In college I was friends with a lot of international students, and now in my work I deal with a lot of people who were international students, that then ended up on the H1-B track.
From my anecdotal experience, there's two classes of international students. The first class fits the stereotype of "brain gain". They are extremely intelligent, driven people, often with an ideological affinity to the United States, specifically its focus on individual excellence, hard work, freedom, and large rewards in return for great performance. These are the international students who create Startups in college, have 4.0 GPAs, and end up working at top US Banks, Law Firms or Tech Companies. When Elon Musk refers to the H1-B top 1%, these are the type of people he's familiar with in his work running elite Startups (including at one point himself).
The second class are the children of rich foreigners (or desperate parents willing to throw all their money to give their child success) who have "failed" within their own countries education system. This is particularly true in China, where the GaoCao is the final metric. No amount of studying will put you in an elite Chinese university if your IQ isn't meaningfully above average, as the GaoCao is effectively an IQ + studying test. Like the LSAT or the SAT, studying definitely gives you a leg up, but for most people there's a limit beyond which no amount of practice or studying will help you.
Having not been in the top 1% or 5%, parents throw huge amounts of money at gaming the US admission system to get into a high US university. Since Chinese eduction is so memorization-based and intense compared to the US, even average Chinese students are decently prepared to create an impressive application. Combine this with outright fraud with admission's essays, reference letters, and hiring lookalikes to sit-in on important tests (all stories I've heard from people who claimed they did this), and these underperformers get in to the US.
Some of the second class have super-rich parents, so they just live in luxury off their allowance in the US. Others, specifically those of middle class parents, have an all-or-nothing approach, where they need to get a job in order to survive, but are often woefully underprepared compared to what their credentials might suggest.
The first class of international students are the "Elite Human Capital" the H1-B system is partially designed to attract. We WANT these people, ideally all of them, from around the world, as they're the ones running the trillion-dollar tech companies that have made the US so wealthy in the past few decades. A few thousand of these people could honestly be the difference between US dominance in AI, Battery Technology, Self Driving Cars, and any other transformational technology you can imagine.
The second class of people are more difficult to deal with. The children of wealthy parents are great since they spend so much on luxury that they effectively act as a wealth transfer tool back to the US. Luxury products are usually very high margin, low labor to produce, and if a $300 meal in New York balances out a literal ton of steel from China, I think the US is getting the better end of the deal.
The mediocre students from the second class are the problem. They give all H1-B students a bad name, and generally end up underperforming everywhere they go. The ideal outcome for them is to be a below average worker in a large corporate machine that's too incompetent to fire them. They are (maybe) net-drains on the economy, but their real damage is done when they apply for H1-B on equal footing as the elite students I mention before. It's an absolute travesty that our system is giving an equal playing field to incompetent and competent people.
Whether my experience is representative, I don't know. If it is, I think a better system would be to give every high-performing student a fast-track to a Visa. Whether that's a reformed H1-B or a new category I don't know. Maybe make it conditional on any of the following;
Quite a few, but almost none from the second class I describe. Literally none of the unproductive second class, who I assume have high enough living standards and a social safety net so it doesn’t make any sense to come to the US.
Much more average students, which I assume is a result of having a much easier time getting into US schools. A few of the extremely productive types but these were limited in number.
Very interesting to hear. I'm glad Europeans are doing fine. I think them being more average students might have to do with the relatively much more lax and simpler educational systems we have here. Americans don't realize how competitive and utilitarian they are in their education compared to Europe.
If the top 1% of H1b is the one we 'actually' want, then it seems far more reasonable to me to cut the size of the H1b program to only allow some thousand applicants per year, rather than trying to invent some new test or visa system that is open to being manipulated and gamed.
Then we would only get 10 top 1% applicants out of 1,000 under the current rules.
By top 1%, I don't think Musk is referring to top 1% of H1-B recipients, but top 1% of workers in general. It's also just hyperbole, as top 1% is overly restrictive when it comes to accepting excellent people.
The current rules assume a much larger applicant pool. That's why we have the program being used to fill out positions at 7-11. I would think drastically limiting the size would result in choosier picks.
The current system assigns visa’s semi-randomly. It is downright shameful when a 711 worker gets a Visa when a $200,000/year programmer is denied the same due to random chance.
