Getting Americans into American PhD programs

Getting Americans into American PhD programs

"There's a lot of people with potential that we've been overlooking." You can say that again.

Hard to believe, but over 50% of STEM PhDs awarded by US universities go to non-American students.

What?

As the video below shows, many American students are not even aware of the PhD opportunities that exist in their own country, paid for with their own tax dollars, so they don't even apply. In that vacuum of domestic applicants, PhD program spots are left to be snapped up by foreign students who now are increasingly heading back home to places like China or India. Put differently, to most Americans the idea of getting a PhD is foreign to them, they don't even really know what it is or entails, whereas for foreign students getting into American PhD program is a well-known avenue to go to America--on a student visa.

To be clear, this is not the fault of foreign PhD students, and there's nothing wrong with universities accepting some international students. But when they number over 50%, it shows American universities are not living up to their responsibility to recruit students from their own population, just as they do for undergrad and Masters programs. PhD programs don't bring in the exorbitant tution of other programs; in fact, universities usually pay PhD students a stipend and tuition remission. So they don't bother to recruit.

When I was a high school junior and senior, I received piles of glossy brochures in the mail from over 100 colleges. Yet I've never received a brochure about a PhD program, and rarely if ever have I seen an ad for one anywhere. I have a BA and two Masters degrees and have been to four graduate schools, and I have never had a school educate students about PhD opportunities.

US schools could do a much better job of recruiting Americans for these spots in school. It's not enough for schools to take the easy way out and say "well we can only admit who applies," because that's not true. Schools have a large degree of control over who applies by their outreach and advertising campaigns.

This video shows both sides very clearly. The first side shows how foreign students are flocking to US PhD programs, but pay attention also to the second half which shows a fantastic program at San Francisco State which is recruiting "overlooked" American students into PhD programs. The program is doing what PhD programs should already be doing for themselves. We need much, much more of this kind of recruitment in the US. Even if you thought a PhD was not for you, you could be wrong don't count it out as the video shows.

Notice that the program at SFSU aims to train "low-income and minority students whose potential in math and science may not have been realized." But the truth is you don't have to be a low-income or minority student to have not realized your potential in STEM fields. We need more programs like SFSU's. "There's a lot of people with potential that we've been overlooking."

America's Brain Drain - CBS News
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4x0_WXlC1Y