<p>While attending my son's graduation, I noticed that all but two, of the 48 graduates in the Master of Science in Electrical Engineering, were foreign . I know, because they asked they asked the foreign students to stand and be recognized. They obviously are recruiting from a country, perhaps India. The grads earning bachelors in electrical enginerring were all caucasion. Very strange! Is this happening at other schools?</p>
<p>Considering that most electrical engineers in the US can get jobs without a Master’s degree, that makes some sense, but I wouldn’t expect that level of foreign.</p>
<p>Many international students come to the US for an MS in an STEM field in the hope that they will find permanent employment here after their one year of OPT visa extension expires. Enough of them do manage to get jobs that yield an H1B visa to keep the dream of succeeding alive in the following generation of students. </p>
<p>No decent STEM graduate program in the US has to spend much money on recruiting international applicants. They are banging down the doors. My guess is that the MS Eng program is a cash cow for this university.</p>
<p>So the foreign students need the MS degree, as opposed to the BS?</p>
<p>Foreign students who want to work in the US need access to recruiters and it is easier for them to get a job if they get their “ticket punched”–that is, have the stamp of quality from a US university that the companies are familiar with.</p>
<p>Many of them will also return to their home country with that MS. The US is still the top country for college education in the world in the eyes of those from abroad. Many will finance the US masters after getting the BA/BS in the home country. I wonder about the ratio of foreign grads in the master’s program- obviously a large program but not one that draws US grads.</p>
<p>toledo,</p>
<p>The H1B (work) visa process is expensive and onerous. It is extremely uncommon for an individual with only a BS and a couple of internships to manage to find an employer who will go through that process for them. It is somewhat more common for an individual with a good MS (and possibly work experience in the home country) to be able to find an employer who will go through that process. Not to mention that one or two years of grad school is cheaper than four years of undergrad, so the cost/benefit equation favors the grad program. This is not new. Nearly all the engineering grad students I knew back in the last century at my old universities were international students.</p>
<p>Addenda- perhaps the US grads are getting jobs with the BS while the foreign grads get the MS to be able to get US jobs. Hadn’t thought about that aspect.</p>
<p>Thanks for explaining. I guess it all makes sense.</p>
<p>I’ve noticed the same thing. They’re coming here in droves in the MS programs from India and China mostly along with some other mostly Asian countries and hoping to get jobs here but many don’t due to the need for company sponsorship for their visa. In the meantime they’re taking up spots that could go to people who could be readily be employed. I don’t think it’s the case that the colleges could otherwise only fill 5% of the MS classes with non-foreign students so I think these foreign students are indeed doing some displacement. </p>
<p>I think it’s a problem.</p>
<p>And we should make it easy for them to stay here, be productive, and start businesses. I’m all for a reverse brain drain. It’s the American way.</p>
<p>Carnegie Mellon computer science has a handful of master students who stay on for a fifth year, or come from other American colleges, but the vast majority were also foreign.</p>
<p>My friend who works for the DOD and tries to get colleges involved in US defense projects says he’s having a really tough time finding colleges who have enough us citizens to do them. You aren’t imagining it.</p>
<p>This has been going on for years. When H and I were in grad school back in the dark ages, he was one of 3 American students (out of 50) in the Masters/PhD program in his engineering major. Most of the non-American born students were from India and China.</p>
<p>I am curious about the costs. Toledo, is this a public or private school?</p>
<p>You have two factors - job opportunities for the graduating undergrads in Engg. coupled with assistantships and tuition waivers for grad students. Other than the ones who want to do a PhD, a job at hand is incentive for the US student to bail out (eg. DS). By the same token the foreign student who cannot afford to pay for the undergrad education, and doesn’t qualify for a job with an overseas degree, is willing to take the assistantship in grad school (eg. me).</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>there was just an article (that I can’t find right now) about how a US school let foreign students access the information that was for US citizens only. If these schools want to be serious about doing some of this work, they need to shape up.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I respectfully disagree, right after I point out that I came here as a student from Elbonia that studied both there and here for many years.</p>
<p>First, the term ‘brain drain’ assumes ‘brain’ in the first place. The people I worked with from India before 1990 (as an example) were from IIT’s and other super selective schools that are extremely difficult to get in. They had brains by the barrel-ful. The next wave (1990-2000) were from the B-grade schools that were ‘good enough’ and from 2000 on, the only advantage they offered was lower wages and ‘skills’ (largely on paper) and degrees from places that nobody has ever heard of (and I’m quite knowledgeable on the topic, having hired a bunch of them)</p>
<p>The ‘be productive’ part I agree. Why hire an American for 8 hours a day when you can hire a non-American for 12 hours a day? and, make it the norm? Never mind the actual work output…</p>
<p>The ‘start businesses’, well, let’s not get carried away here. I know of exactly two people who started with me in '85 and ‘started businesses’. Out of hundreds (both IIT-K interestingly enough :)). Expecting new business growth and jobs in the US out of H1B applicants is quite optimistic.</p>
<p>At the university level it’s not much different. As RA’s we were expected to work 20 hours a week, in practice, 20 hours a day. Not much better for TA’s. Plus, the more people the more funding, so it’s a vicious cycle…</p>
<p>In the past an MS degree was needed for green card, then it kind of got easier with different green card categories for BS and MS degrees (kind of, not exactly) and now pretty much from the heavy volume countries green cards take 8-10 years (compared to 1 for Elbonians :))…</p>
<p>This is a private school and I just looked up tuition rates. My son will be paying more for his health science grad credits ($975) than they will be paying for their engineering grad credits ($850).</p>
<p>I do not think that we should be subsidizing foreign students. We probably are doing so at the publics.</p>
<p>I think it is fine to educate others here, but most of them should head back home when they are done. Otherwise we discourage our own citizens from these fields due to lower wages. And another perhaps laughable point - I knew a woman who had almost no chance of meeting an eligable man in her high tech workplace because the majority of the men were a lot shorter and much smaller than her, and from another culture. It is not a situation that encourages girls to enter the field.</p>