I’ve seen top 1% workers have to go back to school for a master’s degree due to getting unlucky with the H1-B lottery.
For US fathers, the sons land at the 46th income percentile. Most immigrant groups do better than that, with China and India landing around 64th. That suggests that, at least for poorer immigrants, the conditions of their original country suppressed achievement and the latent (heritable) ability is higher.
I don’t know of data for high income immigrants. On the one hand, there’s regression to the mean. On the other hand, they’ll still land well above the American average, thereby improving it.
This is referring to immigrant underplacement, which is a known phenomenon that we sometimes have the ability to account for, and which isn't super relevant here.
1) any metric you establish the immigrant has a very strong incentive to game. So while these are improvements, I expect people will adjust in time to exploit the system in new ways. This is what’s happened in the anglosphere as regards Indian immigration.
2) instead of having beuracrats try to come up with formulas for what such a such a position should pay, let’s just charge a bunch of money for a visa. If you’re productive enough to cough up the money, you’re in. No guessing games, simple and pure.
Another added benefit is that it raises revenue that can compensate natives for any perceived externalities.
3) the real issue is always going to be family re-unification and birthright citizenship. Bryan Caplan told a story of a Nigerian doctor that chain migrated 150 family members.
This is another way in which “make them pay” works. If you have to pay a large sum to re-unify each family member this will put a damper on the importation of less able chain migration
By the by, I note that today I would preferentially hire from DeVry than Harvard for a recent grad. My feeling is that Harvard no longer teaches its students much that is actually relevant and instead rams grievence studies and the like down their throats in a fashion not dissimilar to how French peasants make foie gras.
I also, and very specifically, assume that anyone who has an MBA from any university or business school attained before he or she has had more than trivial work experience to be, as with Harvard grads, a net negative to the organization.
As for the value of a foreign degree, again I feel it very much depends on the institution. I'm fairly sure (based in part on my employment history that includes two stints in the US) that my degree - a BA in Comp Sci from some ancient heap of stone in East Anglia - is better than most US degrees in terms of teaching me how to think though I think I've only used stuff I was directly taught in it a couple of times in the past 35 years. I base that on how I have seen recent (at the time) graduates from moderately well known US schools fumble in ways that I didn't.
I think that's a key aspect missing from this piece - "foreign degrees" have huge variation in quality, between literally Oxbridge and actually entirely fake diplomas..
The Dutch and the UK have visa categories that are based on having attended a top internationally ranked university. Seems like a much better solution than Cognizant bringing in people because their boss is from the same caste.
I think your reasoning has some limitations that need to be addressed, so I'll try to explain things more from a European perspective:
Firstly, it should be noted that the aforementioned points mostly pertain to China, India, Russia and a select number of other countries, including South Korea. In these nations, the primary objective for individuals is to achieve optimal grades in standardised tests (a sentiment that is, to a certain extent, shared by Americans). In contrast, the majority of European countries adopt an alternative pedagogical approach, eschewing the use of standardised tests in favour of a more varied and individualised education. This approach renders the notion of preparing for IQ-like tests somewhat redundant as you cannot prepare as well for tests anyway.
Secondly, setting aside the point previously discussed, the assumption is made that educational systems are similar and comparable between very different countries. However, as I am mostly able to speak on the basis of European countries, it is clear that secondary and tertiary educational systems differ extensively. For instance, in Germany, the 'Gymnasium' is a form of secondary school that leads to the Abitur diploma, which is the only qualification that directly admits students to state universities (in Germany, state universities are regarded as the most challenging and prestigious). The official numbers demonstrate that a mere 40% of a yearly cohort is granted the opportunity to attend such a Gymnasium after elementary school. Of these 40%, only 30% obtain an Abitur. Consequently, the proportion of individuals who attend a (state) university in Germany is considerably lower than in America. It should be noted, however, that there are other institutions in Germany, such as Fachhochschulen, that also grant a Bachelor's or Master's degree. However, these degrees are of a different nature. Additionally, there are a lot of countries that offer high-paying alternatives to attending University (Google the 'Ausbildungssystem' in Germany or HTL system in Austria for more information).
