This is well written, concise, and outlines a problem that most people would call “political” without being hostile to other people (while still making it clear what the problem is). Great job, I wish we had more opinion pieces like this.
Also, I agree 100%. Some people don’t like foreigners at US schools, thinking that those foreigners are taking spots away from worthy Americans. I think the only thing worse is if the foreigners stop wanting to come to US schools because of the implications about how far the American education system has fallen.
I understand the need to frame arguments in an objective and clinical way. At the same time, it's frustrating because it just feels like being so distant emotionally doesn't drive deep enough into the way the current environment shakes so many people to their cores. It's an egregious assault on individual experiences and there's no real way to sugarcoat that.
You can deport illegal immigrants without taking away their dignity and without frightening the ever living shit out of everyone. But this isn't that. The intention is fear.
And, more critically - if foreigners are deciding to take up faculty positions in their home countries.
Countries like India, Vietnam, and South Korea have begun replicating the Chinese Thousand Talents program to attract their diasporas back to domestic academia.
Significant domains of CS such as HPC/Systems, Networking, OS internals, etc are heavily dependent on faculty, graduate students, and post-docs who are all on some sort of visa. And increasingly, at least amongst Indians, becuase the backlogs for citizenship are insane, a number have been taking sweetheart positions at INIs like the new IITs with almost US$100k in startup public-private grants on top of a $20k salary (tax free due to the income tax changes) with free housing and car and complete autonomy to consult with private sector players without IP entanglement.
Vietnam is doing something similar as well to attract Vietnamese diaspora in SK and Japan, along with the Viet Kieu in America and Australia.
A nativist academic culture in STEM in the US would completely destroy any R&D capacity that even exists today.
Making private sector/startup consultancy really easy for professors to do is one of the main reasons there is an insane pickup of pace in the return of the diaspora. Many professors in my IIT suddenly have BMWs. I''ve never seen it before 2021ish. And yes, BMWs are a luxury car in India. And no. IITs being a government college don't pay professors enough for them to afford a luxury car on salary alone (in the context of financial conservativeness typical to india). For more context, my starting SWE job before I came back for M.S paid as much as my professor earned decades into his career, being dean, and having a couple of other responsibilities. - 50L per year (total comp, not base). Also helps that the STEM economy is picking up like crazy.
It is true that the govt institutions themselves have less IIT representation, mostly due to low salaries. However, what matters to the private sector is sources of capital. Tech investors in india usually went to IITs themselves, and so the ecosystem always remains close to IITs, allowing professors easy access. Lot of the startups (even YC ones!) by IIT students actually involved one of their professors in the ideation stage, and they even have equity % sometimes. Similar to Rajeev Motwani holding a stake in Google, they get really rich sometimes.
> Making private sector/startup consultancy really easy for professors to do is one of the main reasons there is an insane pickup of pace in the return of the diaspora
Yep! The University of Waterloo back in Ontario did the same thing in the 1960s, which helped catapult the program into a Tier 1 CSE program comparable to older more established programs like UToronto and UMich.
> Lot of the startups (even YC ones!) by IIT students actually involved one of their professors in the ideation stage, and they even have equity % sometimes
Yep! There are also some NIT, BITS Pilani, IIT, and other program specific networks made by their alumnis in academia and VC. I think Foundation Capital (Netflix, Cerebras, Fortanix) is running one such program.
Indian spaceflight program done by ISRO have very few people from IITs or any of the so called elite colleges.
Unlike china Indian colleges are really backward due to lack of research funding and a coaching industry which have gamified the entrance exams.
> Indian spaceflight program done by ISRO have very few people from IITs or any of the so called elite colleges
The bulk of recruitment at ISRO has always been happening at the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST) and the Indian Institute of Sciences (IISc) - not IITs.
Even getting into an IIST or IISc is almost as difficult as getting into an old IIT.
Both India and China have specialized institutions dedicated to subfields that end up getting the bulk of R&D funding in said subfields, for example, Petroleum Engineering and the China University of Petroleum and the Indian Institute of Petroleum Engineering.
