How Foreign Policy Students Hurt US Innovation

In a February 2013 article on Bloomberg, the author, Norman Matloff, argues that the United States is falling behind due to the greed of public and private institutions. According to the article, both public and private college level institutions are allowing more foreign students than American students into their programs for science, technology, engineering and mathematics. “The F-1 program, as it is known, has become a profit center for universities and a wage-suppression tool for the technology industry.” This in turn creates fewer opportunities for American citizens to enter the STEM fields.

Some possible problems that this creates are lower wages for Americans, fewer opportunities for Americans in those fields, as well as greater competition. “The National Science Foundation forecast that a large influx of F-1 doctoral students in science, technology, engineering and math -- the STEM fields -- would suppress wages.” As a result more Americans can’t use their degrees in the STEM fields and continue their education at the next level – often becoming doctors and lawyers. This then creates an influx of professionals who cannot find jobs.  Moreover, a study finds that, “the average quality of the international STEM students is lower than that of the Americans.” Should this be allowed to continue, or should we challenge this?

How can the United States avert this problem without damaging their reputation of goodwill education? How can the US preserve domestic jobs for Americans instead of giving them to foreign students with work visas?

A possible solution would be to devise some sort of legislation that encourages foreign students to become Americans – offering them citizen status, as opposed to work visas or student visas – so they stay in America.  Another possible solution might be to limit the number of foreign students into the STEM programs, and offering the majority of the positions to US Citizens, instead of the reverse.

By Christopher M. Vacek

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-12/glut-of-foreign-students-hurts-u-s-innovation.html