Social Media Research Blog

Education, Employment and Immigration

Techcrunch has a great article talking about the decline of foriegn students in US universities.

"U.S. grad school admissions for would-be international students plummeted this year, according to the Council of Graduate Schools—the first decline in five years.  The decline was 3% on average, thanks to increases from China and the Middle East, but some countries saw double-digit declines in interest in a U.S. education. Applicants from India and South Korea fell 12% and 9% respectively—with students turning their sights on schools in Asia and Europe instead.

This shouldn’t be a surprise. Much of the world’s economic growth—hence, jobs—is in emerging markets, the schools are far cheaper and in many cases competitive academically, and then there’s the H-1B issue. If America won’t allow a PhD just trained in our top schools to work here and contribute to the economy—why come here and take on the student loans to begin with?"

Having recently graduated from a US university and having seen the gradual decline in students, this article comes as no surprise. I have some personal experience with this and can say a few words about the process:

1. The economy in India is doing much better than before. Despite the meltdown and the world wide recession, companies that are focused on the Indian markets are still doing great. Many engineers in India are now finding high paying jobs (unlike the situation in 2001).
2. The process of obtaining a US Visa -- be it a student visa or a visitors visa is excruciatingly painful and at times downright stupid. Having a visa rejected (at times; without any clear reason) is quite demotivating and many people simply do not really wish to put up with it.
3. Once you do have the visa, however, things can be somewhat straightforward while you are in grad school. As long as you are a student and your I20 is valid there is little to be worried about. The good part of the process is also the fact that in the United States, you get to do Curricular Practical Training (CPT) and Optional Practical Training (OPT) while you are in school. Most foreign students utilize this to gain experience and skills in the industry. (Although, you land up paying a lot of out-of-state tuition so that you can do this internship!).
4. The part that starts becoming difficult is the point when your company needs to sponsor for an H1. Many companies exclusively ask that candidates requiring H1s need'nt apply. This year there are still 20K H1s open. Last year, things were much crazier. There were limited number of H1s and too many applicants -- resulting in a lottery system. I personally know enough people who were affected by this madness and had to either reapply or work from Canada/India until the H1 was approved. The basic problem with H1s is:
   • The quota/caps on H1s used to get filled very quickly -- up until the admissions to grad schools in US declined drastically.
   • They are often abused. Consultants and other contractors file for H1s -- at times for candidates who are not really qualified. Many large companies find it cheaper to hire temporary workforce via contractors -- adding to the problem.
5. Next, while you are on a student visa (F1) building a startup is extremely complicated. If there was one place in the world where I would imagine this could even be possible would be here in the US. There are ways to do this but all pretty complicated to work out.
6. Finally, getting a green card requires a wait time of about 5 years (for India) under the EB2 category. Moreover, if you are applying for a green card and get married (to someone who is not on H1/greencard) after your green card is approved it can take forever to get your spouse added to your green card. I know atleast two PhDs who had to leave the country because they could not bring their spouse over.The EB3 category can take 7-9 years!

No system is perfect. Despite the above problems United States is still a place that attracts the best talent in the world. As the world becomes flat and more opportunities/resources become available in other places, keeping the competitive edge for many businesses requires that we reconsider some of the laws around immigration and visas. I really hope that the Obama administration is able to change the legislature to carry out the appropriate reforms.

Invited Talk: Eric Roberts (Making Computing Fun Again)

Rediscovering the Passion, Beauty, Joy, and Awe: Making Computing Fun Again

The following post is a summary of the talk by Dr. Eric Roberts given at UMBC on April 24, 2007 2008. Unfortunately, I did not have time to edit the notes and post it sooner. I strongly feel that this is an important subject and academia, industry and schools need to work together on this issue. I think many readers of this blog are equally passionate about this topic and would be interested in Dr. Roberts talk. The PPT of the talk is available here.

Here is my attempt to highlight some key points:

Dr. Roberts addresses how we can make undergraduate education fun ... Again. ("In case it is not already" -- Marie DesJardins). During his role as the chair of the ACM education board, Dr. Roberts has been greatly concerned about this topic.

Int his talk he mentions that there is a paradox in this field: computing industry offers the best employment opportunities, salaries yet the enrollments have gone down -- almost by 50%. And in some schools it is probably as high as an 80% decline. The statistics are alarming more so in women and minorities. If you compare Computer science with fields like Biology, where there is an overproduction of degrees you find that on an average  one must do two postdocs before applying for a tenure track position!  In Computer Science -- the demand is increasing but the supply is really low resulting in 2/3 people being hired from outside (not outsourced but people hired from non-CS backgrounds).

Dr. Roberts addresses some reasons for this paradox:

1) Fears about long term economic stability of employment
This is primarily due to the perception of lack of jobs and fear of outsourcing. However, looking at data about offshoring -- there are more jobs despite outsourcing. Number of computer programmers hired  are going down but computer scientists and software engineers is up.

Dr. Roberts suggests an interesting thought experiments: Say you are a company that has the option of hiring $200k/year engineer in USA / a $75k/year engineer in Bangalore... both very talented and have the potential to generate 1M -- what do you do?

Most people would think that the reasoning would lead to hiring just the 75K/year engineer in Bangalore however, if you wear the HR hat you would try hire them both!!! Since they both have the potential to generate the 1M /year -- which is profitable.

2) kind of exposure to computing at elementary and secondary school levels
AP test in computer science use to be based on pascal in '94, CPP in 95 and JAVA in 2003. The problem is that it is difficult to find good teachers for advanced programming languages. Additionally, computing skills are becoming harder to teach and teachers dont have the resources to keep up. Moreover the education board views computing courses as "Vocational" almost at par with shop courses. Finally schools are evaluated in terms of math and science performance alone. So good computer science teachers are being moved to teach math/science classes. Finally the schools only care about teaching kids toools!! Like...powerpoint!! WTH?

3) image of work in the field -- no longer seems fun?

"Has anyone considered the possibility that it is not fun anymore?" -- Donald Knuth Oct 11, 2006

What are the reasons? Is it because there is no chance to make a legacy? Has programming is becoming harder? Or is it because startups are too fragile? Dr. Roberts points out that people would rather be Dilberts boss than Dilbert...perhaps this explains why economics and management branches are most popular.

4) University curriculum is broken somehow
However, there is a variation in enrolment by time and in some cases enrollment seems independent of curriculum. Student decide not to take  before they even look at the curriculum! And those who do land up taking the classes love the courses... but decide not to major in cs anyway. This is quite alarming.

Here are a few of Dr. Robert's suggestions on what we can do:

1. Realize that the problem is beyond just the university level
2. Press govt and industry to improve computing education
3. Emphasize the fact that programming is a key to the field
4. Restore passion...and make computing Fun!

From my own perspective, this problem is not just here, in the US educational system but seems to be a greater worldwide issue. For example, in India, a small Montessori school that my mom helps to run, is trying innovative methods to involve children in computer education from early on. However, the lack of resources, good computer programming teachers has been a great challenge for them. Additionally, when it comes to primary level education, there arent may educational tools that introduce children to computing. Kids are extremely fast with learning powerpoint, getting online and playing games and it would be great to build software that could teach children basics of programming in a fun and exciting way. These tools need to have a way in which children can take something "tangible" back home to show to their parents and give them a sense of actually building something cool!