Given all that, where are professors supposed to find and hire students who don't want to stay in academia themselves? I think a lot of these students wind up being aspiring immigrants, and I'm not surprised that a lot of them would also have a hard time finding a place for themselves after graduating and that many of them would leave. Also, the abstract seems to argue that that US still benefits greatly from this arrangement: "though the US share of global patent citations to graduates' science drops from 70% to 50% after migrating, it remains five times larger than the destination country share."

I believe there will be a significant "discontinuity" in the data beginning in 2025. Likely along the lines of (1) US-born science majors going abroad for their PhD's (and likely staying there afterwards), and (2) a major decline in foreign students coming to the US. Blocking disbursement of ongoing grants, immediate and dramatic slashing funding for the sciences, holding up universities under pain of blocking federal funding, eliminating fellowships, firing government scientists, stuffing agencies and commissions with politically appointed yes men, having oaths of fealty in all but name, deporting and blocking return of foreign students, and many more actions of similar character tend to fo that.

One of the greatest national scientific establishments was irreparably damaged in a matter of months. No discussion, no process -- just pulling the rug out. The US will coast for a few years on the technologies that just popped out of the university pipeline of development, but that pipeline is now essentially broken.

Multiple of my children have considered moving abroad to study. It's weird to sit between them and their frustration of the system, and their grandparents (our parents) who seem to think that the crap they're embibing off of fox news, all so that advertisers can target/fleece the older generation, will actually lead to good for their grandchildren.

This is the plan not a coincidence. China pays huge “grants” to their citizens to come to the US, get educated, work in big tech/science, then bring it all home.

If they are in balance, then it looks a lot less of a problem. It may even be the case that because of the desirability of working in the US for US institutions the US is gaining the best from all around the world and shipping out a more mixed ability set.

10-15 years ago my foreign grad students all wanted to stay. Only question was how.

There was always a big crowd who found the process of staying in the US painful, random, humiliating, and sometimes even downright abusive, so they went home.

What has really changed is China. That's what this paper shows too. Many of the Chinese students want go back home.

10-15 years ago when I would talk to grad students from China most wanted freedom and democracy. Now most tell me about how the Western system has failed and how a centralized government is more efficient.

Between making it harder to stay, China changing the narrative on dictatorships, and the West doing a horrific job in the last decade on pretty much every front, yeah, we're going to see a lot of folks move back.

Note: This is at a top-tier US university.

What I mean is that if you don't like the company you work for in, say, SF, you can switch companies without having to switch houses. In Academia... it's akin to going to conservatory for classical music: you have to travel to where the orchestral openings are. This is a bit of a legacy problem from Wilhelm von Humboldt's idea to combine teaching and research, which led to the modern university system.

I'm far from the first person to say this, btw. Convergent Research's "Focused Research Organization" concept as well as The Arc and Astera Institutes are a few recent examples of people trying to provide escape routes from having to deal the large degree of "institutional tech/systems debt" in university contexts. For a great essay on why this is necessary, see "A Vision of Meta-science" (highly recommended if you are interested) [1].

The good news is that people are starting to come around to the idea that the scientific ecosystem would benefit from more diversity in the shape, size, and form of science-generating institutions.=The NSF just announced a new program to fund such "independent research organizations." I think this could give people who want to go into the sciences as a second career and who have a bit of an entrepreneurial tendency a new kind of Job opportunity [2]. We talk about Founders all of the time in Tech, we should probably have some equivalent in the best possible sense of the term, in the Sciences.

[1] https://scienceplusplus.org/metascience/ [2] https://www.nsf.gov/news/nsf-announces-new-initiative-launch...

  > 25% of scientifically-active, US-trained STEM PhD graduates leave the US within 15 years of graduating.

For people missing the abstract, here it is and I'm giving emphesis to an important part.

  Using newly-assembled data from 1980 through 2024, we show that 25% of scientifically-active, US-trained STEM PhD graduates leave the US within 15 years of graduating. Leave rates are lower in the life sciences and higher in AI and quantum science but overall have been stable for decades. ***Contrary to common perceptions, US technology benefits from these graduates' work even if they leave: though the US share of global patent citations to graduates' science drops from 70% to 50% after migrating, it remains five times larger than the destination country share, and as large as all other countries combined. These results highlight the value that the US derives from training foreign scientists - not only when they stay, but even when they leave.***

While personally I'd staple Green Cards to every Ph.D. given to a foreign national, I simultaneously want them to go back to their home countries and make their countries better. To take the good from America, leave the bad, and to build lasting relationships between the countries. That's a win-win situation. Both countries benefit from this! As well as the people. (I'd staple Green Cards so the person can make that choice.)

