa is a net importer of talent and ideas. that its cheaper to have someone spend 20 odd years training in another country and then just lure them in with the promise of big $... isnt that how its been working? or is this some new spin.
The more important question is: what is the rate of scientists coming in vs going out?
If they are in balance, then it looks a lot less of a problem. It may even be the case that because of the desirability of working in the US for US institutions the US is gaining the best from all around the world and shipping out a more mixed ability set.
"Using newly-assembled data from 1980 through 2024, we show that 25% of scientifically-active, US-trained STEM PhD graduates leave the US within 15 years of graduating."
I believe there will be a significant "discontinuity" in the data beginning in 2025. Likely along the lines of (1) US-born science majors going abroad for their PhD's (and likely staying there afterwards), and (2) a major decline in foreign students coming to the US. Blocking disbursement of ongoing grants, immediate and dramatic slashing funding for the sciences, holding up universities under pain of blocking federal funding, eliminating fellowships, firing government scientists, stuffing agencies and commissions with politically appointed yes men, having oaths of fealty in all but name, deporting and blocking return of foreign students, and many more actions of similar character tend to fo that.
One of the greatest national scientific establishments was irreparably damaged in a matter of months. No discussion, no process -- just pulling the rug out. The US will coast for a few years on the technologies that just popped out of the university pipeline of development, but that pipeline is now essentially broken.
This is the plan not a coincidence. China pays huge “grants” to their citizens to come to the US, get educated, work in big tech/science, then bring it all home.
The grad-student system in science at US R1 universities is sort of like a dollar auction. You know how a dollar auction works? I have a dollar bill, and I'll give it to whoever bids the highest for it—as long as both they and the #2 bidder pay me their final bids. The #2 bidder gets nothing. Bidding can start at 5¢. Once the bid goes over a dollar, the two remaining bidders are no longer competing to win free money; they're jockeying to lose less. It typically goes up to 2 to 5 dollars before one of them decides to cut their losses.
Numerous doctoral students (and postdocs, and adjuncts) are competing for a much smaller number of tenure-track positions with their research work. If their publication record looks just a little better than the #2 candidate, they can escape from the postdoc grind and land a nice assistant professorship. Then it's only seven more years of busting their ass before they find out whether they washed out, or are set for life with a cushy associate professorship, maybe a full professorship.
People are willing to sacrifice a lot for that. But the vast majority of those who make the sacrifice don't make it, like the #2 bidder in the dollar auction. They put in years on somewhat-above-minimum-wage grad-student and postdoc stipends, doing incredibly difficult and sometimes dangerous work, often postponing childbearing, leaving behind their families each time they have to move to a new university, and either leaving behind their intimate partners or uprooting them as well. All of that redounds to the glory of the PI who runs the lab they work in—but many of those doing all that work regret the sacrifice.
Scientific progress isn't just a matter of doling out research grants and possessing fancy lab equipment. It needs talent, but that isn't nearly enough—the talented people need to work incredibly hard for many years to make real progress. For decades the US has been recruiting the top talent from the rest of the world with this dollar-auction game, paying them peanuts to sacrifice the best years of their lives.
A doctorate doesn't sound like a bad life to me, really. But you have to feel that the system, like minor-league baseball, is kind of taking advantage of doctoral students' hopes and dreams to get the rather astounding rate of scientific progress we see today (at least by some measures). It funds public goods for everyone out of those sacrifices.
The least the US could do would be to show a little more gratitude by guaranteeing them permanent US residency after they graduate, but they don't even get that—many people are kicked out of the US, where they've spent most of their adult lives, when they wash out of the academic pipeline. And the current deplorable administration has promised to worsen this already deplorable situation.
> Leave rates are lower in the life sciences and higher in AI and quantum science but overall have been stable for decades
The US has been completely dominant in technology innovation for the last several decades. So, the answer is no: the loss of 1/4 of the STEM scientists is not important.
42 comments
[ 1.9 ms ] story [ 50.5 ms ] threadCan someone please substatiate this claim? Many people I know are begining to question this and Id like to know more.
This percentage is going to go up sharply in near future.
Do you really, actually, not comprehend the difference between a national STEM economy and a fast food restaurant, and how the two situations are not at all analogous, or were you just trying to come up with something snappy?
No wonder people just give up and leave.
Given all that, where are professors supposed to find and hire students who don't want to stay in academia themselves? I think a lot of these students wind up being aspiring immigrants, and I'm not surprised that a lot of them would also have a hard time finding a place for themselves after graduating and that many of them would leave. Also, the abstract seems to argue that that US still benefits greatly from this arrangement: "though the US share of global patent citations to graduates' science drops from 70% to 50% after migrating, it remains five times larger than the destination country share."
10-15 years ago my foreign grad students all wanted to stay. Only question was how.
There was always a big crowd who found the process of staying in the US painful, random, humiliating, and sometimes even downright abusive, so they went home.
