Re: Rising Above The Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future



On Tue, 24 Oct 2005, Kamal R. Prasad wrote:


Threeducks wrote:
Kamal R. Prasad wrote:
Threeducks wrote: 

Now you are backpedaling.  Before your definition of "significant" was
publication.  Now it's not.  So who is has the final word on what unique



well -my first definition of significant work was publication but it
was an emperical one and it presumed that if soimething can be
published in a major journal -it must be really a great idea. That
assumption turned out to be false -but it doesn't mean that Im
digressing from my statement that if americans themselves improve their
stds -they would be able to manage without bringing aboard foreign
talent.


Bringing in foreign grad students has nothing to do with the need for
PhD holders by industry.  It is the result of science and engineering
departments requiring a source of labor and not getting enough US
citizens to apply.

if you can show a career track beyond the phd -they might  be willing
to apply. even science afficiandos desire to earna living.

1. Many young people don't know what they want or what they will be best at doing, hence they follow trends. Go to graduate school if you don't like ordinary work.
2. There are lots of career tracks not involving PhD degrees; only 2/3 of the richest people in the USA even got BS degrees.


is?  Again, I wish to mention that often we don't recognize the
importance of a paper until well after it has been published.



but is it hard to identify a genuinely novel idea from a run-of-the
mill? One researcher told me he came across a novel idea in relational
databases when doing his phd and he mutated that single idea into 4-5
papers so as to get maximum credit for the same. I don't know if
referring is ineffective -but if it isn't interesting to prospective
employers -then you do have a problem with the system on hand.


Sit on a review panel for grants and you learn that what one person
thinks is novel, someone else thinks is crap.

alright -you might know a lot more than me on evaluating ideas.

I've been on both sides of the grant process, too. Novelty has nothing to do with it. Its politics, size of CV, name recognition, size of group, etc.


Having "requisite skills" is never the problem. Graduate students in 


well -if local students already have the requisite
skills/proficiency/talent -then why do you bring aboard foreign talent
and increase the dis-franchisement of locals by providing the best of
oppurtunities to foreigners??


At the PhD level I haven't seen this.  Foriegn students have a tough
time landing jobs.  What people are/were upset about is/was a flood of
cheap programmers on H1-B visas.

well -that is the sterotype i.e that they are cheap and stupid. But
have you actually evaluated the skill levels of a reasonably larfge
sampling of H1bs to determine if that is correct?

Most of what is in US IT trade periodicals is that the dumb, grunt work is what is being offshored. Plus, the H1bs are, even by Prof. Matloff's (prof in CS), estimation not brighter than US guys.

If there is anythign 
that facts indicate -it is that the bulk of american IT workers have a
bleak future ahead of them.

This I will agree with, but it applys not just to IT. Much of anything done from a desk will be going to a 3rd world country soon.

They just aren't prepared to handle the
competition -

That "competition" is in the currency exchange rate. If the Indian rupee were not so cheap, the jobs would not be going there. We've been over this a lot and you even brought it up yourself early this year. It has nothing to do with "competition" just cheap Indian money.

and that is where requisite skill levels matter a lot mroe
than getting a degree certificate. 

This has always been true.



engineering and science don't pay any fees, and are, in fact, paid to go
to school.


but I know lots of grad students (mostly of Indian origin) who
accumulated huge loans as students.


No one should pay to go to grad school in science or engineering.  If
they do, they are a fool.

for MS they do.

I also came across an american who
did his BS from UC davis and came to work in the indystry because he
had to repay his loans and couldn't afford to take on another one as
yet.


BS is an undergraduate degree.  One has to pay for that.

The difficultly in getting visas has been a major deterent to all but
the most serious of the foreign students.


Im not aware if getting student visas are a significant problem for
Indians. The reason why foreign students aren't enrolling is because
after finishing grad school they need to get hold of jobs to repay the
loans and those aren't easy to find.


They shouldn't have any loans if they are in a PhD program.  If they are
paying to get a PhD, they are fools.

They may be easier to find in
India -but an Indian job cannot suffice in paying off US tution fees.
Also, if anyway they have to work in India -why acquire US education?

<snip>
Then why come to the US at all?


mostly to get a job in the US. 

But you said things in India were great.  Why come to the US?

well -20 or 10 yrs back, there weren't many obs in hi tech sector in
India.

Your spelling is still terrible and preference for abbreviations shows clear lazyness.

Now there are -and so the enrollment to grad school in the US is 
coming down. As the quality of work being sent to India increases -more
engrs will opt to do their post grad in India and enrollment will drop
even further.

regards
-kamal


I remember one hiring manager who
selected me -telling me that they recognize only my US experience and
not my Indian experience or graduate degree.  And it isn't restricted
to engg alone. Even doctors who migrate to the US need to go through a
re-certification process that is more to do with vetting their
knowledge than with imparting new skills. Its something to do with
different education systems that aren;t universally accepted.

regards
-kamal



.

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