Had to work my way through because in my generation NSF and NIH fellowships were preferentially given to affirmative action students
One of the biggest reasons for the foreign dominance that graduate engineering has become a funded research business for professors so they preferentially recruit grad students who bring their own funding.
Most foreign students are fully funded by their home governments or some sponsoring organization. Hiring fully funded grad students extends research budgets and allows more summer consulting dollars for the PI.
Highly qualified American students with fellowships or industry funding get snapped up quickly, especially if the score high on diversity points.
However, the number of fellowships and scholarships is limited and the number of genuinely brilliant foreign students on foreign full rides is seemingly unlimited
We really need to figure out a way to better fund American grad level education so more high achieving Americans can attend grad school because short term it’s hard to justify on cost - benefit return on investment
In the long term though, it’s really bad for the countries future to have 80% of your advanced degree grads leaving to go home to help their country compete with the US and for the US to depend on foreign born, US educated expats for the majority of our advanced level technical talent
This is a very good reason to expand the H1B visa program to keep as many of these foreign students in the US after graduation in the short term, but we really need to figure out how to fund our next generation of US born advanced technical talent
As it is, US educated foreigners are making huge strides in transplanting US technical skills and education systems in their previously backwards home countries, as any review of research publications proves
This is true. At some point, the STEM university faculty will be mostly foreign-born and, when offered enough salary and lab infrastructure, will go back home (likely Asia), taking that expertise with them.
In this way, US dominance in r&d will be lost.