> Unlike china Indian colleges are really backward due to lack of research funding and a coaching industry which have gamified the entrance exams
China also bases acceptance on entrance exams - the Gaokao is equally as competitive as the JEE Advanced. The exact same gamification of entrance exams and coaching centers is sadly the norm in China as well, despite the Xi admin's initial attempts to crack down on it.
Additonally, Chinese R&D funding is also stratified the same way Indian R&D funding is.
The equivalent of a government engineering college in both China and India would be receiving relatively limited funding or autonomy, but a Double First Class University in China or an INI in India well get the first pick of research grants and subsidizes.
If there is a promising professor at a mid-tier program, they are likely affiliated and getting their funding via affiliation to a national academy like the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
This is why all regional powers have a civilian space flight program - the same thing you mentioned but also it allows you to sidestep some international treaties around testing.
We can only hope this administration and its supporters are a temporary aberration that the US can claw its way back out of. Otherwise, that classic advice to sign up your kids for Mandarin class starts to sound pretty good.
America isn’t the only place that speaks English. It’s the global standard language. When a Japanese and a Chinese person negotiate they are already using English.
Instead we are seeing increased siloing of scientific domains. The EU is cracking down on EU-Chinese research cooperation (as recent arrests and deportations in France have shown), India still has a de facto freeze on Chinese R&D and China is still enforcing export controls on ToTs to India, and South Korea and Japan are still controlling any IP generated from their industrial research fusion programs.
We're instead seeing at least 6-7 different scientific ecosystems and associated capital forming, and with collaboration being tightly controlled by governments.
Looking at the history of US leads to the depressing conclusion that this administration is not an aberration but is instead a return to the same old shit from 150 years ago.
Conservation literally means to preserve. Teddy Roosevelt was a conservative who established the national park system to preserve our country's natural wonder. You might also say that conservatives don't believe in spending lots of money and are against high deficits and fiscal craziness. None of those really describe the conservative movement in America today.
Just curious, but is there any evidence that Chinese/Indian/etc will even be as open to US students as the US has been to them? I have no knowledge of what their intentions may be, but I think it’s a pretty large assumption that they would even take American students at all
PKU and Tisnghua both have overseas student programs and they are particularly eager to have qualified takers. Now, the question is how far does that go when the schools really become popular undergrad and grad STEM studies?
The bigger problem is that schools like MIT, Stanford, UCB, UCI throw (or threw?) lots of resources at students that Chinese schools didn't really do (and maybe still don't? My info is 10 years out of date). Even the lower ranked schools have ample resources and fairly well paying TA/RA-ships available. In China, you would have to work for your professor's side company to get money, and the professor might not let you graduate if you were doing a good job (again, 10 years ago, I have no idea what its like today, China is changing quickly).
As a global citizen of Earth, I would agree. But I'm also a citizen of the United States, and have a vested personal interest in its academic and economic superiority. And I think that's normal. You don't even have to be nationalistic or patriotic about your particular country to feel that way. Academic and economic declines in any country will cause problems for everyone who lives there.
Of course there should be. However, those nations should worry about that on behalf of their citizens. No other nation is going to concern itself with whether Americans can live close to their parents.
Yup, the author is in a fairly rare fortunate situation for someone who is good in his field. A lot of us moved countries or continents to be good at our jobs, and there is always a personal cost.
Although, for grandkids, I guess that when you are far you are also more intentional with making sure you spend time with their grandparents when they are far.
This is the sort of attitude that allows nations to fall. If a nation isn't protecting it's most valuable resources, they will be taken away by others who want them.
My oldest is applying to college right now and this has worried me immensely. College isn't going to be the same anymore. Dark forces are working hard to discourage discourse and diversity. I want to support institutions that still stand for something and value truth and enlightenment but it's hard to know if we're succeeding.
Now apply this to the many countries across Asia, Europe and Africa with millions of citizens moving to the United States and similar countries in the West.
This is well written, concise, and outlines a problem that most people would call “political” without being hostile to other people (while still making it clear what the problem is). Great job, I wish we had more opinion pieces like this.
Also, I agree 100%. Some people don’t like foreigners at US schools, thinking that those foreigners are taking spots away from worthy Americans. I think the only thing worse is if the foreigners stop wanting to come to US schools because of the implications about how far the American education system has fallen.
