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Comment by rguzman | Hacker News Reader

> A 2013 study by the Economic Policy Institute showed that American universities graduate 50 percent more students in computer, information science, and engineering each year than are hired in those fields

This is a reasoning flaw: companies don't need people who graduate from certain fields. They need people with certain skills that are difficult to attain. A degree in those fields is correlated with the skills in question, but it is very far from a predictor.

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And companies can only find those skill abroad? And not by - say - offering local graduates lower starter pay but extra training?

When everyone is talking about how hard it is to predict hiring outcomes, it's a bit of a stretch to suggest that this problem magically disappears for prospects who happen to be from other countries.

You have a finite amount of smart people in the USA, the only way to increase supply is by importing them. You can teach skills but you can't teach talent.

I think the problem is also that companies are no longer as willing to train new hires. It can take a lot of work to take an entry level employee and train them up to the point where they can do the job you really want to hire for. When people worked for the same company for decades it was easily worth it, but now that workers hop around every few years fewer companies are willing to make the investment, hence the fact that everyone is looking for experienced engineers, and recent grads from all but the best schools can have a bit more of a tough time.

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