Thirdly, the issue of grade inflation is salient, given that European countries do not experience the same level of this phenomenon as universities in the US, China and other countries. For example, if an individual were to graduate from a German institution such as RWTH Aachen or University of Heidelberg with a 2.0 (equivalent to a 2.8 GPA in America), they would likely be placed within the top 10% of their class. A 3.5 to 4.0 GPA is almost unattainable at most state schools. But also in other European countries, such as Greece and the Netherlands, a point system ranging from 0(worst) to 10 (best) is used, with a score of 5 being the passing threshold. Attaining a score of 7 or 8 generally places one within the top 5% of their class. Nevertheless, the Bologna Process stipulates that the degree awarded by a university must be referred to as either a Bachelor's or Master's degree. This further complicates the comparison of degrees between different institutions. But I think it's widely acknowledged that especially central and Northern European countries have a high number of scientists, doctors and engineers, and scientists that are generally regarded as being among the most accomplished in their field.
Last but not least, we don't have the Ivy League . Even though this varies considerably between different European countries, it remains noteworthy. In Central Europeans and Skandinavien countries such as Switzerland, Sweden or Germany, admission to any university (with the exception of medical school) is relatively straightforward. However, it is challenging to successfully complete a university degree, as courses are designed to filter students based on their aptitude, particularly during the first half of a Bachelor's degree. This phenomenon is indicative of a highly competitive environment, where students are subjected to rigorous selection measures from the beginning of their studies. Given the rigorous academic standards observed across all state universities, which are funded by taxpayers, the university attended becomes a less significant factor in the eyes of students and employers. This hypothesis is supported by the analysis of CVs of prominent German CEOs and politicians, which frequently list universities that are not widely known outside Europe. A cursory comparison of the curricula of prestigious institutions such as the Technical University of Munich and less renowned universities like the University of Bamberg reveals no significant disparities in terms of curriculum or the rigour of examinations. Consequently, a significant proportion of Germans and Swiss enrol at the nearest university to their place of residence or birth, or the university in their preferred city (e.g. Berlin), without giving due consideration to its reputation or ranking. This phenomenon can be primarily attributed to the perception among the majority of German/Swiss/Swedish employers that a university's reputation is of minimal significance, given the high standards across all state universities. However, it is noteworthy that the probability of graduating or graduating with very good grades is associated with the discipline pursued. For instance, Business Administration is reputed to be more inclined to confer commendable grades, while engineering degrees are regarded as being rather stringent.
In summary, there is no institution in Germany analogous to the Ivy League in the United States, which is perceived to guarantee to educate the most 'capable' or 'intelligent students'.
This is just a short list of reasons why Americans don't understand the education system in Europe, and why they are often confused about why they don't get good grades when they are studying abroard in Europe.
Otherwise, I think your suggested changes to legal migration are a good idea for countries like China or India. It seems more 'meritocratic' to focus more on real-life achievements, like income, when admitting people to the US. This is at least better than relying on college degrees, since the signaling value of a degree, even from a highly-ranked university, has declined over time, even in western countries (like the computer science graduates from Berkeley).
Well, 2 of our (Anglophone) kids have taken their local CS degrees to jobs in other (Anglophone) nations.
The first was as a remote role during covid that then, after covid, required 3 days per week 'in the office'. He describes his job (and degree production) market as essentially being as one with our local one here except with more opportunities for networking. (Is that how the EU works?)
For the other kid, earlier last year as a new graduate it was more of a case of discovering the receiving nation (Britain) awash with fancy though empty degrees and she had to battle (ie write code) to get recognition.
Here students are discouraged from doing 'honours' if they don't intend to stay in academia. She instead did a 'double' (CS and Physics with >3.8 GPA equivalent throughout). Whereas in Britain everyone, including the dummies, had done 'honours'.
Maybe I'm too stupid for the test, but I'm confused. Do all three of the stores sell groceries, and I get to pick the one I want? Presumably to optimize the route, as it doesn't distinguish between Giant and Whole Foods.
In college I was friends with a lot of international students, and now in my work I deal with a lot of people who were international students, that then ended up on the H1-B track.
From my anecdotal experience, there's two classes of international students. The first class fits the stereotype of "brain gain". They are extremely intelligent, driven people, often with an ideological affinity to the United States, specifically its focus on individual excellence, hard work, freedom, and large rewards in return for great performance. These are the international students who create Startups in college, have 4.0 GPAs, and end up working at top US Banks, Law Firms or Tech Companies. When Elon Musk refers to the H1-B top 1%, these are the type of people he's familiar with in his work running elite Startups (including at one point himself).
