The Brain Drain
There’s a disturbing dynamic taking place – Highly educated, skilled immigrants are leaving the U.S.
Why should we care? Because immigrants are critical to the country’s long-term economic health. Despite the fact that they constitute only 12% of the U.S. population, immigrants have started 52% of Silicon Valley’s technology companies and contributed to more than 25% of our global patents. They make up 24% of the U.S. science and engineering workforce holding bachelor’s degrees and 47% of science and engineering workers who have PhDs. Immigrants have co-founded firms such as Google (GOOG), Intel (INTC), eBay (EBAY), and Yahoo! (YHOO).
What’s worse, we’re not in a position to replace them.
Few U.S. college graduates receive technical degrees. As a culture, we seem to value law or political science more than engineering or science, but we need engineers and scientists to compete in an increasing technological world. Our technical competence needs to be deeper than programming a VCR or sending text messages on a cell phone.
We need workers capable of applying creative and innovative thought to underlying technical and scientific principles, and we need more of them.
The U.S. has the best technical colleges and universities in the world, but many of our engineering graduate students are foreigners. Foreigners value our technical education. Soon China will graduate ten times (and India five times) more engineers and scientists than the U.S. We are being left behind.
Highly educated, skilled immigrants, proficient in fields we are not pursuing, are leaving and we’re being left behind. Remember when these immigrants overcame homesickness, etc. because the US was their only option when it came to their career path and quality of life?
Ah… the good old days.
Tags: Higher Education
For the last twenty years America has produced Investment Bankers, not Engineers or Scientists. As a Political Science grad I can assure you, No one values that major, it’s just a percurser to grad school. If America is dependent on immigrants for prosperity than we are weak indeed.
Actually, the brain drain accurred years ago, when those same immigrants were legally allowed into the country to assist in the Republican war on real wages. Yes they do work for less, and yes the resulting lower pay and lost opportunity does drive Americans out of those fields. That is the real brain drain.
With all due respect to their talents and character, it is now time for them to go home. If we are smart we will lock the door behind them, lest once salaries rise again they will come back and trigger another wage depression and talent exodus.
There are plenty of smart and qualified Americans for high tech jobs. Too smart, in fact, to play the sucker’s game of competing pay-wise with imported labor.
If there is a short-term shortage, great – salaries will go up, and more smart Americans will change their majors and pursue those fields in school.
Scientists and engineers used to be what people wanted to be when they grew up – thanks to the investments in science like the Manhattan project and the space program. Now kids want to be famous. Scientists used to be famous.
The anti-intellectual movement in the right has spent many years devaluing the role of science in our society, so we shouldn’t be surprised that being a scientist is not something a lot of kids aspire to. Wikwox is right – smart kids become investment bankers because they are highly valued.
The number of American men going into science and medicine has been dropping for a long time but the increase in the number of women and foreign students has covered up that problem for a while. If the U.S. can no longer attract the best foreign talent, we will be facing shortages of scientists, engineers and physicians.
but the increase in the number of women and foreign students has covered up that problem for a while.
The increase in foreign high-tech employees is a cause, not a symptom, of Americans deciding not to pursue those fields.
I’m feeling pretty good. My high school son is determined to become a chemical engineer. He’s researched the field extensively, so I’m feeling pretty confident that he’ll head down this path. My middle school daughter wants to be a surgeon… this month! 🙂
BTW, what is it with all these physical therapist majors lately? Did I miss something?
We reached our high water mark back in the fifties.It’s been all downhill from there. This will be a dark ride. Why wait to hit bottom? I say: APOCALYPSE NOW!!!
This summer, I was at the masters and doctorate conferring at Penn State University. More than 800 upper level degrees were given. Every single engineer, save one, was either Indian or Asian in name. All but three computer degrees were given to those with Indian or Asian surnames.
Every single masters in business administration was given to a white person with an Anglo or Irish or Italian name, except for one white Eastern European name.
Everyone sitting around me commented on it by the end of the ceremony.
