Date: Sat, 21 Apr 2012 23:57:06 -0700 From: Norm Matloff To: Norm Matloff Subject: Re: nice article, except for lack of the "A" word--POSTSCRIPT To: H-1B/L-1/offshoring e-newsletter (In reference to http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/SalzmanObama.txt) "The answer to this week's puzzler" is, of course, that it was A for Age. I'll briefly explain my point in the puzzler below, and add some links I think some of you will find interesting, maybe even fun to read. Then I will get serious again, and raise a question that I've never truly asked before in such a direct, even confrontational, manner. That Changing Gears article highlighted three new engineering graduates, reporting that they are getting great job offers. Good for them, but unfortunately the article overlooks the key point that I constantly focus on, the Age issue. The article ends with this passage: And, back in Akron, Joseph Bersuder, Marcus Grimm, and Cameron Close, the three engineering students, say they and their peers found plenty of offers in engineering. “At the end of my job search, I probably turned away six or seven interviews,” Close said. The question is, if we had more engineers, like the President and so many advocate, would that still be the case? That last is the wrong question. The right question is, 10-15 years from now, when Bersuder, Grimm and Close reach their mid-30s, will employers be pursuing them with as much vigor? The answer is likely No; the employers will still be hiring the new graduates, just as they are now, only Bersuder et al won't be new grads anymore. No need to rehash the age issue now, is there? During the last year, for instance, I've cited various quotes of CEOs in which they say their hiring--amid a claimed labor "shortage"--targets the new grads. I've also repeatedly explained why it is NOT an issue of up-to-date skill sets; it's just plain money, with the over-35 engineers being too expensive in salary and benefits. But it is sad that the article not only fails to cover this key issue of age, but also doesn't discuss the fact that this situation is causing an Internal Brain Drain in the U.S. Who wants to enter a field that may well become a dead end? Many students who are aware of that are searching for alternative professions. Charles Vest, quoted in the article as saying the nation needs more engineers, ought instead to be having nightmares about the Internal Brain Drain--what could be more disastrous for the nation than to have its best and brightest STEM Bachelor's degree graduates shun STEM careers? Professor Salzman, quoted extensively in the Changing Gears article, is someone whose work I've admired for quite a while now. He conducted the section of the 2001 NRC study that found that many employers admitted to paying H-1Bs less than comparable Americans. And of course he is also an author of the famous Urban Institute study, coauthored by Lindsay Lowell, that found we are producing plenty of STEM graduates, far more than we need. Clearly there is a pressing need for Salzman and Lowell to conduct a followup study, investigating WHY the students abandon STEM after earning their Bachelor's degrees. As many of you will recall, I have argued that this is due to low salaries and poor career longeivyt (relative to other career alternatives that people with these analytical talents have), which in turn are caused largely by the H-1B influx. I'll return to this point, but first list a blog page commenting on the Changing Gears article: http://factsandotherstubbornthings.blogspot.com/2012/04/do-we-need-more-engineers.html That blog is written by Daniel Kuehn, an economics PhD student who has, among other things, being doing research with Salzman. Well, there is another interesting connection, somewhat amusing (and maybe a bit embarrassing to me) but with very important implications. Kuehn was a participant in the Georgetown University conference last summer, titled Dynamics of the STEM Labor Market, which I reported on here: http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/SloanDC.txt (As noted in that link, the conference rules forbade identifying the participants, but in this case Kuehn identified himself.) Kuehn is apparently an Open Borders type, who views any restriction on foreign workers as undesirable impediments to the labor market. Nothing wrong with that; though I disagree, it is certainly an intellectually consistent stance. He highlighted this divergence of viewpoints in his blog review of the conference, at his link above. In his review, the amusing/embarrassing passage is: [I learned that] people are not their politics. One of the guys that aggravated me the most during the workshop because of his restrictive stance on high-skill immigration was really a pleasure to sit across from and talk to about other stuff during dinner. Well, that "aggravating" guy was me. :-) Thanks, Daniel, for the compliment, even if a bit backhanded. The serious point, though, is this: As I've written before, I found that Georgetown conference to be a real eye-opener, as I was appalled to find a general consensus among most of those present that we should "get the Indians." If you recall, the consensus, which I strongly object to, is that there are Good Guys and Bad Guys among H-1B employers, with the Good Guys being the "Intels" and the Bad Guys being the "Infosyses." "Get the Indians" means to pass legislation that places extra restrictions on the Indian/Indian-American-owned rent-a-programmer firms, while actually loosening the already-meager controls on the U.S. mainstream firms. My language here, "get the Indians," is overly harsh, in the sense it wrongly conjures up an image of racism and even bullying and sadism. :-) So, let me assure readers that I don't ascribe such feelings to any of the participants of the conference. Yet, if that phrasing has the wrong connotation, let me offer an equally-harsh but arguably accurate alternative, "Let's throw the Indians under the bus," which I regard as equally disturbing, and based on false premises. I think that there is a general understanding among researchers on H-1B that the age issue for engineers, especially in CS/EE is real, and that there is indeed an Internal Brain Drain. Harvard's Richard Freeman has written on the latter, and implied that there is an H-1B connection. Berkeley's Clair Brown has written on the age issue in EE, and explicitly connected it to the influx of foreign students. Eric Weinstein uncovered that internal NSF study that advocated bringing in a large influx of foreign students to hold PhD salaries down. Whether that represented official government policy or not, the resulting effects were that (a) STEM PhD wage growth did slow and (b) fewer American students were attracted to doctoral study, due to stagnant wages, just as the NSF forecast. I've shown repeatedly, including at the Georgetown conference, that the U.S. mainstream firms abuse the H-1B program too, both directly and via the age issue (go back to the Brown comment above). NONE of the phenomena cited in this paragraph are related to the Indian IT services firms (who don't hire PhDs, don't hire EEs, etc.); these troubling phenomena all relate to the U.S. mainstream firms. I ask, then, why the willingness to "throw the Indians under the bus"? Indian employers hire only 12% of the H-1Bs, and yet the mainstream, i.e. majority, employers' abuse of the visa program is pervasive. Is it possible that Kuehn's assessment of the conference participants was wrong, that most are just as Open Borders as he is? Again, that's a legitimate ideology, but I know a number of the participants personally, and know that they don't share Kuehn's ideology. I thus am baffled by their endorsement of the "under the bus" notion. Isn't an Internal Brain Drain something we should all be worried about, if not even terrified by? How can anyone in good conscience support "reform" bills, such as Lofgren's, that unfairly scapegoat the Indians while unjustifiably actually making things even easier for the equally-guilty mainstream? As I said, the Georgetown conference, filled with the movers and shakers on H-1B policy from both the research world and the Executive Branch of the federal government, was a real eye-opener for me. It has both puzzled and disturbed me ever since. Norm