The second class are the children of rich foreigners (or desperate parents willing to throw all their money to give their child success) who have "failed" within their own countries education system. This is particularly true in China, where the GaoCao is the final metric. No amount of studying will put you in an elite Chinese university if your IQ isn't meaningfully above average, as the GaoCao is effectively an IQ + studying test. Like the LSAT or the SAT, studying definitely gives you a leg up, but for most people there's a limit beyond which no amount of practice or studying will help you.
Having not been in the top 1% or 5%, parents throw huge amounts of money at gaming the US admission system to get into a high US university. Since Chinese eduction is so memorization-based and intense compared to the US, even average Chinese students are decently prepared to create an impressive application. Combine this with outright fraud with admission's essays, reference letters, and hiring lookalikes to sit-in on important tests (all stories I've heard from people who claimed they did this), and these underperformers get in to the US.
Some of the second class have super-rich parents, so they just live in luxury off their allowance in the US. Others, specifically those of middle class parents, have an all-or-nothing approach, where they need to get a job in order to survive, but are often woefully underprepared compared to what their credentials might suggest.
The first class of international students are the "Elite Human Capital" the H1-B system is partially designed to attract. We WANT these people, ideally all of them, from around the world, as they're the ones running the trillion-dollar tech companies that have made the US so wealthy in the past few decades. A few thousand of these people could honestly be the difference between US dominance in AI, Battery Technology, Self Driving Cars, and any other transformational technology you can imagine.
The second class of people are more difficult to deal with. The children of wealthy parents are great since they spend so much on luxury that they effectively act as a wealth transfer tool back to the US. Luxury products are usually very high margin, low labor to produce, and if a $300 meal in New York balances out a literal ton of steel from China, I think the US is getting the better end of the deal.
The mediocre students from the second class are the problem. They give all H1-B students a bad name, and generally end up underperforming everywhere they go. The ideal outcome for them is to be a below average worker in a large corporate machine that's too incompetent to fire them. They are (maybe) net-drains on the economy, but their real damage is done when they apply for H1-B on equal footing as the elite students I mention before. It's an absolute travesty that our system is giving an equal playing field to incompetent and competent people.
Whether my experience is representative, I don't know. If it is, I think a better system would be to give every high-performing student a fast-track to a Visa. Whether that's a reformed H1-B or a new category I don't know. Maybe make it conditional on any of the following;
- 2 SD above US mean in IQ
- 2 SD above US mean in starting salary
- 2 SD above US mean in educational attainment
Did you meet any European international student? In which group would you say they belonged?
Quite a few, but almost none from the second class I describe. Literally none of the unproductive second class, who I assume have high enough living standards and a social safety net so it doesn’t make any sense to come to the US.
Much more average students, which I assume is a result of having a much easier time getting into US schools. A few of the extremely productive types but these were limited in number.
Very interesting to hear. I'm glad Europeans are doing fine. I think them being more average students might have to do with the relatively much more lax and simpler educational systems we have here. Americans don't realize how competitive and utilitarian they are in their education compared to Europe.
If the top 1% of H1b is the one we 'actually' want, then it seems far more reasonable to me to cut the size of the H1b program to only allow some thousand applicants per year, rather than trying to invent some new test or visa system that is open to being manipulated and gamed.
Then we would only get 10 top 1% applicants out of 1,000 under the current rules.
By top 1%, I don't think Musk is referring to top 1% of H1-B recipients, but top 1% of workers in general. It's also just hyperbole, as top 1% is overly restrictive when it comes to accepting excellent people.
The current rules assume a much larger applicant pool. That's why we have the program being used to fill out positions at 7-11. I would think drastically limiting the size would result in choosier picks.
The current system assigns visa’s semi-randomly. It is downright shameful when a 711 worker gets a Visa when a $200,000/year programmer is denied the same due to random chance.
I’ve seen top 1% workers have to go back to school for a master’s degree due to getting unlucky with the H1-B lottery.