What has really changed is China. That's what this paper shows too. Many of the Chinese students want go back home.
10-15 years ago when I would talk to grad students from China most wanted freedom and democracy. Now most tell me about how the Western system has failed and how a centralized government is more efficient.
Between making it harder to stay, China changing the narrative on dictatorships, and the West doing a horrific job in the last decade on pretty much every front, yeah, we're going to see a lot of folks move back.
Note: This is at a top-tier US university.
Immigrants are being chased out of the US in record numbers. Many of my friends with brown skin (second generation immigrants) are worried their kids will be harrassed by ICE, etc.
The sad fact is that there are a LOT of Americans who deeply resent when someone from another country comes to the US, works hard, and earns a prosperous and happy life.
The US is now led by an emotional revenge-driven crusade against the American Dream, against capitalism, against the "melting pot" that fuels culture and innovation. It's a weird kind of revenge idiocracy going on right now.
In case it's not obvious, many of us here are deeply ashamed of what is going on and we will make it right eventually. I'm personally looking forward to the lawsuits that end up paying people mistreated by ICE significant sums of money, give them flights back to the US, etc. The US has a labor shortage and a talent shortage right now, we need the best and brightest, the most hard working, etc., not the lazy ones who think they are owed something and believe the orange clown.
I'm jealous of tech people who live in media-sovereign countries like the US, China or Russia who don't have to experience algorithm discrimination.
IMO, tech/science people who leave the US before accumulating big money are making a mistake. They underestimate how rigged the tech industry is. You've got to leverage the rigging. You either benefit from the rigging or you are victim of it. I cannot wrap my mind around people who are born in the US and leave. People don't understand how lucky and privileged they are before it's gone.
Multiple of my children have considered moving abroad to study. It's weird to sit between them and their frustration of the system, and their grandparents (our parents) who seem to think that the crap they're embibing off of fox news, all so that advertisers can target/fleece the older generation, will actually lead to good for their grandchildren.
If they are in balance, then it looks a lot less of a problem. It may even be the case that because of the desirability of working in the US for US institutions the US is gaining the best from all around the world and shipping out a more mixed ability set.
I believe there will be a significant "discontinuity" in the data beginning in 2025. Likely along the lines of (1) US-born science majors going abroad for their PhD's (and likely staying there afterwards), and (2) a major decline in foreign students coming to the US. Blocking disbursement of ongoing grants, immediate and dramatic slashing funding for the sciences, holding up universities under pain of blocking federal funding, eliminating fellowships, firing government scientists, stuffing agencies and commissions with politically appointed yes men, having oaths of fealty in all but name, deporting and blocking return of foreign students, and many more actions of similar character tend to fo that.
One of the greatest national scientific establishments was irreparably damaged in a matter of months. No discussion, no process -- just pulling the rug out. The US will coast for a few years on the technologies that just popped out of the university pipeline of development, but that pipeline is now essentially broken.
This is the plan not a coincidence. China pays huge “grants” to their citizens to come to the US, get educated, work in big tech/science, then bring it all home.
Numerous doctoral students (and postdocs, and adjuncts) are competing for a much smaller number of tenure-track positions with their research work. If their publication record looks just a little better than the #2 candidate, they can escape from the postdoc grind and land a nice assistant professorship. Then it's only seven more years of busting their ass before they find out whether they washed out, or are set for life with a cushy associate professorship, maybe a full professorship.
People are willing to sacrifice a lot for that. But the vast majority of those who make the sacrifice don't make it, like the #2 bidder in the dollar auction. They put in years on somewhat-above-minimum-wage grad-student and postdoc stipends, doing incredibly difficult and sometimes dangerous work, often postponing childbearing, leaving behind their families each time they have to move to a new university, and either leaving behind their intimate partners or uprooting them as well. All of that redounds to the glory of the PI who runs the lab they work in—but many of those doing all that work regret the sacrifice.
Scientific progress isn't just a matter of doling out research grants and possessing fancy lab equipment. It needs talent, but that isn't nearly enough—the talented people need to work incredibly hard for many years to make real progress. For decades the US has been recruiting the top talent from the rest of the world with this dollar-auction game, paying them peanuts to sacrifice the best years of their lives.
A doctorate doesn't sound like a bad life to me, really. But you have to feel that the system, like minor-league baseball, is kind of taking advantage of doctoral students' hopes and dreams to get the rather astounding rate of scientific progress we see today (at least by some measures). It funds public goods for everyone out of those sacrifices.
The least the US could do would be to show a little more gratitude by guaranteeing them permanent US residency after they graduate, but they don't even get that—many people are kicked out of the US, where they've spent most of their adult lives, when they wash out of the academic pipeline. And the current deplorable administration has promised to worsen this already deplorable situation.
> Leave rates are lower in the life sciences and higher in AI and quantum science but overall have been stable for decades
The US has been completely dominant in technology innovation for the last several decades. So, the answer is no: the loss of 1/4 of the STEM scientists is not important.