Re: for $100M we could double the number of PhD students. The issue is there needs to be more RA, TA, and PA-ships funded by the government.
You seem to be implying that if only the government funded more
US students to go to graduate school, we would have more of them in our
graduate research programs.
While there is some amount of truth to that, I do not believe that
will solve the problem. I am a "foreign" PhD and also have a
lot of experience dealing with professors. The most compelling reason
for hiring non-American students is quality. A professor at
a second-tier university can hire the brightest students from China,
India, and, increasingly nowadays, from the republics of the fomer Soviet Union.
Another reason is the perception that the brightest American students
go into law, medicine, and business.
I think engineering programs need to intercept the best and brightest
at the undergraduate level. One mechanism would be to make engineering education
essentially free for these students as it is in China, India, and Europe. |
