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Comment by yaketysax | Hacker News Reader

"Leave graduate school to people from India and China, for whom the prospects at home are even worse."

Even worse in terms of what?

It's been 15 years since this article was originally written, which doesn't seem like a long time.

But China's GDP was $1T in 1999, and was $9T in 2013. I confess near-absolute ignorance but the job prospects for advanced degrees in China probably have gotten at least a little better in that time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_GDP_of_the_People's...

the problem is far more people getting a advanced degree.

In 1999, if you hold a Phd degree from US, it is easy to find a faculty position in China. However, Even you hold a PhD degree from Top Univ in US today, you can hardly find a faculty position in China. You have to do postdoc to publish more papers in top journal.

I agree with you. I see the same pattern with Indian science landscape. Unless you have nice and strong connections, landing an academic position in India is tough too, even with a PhD from some ace university in the US.

And China's GNI per capita (PPP) in 2013 was still just about 20% that of the US: $10,900 in current intl dollars [1]; and India's is half of that, at $5,080 [op cit].

Notwithstanding all that moral panic about China and India, it's hard to fathom how desperately poor these countries were throughout the twentieth century in the first place --and how in many ways they still are.

[1] http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD

I presume that he means that economic conditions are so bad in India and China that people would go through poverty in American Graduate schools instead of staying back home.

I think there is some truth and some hyperbole to that presumption. Especially in the past five years when both nations have seen strong economic growth. Not all people who come from India are the same. Not all American graduate schools are the same. I did a part of my high school and my undergrad in India and came to America as a part of a EECS PhD program at UT, Austin. All of the people who got accepted in my program from both India and China were either academically incredibly strong (top of their classes at strong undergraduate programs in India/China) or had done relevant research. This was true also for the American undergraduate students in my program. Economically speaking, none of the Indian/Chinese students were going to suffer if they didn't join a PhD program in America. They had very good jobs. (A job at Google India in 2009 was pretty fucking hard to get into what with dozens of interviews and so on.).

Now, this is only part of the story. There were at the same time enough lots of students in India who either found it hard to get a job or wanted to improve on their economic situation who came to (equally shitty) graduate schools in America in order to better their situation. Presumably the same is true for students from China.

I believe worse in terms of quality of research, education while having a good stipend. I understand there might be exceptions on either side.

find a job.

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