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> Regarding PhDs, grad international enrollment is declining.

Your source on that? All the schools I’m in contact with are still as international as ever in their CS PhD departments. I’m not sure what the trends are outside of CS, but I can’t imagine they would be very different. I think you are just pulling this number out of thin air.

Research is funded quite differently from undergrad programs. Sure, fewer TAships are available, but your research funding is much more detached. DARPA and NSF aren’t going to become stingy all of a sudden.

> Regarding the "racism against Americans," there is no such race, and if there were one it would not explain research productivity.

If I claimed (without any evidence in fact) that “Indians or Chinese are less productive than Americans” I would totally be accused of racism even though both India and China are multi-ethnic. It is especially a stupid thing to say as foreign and domestic students are pretty diverse, with slackers (or dreamers) and very focused students on both sides.




> Your source on that? All the schools I’m in contact with are still as international as ever in their CS PhD departments. I’m not sure what the trends are outside of CS, but I can’t imagine they would be very different. I think you are just pulling this number out of thin air.

So you're asking for a source when your own view is based on anecdotes? Great.


Yes, the number of international graduate students is at an all time in 2016, and I’m sure for 2017 also. It isn’t rocket science:

https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/international-studen...

Growth has been falling, but that wasn’t the claim that was made, which was actually ridiculous.


Recent surveys do appear to support a slowdown in international graduate school enrollments ([1] summary, [2] original study).

Furthermore, this trend predates the immigration policies of the current administration, and I suspect this trend has further strengthened.

[1] https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/09/28/graduate-scho... [2] http://cgsnet.org/ckfinder/userfiles/files/CGS_GED16_Report_...


Both of those state there is a slowdown in enrollment percentage (and only .9% at that), not absolute numbers. There are still more international graduate students in 2017 than in any previous year.


This might be semantics, but a slowdown means exactly that: a drop in growth rate.




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