I understand the need to frame arguments in an objective and clinical way. At the same time, it's frustrating because it just feels like being so distant emotionally doesn't drive deep enough into the way the current environment shakes so many people to their cores. It's an egregious assault on individual experiences and there's no real way to sugarcoat that.
You can deport illegal immigrants without taking away their dignity and without frightening the ever living shit out of everyone. But this isn't that. The intention is fear.
the intention is to normalize extrajudicial government force by starting with vulnerable people technically "outside of the law"
it really is a "first they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist..."-esque program at this point
And, more critically - if foreigners are deciding to take up faculty positions in their home countries.
Countries like India, Vietnam, and South Korea have begun replicating the Chinese Thousand Talents program to attract their diasporas back to domestic academia.
Significant domains of CS such as HPC/Systems, Networking, OS internals, etc are heavily dependent on faculty, graduate students, and post-docs who are all on some sort of visa. And increasingly, at least amongst Indians, becuase the backlogs for citizenship are insane, a number have been taking sweetheart positions at INIs like the new IITs with almost US$100k in startup public-private grants on top of a $20k salary (tax free due to the income tax changes) with free housing and car and complete autonomy to consult with private sector players without IP entanglement.
Vietnam is doing something similar as well to attract Vietnamese diaspora in SK and Japan, along with the Viet Kieu in America and Australia.
A nativist academic culture in STEM in the US would completely destroy any R&D capacity that even exists today.
Making private sector/startup consultancy really easy for professors to do is one of the main reasons there is an insane pickup of pace in the return of the diaspora. Many professors in my IIT suddenly have BMWs. I''ve never seen it before 2021ish. And yes, BMWs are a luxury car in India. And no. IITs being a government college don't pay professors enough for them to afford a luxury car on salary alone (in the context of financial conservativeness typical to india). For more context, my starting SWE job before I came back for M.S paid as much as my professor earned decades into his career, being dean, and having a couple of other responsibilities. - 50L per year (total comp, not base). Also helps that the STEM economy is picking up like crazy.
It is true that the govt institutions themselves have less IIT representation, mostly due to low salaries. However, what matters to the private sector is sources of capital. Tech investors in india usually went to IITs themselves, and so the ecosystem always remains close to IITs, allowing professors easy access. Lot of the startups (even YC ones!) by IIT students actually involved one of their professors in the ideation stage, and they even have equity % sometimes. Similar to Rajeev Motwani holding a stake in Google, they get really rich sometimes.
> Making private sector/startup consultancy really easy for professors to do is one of the main reasons there is an insane pickup of pace in the return of the diaspora
Yep! The University of Waterloo back in Ontario did the same thing in the 1960s, which helped catapult the program into a Tier 1 CSE program comparable to older more established programs like UToronto and UMich.
> Lot of the startups (even YC ones!) by IIT students actually involved one of their professors in the ideation stage, and they even have equity % sometimes
Yep! There are also some NIT, BITS Pilani, IIT, and other program specific networks made by their alumnis in academia and VC. I think Foundation Capital (Netflix, Cerebras, Fortanix) is running one such program.
This is one of the reasons India has a civilian spaceflight program.
The obvious overlap with military technology aside, it's a way to retain and increase the institutional knowledge within India across a lot of areas.
Indian spaceflight program done by ISRO have very few people from IITs or any of the so called elite colleges. Unlike china Indian colleges are really backward due to lack of research funding and a coaching industry which have gamified the entrance exams.
> Indian spaceflight program done by ISRO have very few people from IITs or any of the so called elite colleges
The bulk of recruitment at ISRO has always been happening at the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST) and the Indian Institute of Sciences (IISc) - not IITs.
Even getting into an IIST or IISc is almost as difficult as getting into an old IIT.
Both India and China have specialized institutions dedicated to subfields that end up getting the bulk of R&D funding in said subfields, for example, Petroleum Engineering and the China University of Petroleum and the Indian Institute of Petroleum Engineering.
> Unlike china Indian colleges are really backward due to lack of research funding and a coaching industry which have gamified the entrance exams
China also bases acceptance on entrance exams - the Gaokao is equally as competitive as the JEE Advanced. The exact same gamification of entrance exams and coaching centers is sadly the norm in China as well, despite the Xi admin's initial attempts to crack down on it.