Maybe they can still raise the long run human capital of the US because their children outperform. See the data (from a 2021 AER paper) for incomes of sons of immigrant fathers at the 25th percentile: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/28/upshot/immigration-america-rise-poor.html
For US fathers, the sons land at the 46th income percentile. Most immigrant groups do better than that, with China and India landing around 64th. That suggests that, at least for poorer immigrants, the conditions of their original country suppressed achievement and the latent (heritable) ability is higher.
I don’t know of data for high income immigrants. On the one hand, there’s regression to the mean. On the other hand, they’ll still land well above the American average, thereby improving it.
This is referring to immigrant underplacement, which is a known phenomenon that we sometimes have the ability to account for, and which isn't super relevant here.
1) any metric you establish the immigrant has a very strong incentive to game. So while these are improvements, I expect people will adjust in time to exploit the system in new ways. This is what’s happened in the anglosphere as regards Indian immigration.
2) instead of having beuracrats try to come up with formulas for what such a such a position should pay, let’s just charge a bunch of money for a visa. If you’re productive enough to cough up the money, you’re in. No guessing games, simple and pure.
Another added benefit is that it raises revenue that can compensate natives for any perceived externalities.
3) the real issue is always going to be family re-unification and birthright citizenship. Bryan Caplan told a story of a Nigerian doctor that chain migrated 150 family members.
This is another way in which “make them pay” works. If you have to pay a large sum to re-unify each family member this will put a damper on the importation of less able chain migration
By the by, I note that today I would preferentially hire from DeVry than Harvard for a recent grad. My feeling is that Harvard no longer teaches its students much that is actually relevant and instead rams grievence studies and the like down their throats in a fashion not dissimilar to how French peasants make foie gras.
I also, and very specifically, assume that anyone who has an MBA from any university or business school attained before he or she has had more than trivial work experience to be, as with Harvard grads, a net negative to the organization.
As for the value of a foreign degree, again I feel it very much depends on the institution. I'm fairly sure (based in part on my employment history that includes two stints in the US) that my degree - a BA in Comp Sci from some ancient heap of stone in East Anglia - is better than most US degrees in terms of teaching me how to think though I think I've only used stuff I was directly taught in it a couple of times in the past 35 years. I base that on how I have seen recent (at the time) graduates from moderately well known US schools fumble in ways that I didn't.
I think that's a key aspect missing from this piece - "foreign degrees" have huge variation in quality, between literally Oxbridge and actually entirely fake diplomas..
The Dutch and the UK have visa categories that are based on having attended a top internationally ranked university. Seems like a much better solution than Cognizant bringing in people because their boss is from the same caste.
I think your reasoning has some limitations that need to be addressed, so I'll try to explain things more from a European perspective:
Firstly, it should be noted that the aforementioned points mostly pertain to China, India, Russia and a select number of other countries, including South Korea. In these nations, the primary objective for individuals is to achieve optimal grades in standardised tests (a sentiment that is, to a certain extent, shared by Americans). In contrast, the majority of European countries adopt an alternative pedagogical approach, eschewing the use of standardised tests in favour of a more varied and individualised education. This approach renders the notion of preparing for IQ-like tests somewhat redundant as you cannot prepare as well for tests anyway.
Secondly, setting aside the point previously discussed, the assumption is made that educational systems are similar and comparable between very different countries. However, as I am mostly able to speak on the basis of European countries, it is clear that secondary and tertiary educational systems differ extensively. For instance, in Germany, the 'Gymnasium' is a form of secondary school that leads to the Abitur diploma, which is the only qualification that directly admits students to state universities (in Germany, state universities are regarded as the most challenging and prestigious). The official numbers demonstrate that a mere 40% of a yearly cohort is granted the opportunity to attend such a Gymnasium after elementary school. Of these 40%, only 30% obtain an Abitur. Consequently, the proportion of individuals who attend a (state) university in Germany is considerably lower than in America. It should be noted, however, that there are other institutions in Germany, such as Fachhochschulen, that also grant a Bachelor's or Master's degree. However, these degrees are of a different nature. Additionally, there are a lot of countries that offer high-paying alternatives to attending University (Google the 'Ausbildungssystem' in Germany or HTL system in Austria for more information).
