improve, not worsen

Well, the NSF knew back in 1989 that they were shifting incentives in a way that would make it economically disadvantageous for US citizens to go through grad school by flooding the system with foreign students, suppressing graduate assistant stipends, and setting up the H-1B program to glut the job markets, suppressing tenure-track positions and expanding body shopping (adjuncts, etc.)... and damaging under-graduate education in the process.

“A growing influx of foreign PhDs into U.S. labor markets will hold down the level of PhD salaries to the extent that foreign students are attracted to U.S. doctoral programs as a way of immigrating to the U.S.A. A related point is that for this group the PhD salary premium is much higher [than it is for Americans], because it is based on BS-level pay in students’ home nations versus PhD-level pay in the U.S.A... [If] doctoral studies are failing to appeal to a large (or growing) percentage of the best citizen baccalaureates, then a key issue is pay... A number of [the Americans] will select alternative career paths... For these baccalaureates, the effective premium for acquiring a PhD may actually be negative.”

The best way to improve US graduate education would be to undo the damage by cutting the numbers of student visas and guest-work visas, cutting academic executive (and coach) compensation packages, and increasing graduate fellowships and grad assistant stipends to the point that the opportunity costs of attending graduate school are no longer so high that they can’t be made up over a life-time through higher earnings from having a master’s or doctor’s degree.

jgo, at 9:00 am EDT on April 27, 2007

Mr. Scott, you have referred to the number of lawyers in high places who fail to perform and have suggested that including pre-law courses would have improved them. Would you expand on that? What do you mean by fail to perform? If you refer to high places in government, then how do you avoid defining success as conformity to your own political opinions?

The Watergate scandal was basically a conspiracy of lawyers to obstruct justice. It featured the unique distinction of the resignation of a U.S. President, but also two Attorneys General who went to prison. If you like, you can frost the cake with the resignation of Spiro Agnew, who copped a plea to a single felony to walk on the other fifty counts of bribery, tax fraud and extortion. Would pre-law courses as undergraduates have prevented any of this?

One could also call Bill Clinton a lawyer who failed to perform. We all know he had no difficulty performing with Monica, but he was disbarred for perjury by the state bar he once served as Attorney General and disgraced his office further by selling last-minute pardons.

Nixon, a licensed attorney, said he didn’t know his federal income tax return required his signature or that the deduction he claimed for the donation of his Vice-Presidential papers had been fraudulently backdated. Clinton claimed that a blow job does not constitute sexual intercourse and wasn’t even sure what the definition of “is” is. Yet, both men had superb undergraduate records, far above average. What pre-law courses could they have taken which would have prevented their later disgraceful conduct?

Jack Olson, at 3:10 pm EDT on April 27, 2007

Law serves Americans well?

Larry, I’m not sure what you mean by “the law” which you say serves Americans well. If you mean our legal codes and statutes, it is doubtful how well they are enforced. For example, convicted murderers in the United States serve an average of just six years in prison for their crimes. One fifth of them are arrested for another violent crime within three years and one-third of that group are arrested for murder. As of 1997, the United States had 100,000 murderers in prison and 800,000 murderers outside of prison. (source: Atlantic Monthly, 9/97)

Or, if by “the law” you mean the legal profession, here the case is open and shut. Only 14% of Americans are “very confident or extremely confident” in lawyers, while 42% express little or no confidence in them. I would expect you to accept those survey results only if you’ll accept the word of the American Bar Association, which commissioned the survey in 2003.

But, I won’t blame you much if you do not accept the ABA’s word for anything, in view of their record of dishonesty. In 1996, the ABA agreed to a consent decree which prohibited it from abusing the law school accreditation process. Its previous abuses included fixing faculty salaries, boycotting state-accredited laws schools by restricting their graduates’ ability to enroll in ABA-accredited schools, and boycotting for-profit law schools. By 2006, the ABA admitted violating six provisions of the consent decree. (source: US DOJ, 6/2006) But, if you think the U.S. District Court held the ABA in civil contempt for that, which it did, that is nothing compared to the contempt the legal profession and the American public have for each other.

Jack Olson, at 11:45 am EDT on April 29, 2007

And how many Americans actually do I see in graduate classes. The simple reason is some of you are lazy. You dont wish to work hard. Hey atleast the TA tries to speak in English, btw how many languages an average American speak?. one should accept there is a problem somewhere due to which there is an influx of foreign candidates.. Again how do you wish the market would remain competitive if one is so stringent regarding pay. H1 is atleast making sure that the jobs remain in US and more jobs are created. To be precise one IT job creates 6 more IT jobs. If the market in US is not flexible and companies feel they can not compete anymore with other multinationals, the best thing they would do is to move out of US to those cheap labored places...then what would you do with all the education...so don’t just sit and complain but cleary percieve the reality that America is the land of immigrants and it would remain so....

vms, at 5:45 pm EDT on April 30, 2007

supply and demand

Jingoists unwittingly make a very valid point. If the US government restricted access for foreign students to US graduate schools, there would be more slots open to second- and third-rate US students. It is unclear how this would benefit US employers and the US economy.

An economy thrives when it imports as much human capital as possible, and it suffers when its government leaders erect barriers to protect its citizens and firms from competition.

Andrew Grove got someone else’s job at Intel. Madeleine Albright got someone else’s job as Secretary of State of the USA. Ayn Rand got someone else’s job as a libertarian cult leader. All arrived long before they were famous. Immigration restrictions would have kept all of them out as they did the family of Anne Frank.

Those who call for protective barriers and oppose open borders and free movement of labor tacitly admit that they do not measure up against to their foreign counterparts and insult Americans by extending that assessment to the rest of us.

Rather than restrict access for foreign graduate students, we should be handing out passports at the arrivals lounge at every major US airport to anyone with a graduate degree and a desire to contribute to the US economy.

If we don’t make them feel welcome here, they’ll end up going someplace else and contributing to someone else’s economy.

Charles Evans, Executive Director at Free Curricula Center, at 4:35 pm EDT on May 1, 2007

Ahhhh, the C word

Whenever I hear the word “competitiveness", I stock up on ramen. Because that’s all I’d be able to afford if even a small number of “competitiveness” intiiatives pass. The C word is a euphemism for any action which raises corporate profits at the expense of their workers.

Do you want to encourage more American students to pursue a STEM education ? Reduce the number of H-1B visas. Why pursue such a STEM degree at either the graduate or undergraduate level when the government pursues a policy of commoditizing the profession with cheap labor ?

Mike, at 9:45 pm EDT on May 2, 2007