When at the onset of the pandemic the Trump administration decided that foreign students couldn't stay in the U.S. if they weren't attending classes in person, I was surprised to learn how much of the STEM students they represent. Thankfully this was reversed (after strong pushback from universities and many more stakeholders), but it still highlighted how dependent the STEM field is on foreign students.
Some numbers[1] from 2017: 81% of Electrical Engineering, 79% of Computer Science, 62% of Mechanical Engineering and 59% of Civil Engineering students are foreigners, to list just the top 4 (the top 2 have by far the largest enrollment).
Isn't this a crisis too? To be clear, I'm not suggesting they shouldn't be in the country; they are incredibly valuable. But doesn't it show that American students are just not going into these fields in sufficient numbers? The U.S. has amazing engineers and scientists, but it needs to import 3/4 of them. And there's no guarantee that they will even stay in the country once they graduate, it's not that easy. Are American students not interested? Just imagine what they could achieve if the same number of American students went into these careers as do foreign students.
A crisis like this pandemic shows just how badly the country would be affected if these foreign students weren't there. Just like for any other resource, a country that has to import most of what it finds valuable is always a serious problem.
Important to note that these numbers are for graduate level students. Still wild that well over 50% of masters, docs and postdocs in the US are are not US citizens.
International students make up around 5% [1] of the undergraduate student body. Can't find the number specifically for STEM but I imagine its still < 20%.
The US is over represented on most "top N" rankings of best STEM universities. I'd guess that this leads to a lot of foreign students wanting to go to US grad schools, and that this is why engineering programs have so many foreign students rather than it being due to some shortage of US students wanting to go into those fields.
Some numbers[1] from 2017: 81% of Electrical Engineering, 79% of Computer Science, 62% of Mechanical Engineering and 59% of Civil Engineering students are foreigners, to list just the top 4 (the top 2 have by far the largest enrollment).
Isn't this a crisis too? To be clear, I'm not suggesting they shouldn't be in the country; they are incredibly valuable. But doesn't it show that American students are just not going into these fields in sufficient numbers? The U.S. has amazing engineers and scientists, but it needs to import 3/4 of them. And there's no guarantee that they will even stay in the country once they graduate, it's not that easy. Are American students not interested? Just imagine what they could achieve if the same number of American students went into these careers as do foreign students.
A crisis like this pandemic shows just how badly the country would be affected if these foreign students weren't there. Just like for any other resource, a country that has to import most of what it finds valuable is always a serious problem.
[1] https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2017/10/11/foreign...