Foreign Student Dependence
13th July 2013
International students play a critical role in sustaining quality science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) graduate programs at U.S. universities, a new report from the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) argues.
Majors Americans won’t do?
It will come as no surprise to observers of graduate education that the report documents the fact that foreign students make up the majority of enrollments in U.S. graduate programs in many STEM fields, accounting for 70.3 percent of all full-time graduate students in electrical engineering, 63.2 percent in computer science, 60.4 percent in industrial engineering, and more than 50 percent in chemical, materials and mechanical engineering, as well as in economics (a non-STEM field).
Well, economics pretends to be a STEM field, so that’s understandable.
The report also emphasizes the value that international students can bring to the U.S. economy after graduation as researchers and entrepreneurs. Measures that would make it easier for STEM graduate students to obtain visas to work in the U.S. after graduation – measures that many in higher education see as crucial to the U.S. maintaining its edge in attracting international graduate students — are pending in Congress (and are included in the comprehensive immigration bill recently passed by the Senate).
Sorry, Congress is more concerned with importing uneducated crop-pickers and day-laborers than people who will actually support themselves and so not be dependent on the government and the Handout Party.