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Comment by pr0duktiv | Hacker News Reader

Hm, at least speaking for my uni (ETH Zurich), lots of grad students from Asia come here for cheap tuition & good PhD salaries, but almost all Chinese grad students I asked want to go back to China afterwards. Ideally we would keep talented people here instead of paying for their education with taxes and have them go back afterwards.

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If you were running a country, would you want your brightest and best people leaving and never returning?

A large proportion of chinese people have to go back to China after being educated, or china will discourage them from leaving in the first place, since it wouldn't be in the national interest.

The US does similar stuff - through their worldwide taxation scheme, they discourage citizens from earning lots of money abroad. They're pretty much saying "if you're successful, we want you to bring those profits back to America".

1) This is anecdotal evidence but as far as I know it's difficult for non-EU people to get a work permit in Switzerland. I know quite a few students that completed the CS Master in ETHZ and that are from Egypt or China, etc. that could not get a job in Switzerland because it was hard to get a permit. Similar for Indian students that did their ETH Master in mechanical engineering, etc. All the students that I know wanted to stay and work in Switzerland.

2) Again, I might be wrong, but I feel a number of CS PhD students in ETHZ and EPFL are getting paid by European programs (e.g, ERC). So, it's not necessarily Swiss taxes that pay these people.

3) At the end of the day, the Swiss government or any government is making an investment on those students. As any investment, it might be profitable or not. Some students might stay in the country and pay back the investment by founding companies, getting good salaries and paying higher taxes, etc. versus some students that might just go back to their country. Actually, to me, it seems like a pretty good investment. If some student studies in China and then comes to Switzerland, Switzerland might have to pay for his/her education for a Master and a PhD, but Switzerland never paid for his kindergarten, primary, high-school and college years, etc., because for example China already paid for this.

4) Most of the papers getting published in universities (at least for CS) are published due to the hard work done by graduate and post-graduate students (with the help of their supervisor of course). Even if the students decide to leave Switzerland afterwards, they still increased the research-throughput of the Swiss university in which they worked. I believe we can agree that, that in itself is good.

To point 2): the EU research programs are co-financed by Switzerland. Otherwise, Switzerland wouldn't be allowed to participate in these programs. Hence, the EU research grants are still Swiss tax money in one or another way.

5) There are scholarships for young Chinese scholars that are co-financed by the ETHZ and the China Scholarship Council: https://ethz.ch/en/the-eth-zurich/global/eth-global-news-eve...

Maybe you could go with something like the Australian model where Uni is relatively expensive but high quality for international students while it is subsidised for domestic students with interest free loans and direct subsidies on course costs.

You are aware of the fact that at most ~8000 non-EEA people can get a work visa in Switzerland every year? This includes what would be called EB-1 visas in the US. A CS PhD graduate with no work experience has zero chance at passing the legal requirements.

There are almost no Asian people at Google Zurich.

I actually wasn't aware (I am not Swiss myself but apparently it was easy to get a permit as a EU citizen). Thanks for the info!

On the other hand this is a far more effective policy in combating inequality than simply handing out foreign aid.

> Ideally we would keep talented people here instead of paying for their education with taxes and have them go back afterwards.

Not sure how Swiss uni financing is setup, but I believe in most countries international (undergraduate) students pay full price so it's hard to argue that the host country is "paying for their education with taxes".

Not here, tuition is very low (<2k per year) at ETH (due to being heavily subsidized) and doesn’t depend on nationality

Can you expand more on why you feel like these students are being paid for with taxes? My understanding is that foreign students in the U.S. are typically paying massive amounts compared to their domestic peers. If anything they're subsidizing locals (assuming profits are used to expand capacity).

ETH Zurich is is Zurich... Switzerland

D'oh

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