Ph.D. recipients in computing fields are primarily non-US residents in the US

These are just our anecdotes, but there is some data to support this.

Take a look at this study from the RAND institute (historically a very pro-immigrant think tank) that compares STEM PhD programs to other options available to highly educated people with choice and concludes that the decision to avoid STEM graduate programs (PhD in particular) is a rational response to market conditions relative to the professions.

http://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP241.html

A more general audience report on this research:

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/science/2009-07-08-scien...

Here's the thing - those "professions" are much more closed off to international students than STEM graduate programs. This absolutely influences choice!

It's pretty clear that some fields and paths to graduate study in the US are far more open to non-citizens than others, and that visa programs targeting STEM fields do provide an extra incentive for non-citizens to go into STEM graduate programs rather than other study paths. This doesn't make it the only reason, or the main motivation, but I'd say it is a motivating factor to go to grad school.

I tend to agree with you that once the MS is achieved, the motivation would be lower, but it still influences the field of study.

Its not. (Disclaimer:I have an EB-1)

Not sure I would agree. School gave me a bunch of the knowledge I'd very unlikely picked autodidactically. For example, the basic advanced maths package, which is a key to understanding numerous CS concepts. Finite state automations, Fourier transforms, dynamic programming, formal grammars, graph theory.. are not something I could be able to casually pick up with just high school knowledge and fumbling around. No doubt some people could, but am pretty average in this regard and I think the majority would relate to that.

I'd even argue non-academic things, like organizing a project, working in groups, being able to tell a dud from someone who delivers, meeting the deadlines and time planning, are better and less stressfully learned in the school.

The rest of your post makes sense, but you lost me at this sentiment. There is a lot more to computing that information systems and programming. I'm glad your career worked out, but there is certainly much in CS that you will simply never learn in the field.

I don't know what it's like on the Ivy League School level, but on the community college level; it seems like the courses are at least five-ten years out of date. (I'm not dumping on community colleges either. I have gotten more out of community colleges than state, or UC courses. I've alway been a huge supporter of community colleges.)

I really wanted to support my local community college, and learn something new, but every year I look through the offered courses, and even the catalogue, and it's just not worth the time, and now the money. The course are just too basic, and dated.

I honestly think tenure is to blame. Plus, I don't think most administrators know anything about computing, and just rubber stamp these antiquated courses. It's a shame because my local community college is surrounded by tech workers, and kids/adults who want to learn this stuff.

In other sciences, schools typically provide free tuition in addition to a decent annual stipend (for housing, food, supplies, entertainment, etc.). I'd guess most CS PhD programs are similar.

>Virtually nothing to gain FROM the PhD

That is probably true if you go into it assuming that. The idea is that you already have a longish (2-6 years) project that you want to work on. You gain whatever you'd like.

>There's just nothing in the field of computing that I believe couldn't be better learned by experience.

This is why one would work on a PhD.

But the work that I do isn't research, and I'm not advancing the field -- just solving business problems. If I was born in the late 60s vs late 70s, pursuing an academic career would have been a great option, but that ship sailed.

Nah, you just don't know what you don't know. There are subjects that are hard to pick up outside of a real course with an instructor, peers, projects, etc. Some areas of CS depend on graduate level math and would be very tough to pick up on your own.

When I say some fields you need formal education in a controlled setting, there's a few examples I can give to provide context.

If you want to go into medicine, you can't borrow a friend and just try things on them. By the time you go into the field any mistake you make becomes critical and it's difficult to log hours and gain experience without a formal educational environment.

To practice law you need to be able to pass the bar, you need to understand decades of case history, legal precedent and how the entire system functions so that you can feasibly operate within that system.

To get into management you can potentially gain experience in volunteer organizations but to do so you're likely going to have enough of a go-getter attitude to be elevated to those positions in the first place. It's not quite the same as saying "I'm going to read these books and learn management."

To go into various fields of engineering there are a number of systems to be understood, sometimes expensive equipment involved and literal danger to other people if things aren't done properly. You can certainly tinker your way into an interest, but you need the formal education in a controlled environment.

There are many other fields that fit within that bubble.

For most of computer science you can pick up and book, sit in front of your laptop and work, learn, experiment, try, fail, learn, improve continuously for virtually no cost other than your own time. You need a goal, then to work towards that goal you learn what you need to accomplish it and pick up those pieces to begin. When it sucks, you learn why and figure out how to improve it. You start optimizing. You need to make something faster you learn how it works under the hood. You need to hook up to some other system you learn about apis. You need to make the interface better, you learn about UX.

The cost to learn is time and that's why this field is constant learning.

I agree with other posters that most people are pursuing advanced math in their spare time. Neither am I but I don't often need to invoke advanced math. I know there are areas where one would need it more, but these days I do not know many people in this field who do.

The crux of my point is simply that, some of the best programmers I know have never gone to college and are 100% self taught. There are very few other fields that you can say that about.

That's all I was getting at.

This applies to undergraduate degrees, too. Therefore the argument that restricts it to Ph.D degrees is moot.

Furthermore, the 'path to work' is temporary. You still need a a work visa to work once your OPT has expired.

But computing Ph Ds are great for 1) the small portion of people who want to become academics in the field, and 2) non-citizens looking for a path to transition into the U.S. economy.

Unfortunately, this is probably another instance where hidebound immigration policy is creating a bubble (in higher ed) while preventing human capital from attaining its highest and best use (in the private economy (at least for four years)).

This isn't a case of merely an increase in foreign student PhD's. It's that the degrees are primarily foreign students, even though as your link shows, they are a minority of students on campus.

Side note, I love that they decided to show the distance scale on the map.

This is different for PhD students because you are talking about a potentially much longer period of time and much less ROI. This is especially true given the oversupply of PhDs in most fields relative to the number of actual tenure-track positions. If you can't get a tenure-track position, then you are probably over-qualified for most industry jobs and wont get much more compensation that someone with a masters.

For non-US students, the return is getting into the US on a visa and getting a post graduate technical degree from a US institution, both of which are much more likely to land you a US job (and probably wont hurt your chances in academia / industry in India / China either).