I haven't read the whole paper (nor will I), but I get the impression that much of this will not be addressed in it. Perfectly okay, they're focused on the easier to measure parts. But let's also not forget that there is a whole lot more to the bigger picture here. A whole lot more than my comment even implies.

I'm jealous of tech people who live in media-sovereign countries like the US, China or Russia who don't have to experience algorithm discrimination.

IMO, tech/science people who leave the US before accumulating big money are making a mistake. They underestimate how rigged the tech industry is. You've got to leverage the rigging. You either benefit from the rigging or you are victim of it. I cannot wrap my mind around people who are born in the US and leave. People don't understand how lucky and privileged they are before it's gone.

[...]

> Emigration rates across PhD cohorts correlate strongly with the foreign national share of graduates ( = 0.86 to 0.95) [...] In all cohorts, the 5-year (15-year) emigration rate is approximately 25% (50%) of the foreign national share

I am not sure if they did this on purpose or not but they missed putting that critical part in the title or right in the abstract. The majority here are not US citizens but foreign nationals. And, most importantly, I couldn't find where they mentioned (or maybe they don't) that these students are studying in US on non-immigrant visas. They're not supposed to or expected to stay after they are done studying. Some stay if they find a company to sponsor them for an internship (Optional Practical Training) but unless they change their visa type they're still expected to leave for their home country.

Without that part highlighted it makes it sound like these US citizens who were born and grew up in US, went to universities here, and then graduated and went to work in China or Europe or something. There is a number of those but, it's not the majority. Maybe they can study just that cohort separately, I think that would be a more interesting thing to look at.

What is a natural, good flow for people between economies in this instance? is it zero or 100% where along this arc does it lie, and why?

No wonder people just give up and leave.

Perhaps it is a good thing that innovation is not encumbered by patents as much in other countries as it has been in the US.

> Leave rates are lower in the life sciences and higher in AI and quantum science but overall have been stable for decades

The US has been completely dominant in technology innovation for the last several decades. So, the answer is no: the loss of 1/4 of the STEM scientists is not important.

Immigrants are being chased out of the US in record numbers. Many of my friends with brown skin (second generation immigrants) are worried their kids will be harrassed by ICE, etc.

The sad fact is that there are a LOT of Americans who deeply resent when someone from another country comes to the US, works hard, and earns a prosperous and happy life.

The US is now led by an emotional revenge-driven crusade against the American Dream, against capitalism, against the "melting pot" that fuels culture and innovation. It's a weird kind of revenge idiocracy going on right now.

In case it's not obvious, many of us here are deeply ashamed of what is going on and we will make it right eventually. I'm personally looking forward to the lawsuits that end up paying people mistreated by ICE significant sums of money, give them flights back to the US, etc. The US has a labor shortage and a talent shortage right now, we need the best and brightest, the most hard working, etc., not the lazy ones who think they are owed something and believe the orange clown.

Numerous doctoral students (and postdocs, and adjuncts) are competing for a much smaller number of tenure-track positions with their research work. If their publication record looks just a little better than the #2 candidate, they can escape from the postdoc grind and land a nice assistant professorship. Then it's only seven more years of busting their ass before they find out whether they washed out, or are set for life with a cushy associate professorship, maybe a full professorship.

People are willing to sacrifice a lot for that. But the vast majority of those who make the sacrifice don't make it, like the #2 bidder in the dollar auction. They put in years on somewhat-above-minimum-wage grad-student and postdoc stipends, doing incredibly difficult and sometimes dangerous work, often postponing childbearing, leaving behind their families each time they have to move to a new university, and either leaving behind their intimate partners or uprooting them as well. All of that redounds to the glory of the PI who runs the lab they work in—but many of those doing all that work regret the sacrifice.

Scientific progress isn't just a matter of doling out research grants and possessing fancy lab equipment. It needs talent, but that isn't nearly enough—the talented people need to work incredibly hard for many years to make real progress. For decades the US has been recruiting the top talent from the rest of the world with this dollar-auction game, paying them peanuts to sacrifice the best years of their lives.

A doctorate doesn't sound like a bad life to me, really. But you have to feel that the system, like minor-league baseball, is kind of taking advantage of doctoral students' hopes and dreams to get the rather astounding rate of scientific progress we see today (at least by some measures). It funds public goods for everyone out of those sacrifices.

The least the US could do would be to show a little more gratitude by guaranteeing them permanent US residency after they graduate, but they don't even get that—many people are kicked out of the US, where they've spent most of their adult lives, when they wash out of the academic pipeline. And the current deplorable administration has promised to worsen this already deplorable situation.

In the US, people pay for their own training, so they can damn well go wherever they please.