For STEM grad students, they won’t be full pay. Their tuition will be exempt and they will receive stipends.
This really varies by university and by program. Some PhD programs are fully funded, others aren’t. At our public flagship (University of Minnesota-Twin Cities), PhD students don’t get automatic tuition waivers, and only a fraction of them receive fellowships that cover the full COA. The rest can apply for teaching assistant and research assistant positions, but these aren’t guaranteed, and they’re more readily available in some fields than in others, depending on how popular the undergraduate courses are (which determines how many TAs are needed) and how large are the research grants that faculty in that area pull in (which determines how many and what kinds of RA positions are available). And Masters degree programs typically aren’t funded.
Well, yes and no. Plenty of people are applying and many, perhaps most, would meet minimum qualifications, but directors of graduate studies at many quality universities would tell you they’re getting fewer cream-of-the-crop domestic applicants than in the past, mostly because entry-level academic hiring has been somewhat dismal in all fields, including STEM. Engineering PhDs often have career alternatives—many can get pretty nice jobs in industry. That’s less true in many pure sciences, as in most non-STEM fields. But PhD programs are getting more high quality international applicants than ever, especially from China, Taiwan, India, and South Korea, and internationals represent a steadily increasing share of all new U.S.-minted PhDs. For those planning to return to their home countries, the state of the academic job market in the U.S, is pretty irrelevant.
So there’s a strong symbiotic relationship at this point. International students come here for advanced training and take the knowledge and skills they acquire back home (though of course, some significant fraction end up staying). It not only advances their individual careers, but also helps their countries develop. And major research universities have become pretty dependent on international students to populate their PhD programs and to fill the TA and RA positions that have become integral to how large research universities operate. Sever that bond and it would be pretty rough going for research universities for a good long time.
At our public flagship, just under 10% of undergrads are now internationals, again mostly though not exclusively from the aforementioned Asian countries—and yes, they’re all full-pays, so they’re a pretty important source of funding for undergraduate education. And roughly 25% of graduate students are internationals, though that varies widely by program. In the College of Science and Engineering, nearly 50% of grad students are internationals. And UMN-Twin Cities has a particularly strong relationship with China dating to 1914 when the first Chinese nationals came here to study. Today there are more than 3,000 Chinese students on the Twin Cities campus, and the school has academic exchange programs with several leading Chinese universities and more than 5,000 alums living in China, a number that is growing rapidly. Cutting all that off would be a severe blow to the university—not a death blow, but one that would inflict deep wounds and deep and lasting pain.
I agree that is a very lame approach, @Dustyfeathers. Many people did not know about the West’s trade embargoes against China that lasted 20 years, and that they still exist in various forms today. I also agree that they do not work.
A similiar event occurred back when Prussia was becoming a “strategic competitor” to Britain. The British were looking for a way to stop Germany’s rise, but research showed them that they would harm Britain even more. So the idea was dropped.
Some good perspectives here.
Graduate students especially have been enrolling in American colleges for a long time. My husband did well in engineering and got a full ride to a T30 school for grad school. This was in the early 1990s. He had other good offers too. We had no idea what to expect when he applied, and the state school he attended for undergrad didn’t guide him at all.
In grad school, the vast majority of his classmates were international students, including a large contingent of Chinese international students. He tried to make friends, but wasn’t very successful–and he had spent several years in Asia when he was a kid. Asian-American students similarly weren’t able to get close with their international classmates and were friends with my husband. Still, grad school was a good experience for my spouse–he learned, he got a degree, it was great to go to a new city. If that is how it needed financed, so be it. We have no regrets, resentment, etc.
The American culture/worldview etc is rubbing off on our international students, but it is to the extent that they are comfortable breaking away from their safe zone. And having traveled internationally and fumbled with my own language limitations, I completely understand why that is hard stuff to ask of anybody.
I think that would be far easier to get international undergrad students to become more a part of campus life. Universities are geared toward bringing their freshmen together in peer groups, etc.
This is too simplistic of a statement and not very realistic.
As a previous poster said this depends on student, program, field etc. Is there a policy you would like to see regarding finances/funding for domestic vs. international students?
Realistically, few PhD students from any country stay in programs where they are not funded. Sure, many have TA positions for the first year or two. But students don’t just stay around researching without funding.