Additonally, Chinese R&D funding is also stratified the same way Indian R&D funding is.
The equivalent of a government engineering college in both China and India would be receiving relatively limited funding or autonomy, but a Double First Class University in China or an INI in India well get the first pick of research grants and subsidizes.
If there is a promising professor at a mid-tier program, they are likely affiliated and getting their funding via affiliation to a national academy like the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
This is why all regional powers have a civilian space flight program - the same thing you mentioned but also it allows you to sidestep some international treaties around testing.
We can only hope this administration and its supporters are a temporary aberration that the US can claw its way back out of. Otherwise, that classic advice to sign up your kids for Mandarin class starts to sound pretty good.
Why would moving to an even more authoritarian country be good advice? What?
The point is you'll be doing business in high technology with China, not America. Helps to speak the language when you negotiate.
America isn’t the only place that speaks English. It’s the global standard language. When a Japanese and a Chinese person negotiate they are already using English.
I disagree with that.
Instead we are seeing increased siloing of scientific domains. The EU is cracking down on EU-Chinese research cooperation (as recent arrests and deportations in France have shown), India still has a de facto freeze on Chinese R&D and China is still enforcing export controls on ToTs to India, and South Korea and Japan are still controlling any IP generated from their industrial research fusion programs.
We're instead seeing at least 6-7 different scientific ecosystems and associated capital forming, and with collaboration being tightly controlled by governments.
Looking at the history of US leads to the depressing conclusion that this administration is not an aberration but is instead a return to the same old shit from 150 years ago.
Welcome to literal conservatism.
You mean reactionism. A conservative wants to keep the status quo. A reactionary wants to regress to a previous status quo.
Conservation literally means to preserve. Teddy Roosevelt was a conservative who established the national park system to preserve our country's natural wonder. You might also say that conservatives don't believe in spending lots of money and are against high deficits and fiscal craziness. None of those really describe the conservative movement in America today.
Just curious, but is there any evidence that Chinese/Indian/etc will even be as open to US students as the US has been to them? I have no knowledge of what their intentions may be, but I think it’s a pretty large assumption that they would even take American students at all
PKU and Tisnghua both have overseas student programs and they are particularly eager to have qualified takers. Now, the question is how far does that go when the schools really become popular undergrad and grad STEM studies?
The bigger problem is that schools like MIT, Stanford, UCB, UCI throw (or threw?) lots of resources at students that Chinese schools didn't really do (and maybe still don't? My info is 10 years out of date). Even the lower ranked schools have ample resources and fairly well paying TA/RA-ships available. In China, you would have to work for your professor's side company to get money, and the professor might not let you graduate if you were doing a good job (again, 10 years ago, I have no idea what its like today, China is changing quickly).
This post sounds a bit one sided. Maybe there should be centre of excellences elsewhere too. Let the others live near their parent’s farms as well.
As a global citizen of Earth, I would agree. But I'm also a citizen of the United States, and have a vested personal interest in its academic and economic superiority. And I think that's normal. You don't even have to be nationalistic or patriotic about your particular country to feel that way. Academic and economic declines in any country will cause problems for everyone who lives there.
Of course there should be. However, those nations should worry about that on behalf of their citizens. No other nation is going to concern itself with whether Americans can live close to their parents.
Yup, the author is in a fairly rare fortunate situation for someone who is good in his field. A lot of us moved countries or continents to be good at our jobs, and there is always a personal cost.
Although, for grandkids, I guess that when you are far you are also more intentional with making sure you spend time with their grandparents when they are far.
This is the sort of attitude that allows nations to fall. If a nation isn't protecting it's most valuable resources, they will be taken away by others who want them.
My oldest is applying to college right now and this has worried me immensely. College isn't going to be the same anymore. Dark forces are working hard to discourage discourse and diversity. I want to support institutions that still stand for something and value truth and enlightenment but it's hard to know if we're succeeding.
I am struggling with the premise of this post. The analogies don’t seem to land very well
Now apply this to the many countries across Asia, Europe and Africa with millions of citizens moving to the United States and similar countries in the West.
> my kids excel, will they move away?
No, but if they power point, they might be grounded.