Thirdly, the issue of grade inflation is salient, given that European countries do not experience the same level of this phenomenon as universities in the US, China and other countries. For example, if an individual were to graduate from a German institution such as RWTH Aachen or University of Heidelberg with a 2.0 (equivalent to a 2.8 GPA in America), they would likely be placed within the top 10% of their class. A 3.5 to 4.0 GPA is almost unattainable at most state schools. But also in other European countries, such as Greece and the Netherlands, a point system ranging from 0(worst) to 10 (best) is used, with a score of 5 being the passing threshold. Attaining a score of 7 or 8 generally places one within the top 5% of their class. Nevertheless, the Bologna Process stipulates that the degree awarded by a university must be referred to as either a Bachelor's or Master's degree. This further complicates the comparison of degrees between different institutions. But I think it's widely acknowledged that especially central and Northern European countries have a high number of scientists, doctors and engineers, and scientists that are generally regarded as being among the most accomplished in their field.
Last but not least, we don't have the Ivy League . Even though this varies considerably between different European countries, it remains noteworthy. In Central Europeans and Skandinavien countries such as Switzerland, Sweden or Germany, admission to any university (with the exception of medical school) is relatively straightforward. However, it is challenging to successfully complete a university degree, as courses are designed to filter students based on their aptitude, particularly during the first half of a Bachelor's degree. This phenomenon is indicative of a highly competitive environment, where students are subjected to rigorous selection measures from the beginning of their studies. Given the rigorous academic standards observed across all state universities, which are funded by taxpayers, the university attended becomes a less significant factor in the eyes of students and employers. This hypothesis is supported by the analysis of CVs of prominent German CEOs and politicians, which frequently list universities that are not widely known outside Europe. A cursory comparison of the curricula of prestigious institutions such as the Technical University of Munich and less renowned universities like the University of Bamberg reveals no significant disparities in terms of curriculum or the rigour of examinations. Consequently, a significant proportion of Germans and Swiss enrol at the nearest university to their place of residence or birth, or the university in their preferred city (e.g. Berlin), without giving due consideration to its reputation or ranking. This phenomenon can be primarily attributed to the perception among the majority of German/Swiss/Swedish employers that a university's reputation is of minimal significance, given the high standards across all state universities. However, it is noteworthy that the probability of graduating or graduating with very good grades is associated with the discipline pursued. For instance, Business Administration is reputed to be more inclined to confer commendable grades, while engineering degrees are regarded as being rather stringent.
In summary, there is no institution in Germany analogous to the Ivy League in the United States, which is perceived to guarantee to educate the most 'capable' or 'intelligent students'.
This is just a short list of reasons why Americans don't understand the education system in Europe, and why they are often confused about why they don't get good grades when they are studying abroard in Europe.
Otherwise, I think your suggested changes to legal migration are a good idea for countries like China or India. It seems more 'meritocratic' to focus more on real-life achievements, like income, when admitting people to the US. This is at least better than relying on college degrees, since the signaling value of a degree, even from a highly-ranked university, has declined over time, even in western countries (like the computer science graduates from Berkeley).
What exact individual incentives are given to people to perform well on these tests?
If there are no personal incentives, then all you're measuring is cultural willingness to put in effort on a test that doesn't matter.
Glad to see Dr. Richwine vindicated yet again!
You are an example of an arrogant person.
Well, 2 of our (Anglophone) kids have taken their local CS degrees to jobs in other (Anglophone) nations.
The first was as a remote role during covid that then, after covid, required 3 days per week 'in the office'. He describes his job (and degree production) market as essentially being as one with our local one here except with more opportunities for networking. (Is that how the EU works?)
For the other kid, earlier last year as a new graduate it was more of a case of discovering the receiving nation (Britain) awash with fancy though empty degrees and she had to battle (ie write code) to get recognition.
Here students are discouraged from doing 'honours' if they don't intend to stay in academia. She instead did a 'double' (CS and Physics with >3.8 GPA equivalent throughout). Whereas in Britain everyone, including the dummies, had done 'honours'.
Maybe I'm too stupid for the test, but I'm confused. Do all three of the stores sell groceries, and I get to pick the one I want? Presumably to optimize the route, as it doesn't distinguish between Giant and Whole Foods.
I have told you many times that I have the solution to the low fertility crisis, but you ignore me.
you seem stable, buddy
Nominative determinism?