It looked like wikwox is right — and if even a fraction of those graduating engineers,scientists, etc is leaving, we’d better start cloning Pandora’s son.
Something is going on in K-12 education… or in the home? There are plenty of kids who love math and science. Where are we losing them?
Clone my son, PM? *shudder* Kidding – he’s a good kid. A full-out nerd, but a great kid.
This exodus is just a temporary reflection of the overall economy, trust me when things pick up they will be recalled first, they work for less and do not need benefits such as health care and retirement so they are much better for the bottom line. A lot of their H1-b visas were expiring anyway so it,s kind of worked out well for the companys that prefer them. Globilization is causing the future of our children to grow dimmer and dimmer and it,s time to deal with it, When I mention this on different sites on the internet I get a lot of responces from degreed and qualified people who are not finding positions because of the hard economic fact that the american worker has become too pricey for the global economy, are cost of living is so much higher than the rest of the world,especially health care insurance, that jobs go first to H1-b visa holders and what,s left goes to trained americans.
I totally disagree anon. I think you have cause and effect backwards.
Rememeber the foreign students who come here are the cream of the crop from the economic aristocracy of their countries. I wonder how many are government-funded… supposedly “competing” against self-funded American students.
I totally disagree anon. I think you have cause and effect backwards.
Why?
Do you really think foreign high tech employees are rushing to fill a void caused by the failure of lazy American students to excel in those fields?
Or do you think (as I do) that the smart Americans fled those fields for more money iin law and finance, rather than compete for lower dollars (and fewer opportunities) in high tech fields?
I find this argument no more convincing than the same argument applied to low-wage jobs – “jobs Americans don’t want to do…” It is a crock.
If the illegal workers were removed from the low-tech jobs, and the legal foreign workers were removed from the high tech jobs, Americans would happily fill both kinds of jobs. Salaries would go up, and prices of some products might go up. Sounds like a great deal all around.
Anon; To your question, How many are government-funded, the answer is they all are, private education is state funded in virtually 90% of the rest of the world, We are the only industrilized nation that has both a for profit education system and a for profit health care system, these are quickly becoming liabilities in a globilized economy. Hate to sound like Marx and Troski, but our system is not compititive with most of the worlds. Evidence of that is showing up in the rate of recovery in the rest of the world, we are lagging behind, especially in the area of job creation.
Companies have absolutely learned how to take advantage of the H1B2 visas, no doubt about it. That doesn’t change the fact that the number of Americans entering technology fields has been dropping over the years. In some tech fields, there aren’t just enough Americans to fill those jobs.
unstable; We are doing a poor job training students in science and math, no doubt about, but the universities that offer many of these fields of study are also among the most expensive. It,s risky to borrow this much money and run the risk of being not able to find a job because of forign competition, so a lot of our best and brighest our doing what two of my nieces did, switching to finance and getting a job all wall street, that,s the real brain drain.
And adding to that our best American universities recruit and solicit globally now–with Open Houses in Tokyo, London, Buenos Aires etc..Unheard of 10 years ago. Those admissions generally pay full fee, are comparable competively w/ the US student, and the university is more than happy to accomodate.
pandora, why do you hate american born college graduates. you think immigrants are smarter? if they are so smart, why weren’t they born in america? PALIN ’11!!!!
“There’s a disturbing dynamic taking place – Highly educated, skilled immigrants are leaving the U.S.
…..
What’s worse, we’re not in a position to replace them.” – Pandora
Pandora,
Actually, there 4 American-born scientists / engineers in my job support group, all with 20+ years experience who are “in a position to replace them”.
Pandora wrote:
Actually, you’re thinking back to a time when travel was much harder and much more expensive; it cost those immigrants everything they had just to get to America, and leaving really wasn’t an option.
However, we have no one to blame but ourselves: if Americans don’t choose to go into engineering, then we shouldn’t be surprised if we get a lot of immigrants who do want to study such fields. And when good, natural born American citizens start griping that their bosses are all fur’ners, well too bad, so sad, but it was our own choice to do this.