I agree that extended OPT for folks with "STEM" degrees that were "tuition generating" needs to stop, it is really just a back door to the US immigration system. However, many graduate STEM degrees (like a Ph.D. in engineering or biochemistry) are fully supported by US tax dollars since the students are paid by grant supported research assistantships. Now, whether admissions practices into those programs are favoring foreign applicants (in some cases yes) is another question. That said, it IS in the national interest to retain those folks in the USA since the US tax payer paid to train them. My fear is that the extended STEM OPT will be removed with no subtlety.
There needs to be a distinction made between tuition generating BS/MS programs (many of which are low quality even at top universities), and fully supported doctoral programs. There is no national interest in retaining those poorly trained MS students but paying to train Ph.D. students then kicking them out of the country is just dumb.
"Paying to train Ph.D. students then kicking them out of the country" is a gift to the rest of the world. If you think sending food aid to famine-stricken nations is good, then you must admit that "paying to train Ph.D. students then kicking them out of the country" is even better. The former is sending corn to eat; the latter is sending seed corn to flower into rising civilizations.
(I mean no dishonor if you oppose sending food aid to famine-stricken nations; at least then you're intellectually consistent.)
There is more than enough American-born talent to staff all America's needs. In fact, American-born talent is grossly underutilized. There will be no measurable lessening of America's STEM preeminence if we send foreign-born Ph.D. recipients home. There will be a measurable boost in the salaries of American engineers and scientists, though. We owe that to our posterity.
"Paying to train Ph.D. students then kicking them out of the country" is a win-win. Foreign countries reverse their brain drains and get back cutting-edge scholars. American universities get extra grad students without undercutting jobs for heritage Americans.
If you send all foreign born PhD recipients back to their home country, you are going to lose a lot of top talent. If you look at the last 100 American Nobel prize winners across all fields, 34 were born in a foreign country. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_by_country)
I think having less Nobel winners if we kicked them out is a measurable lessening of America's STEM preeminence, but we could probably measure it in other ways too (patents, citations).
If they went back to their home countries and won Nobel Prizes there, in what sense would their contributions be "lost"?
You greatly underestimate the number of Americans who would have won Nobel Prizes but didn't because there was less room for Americans in academia and other US scientific institutions.
Anyway, neither of those points is of primary importance. What's of primary importance is that bringing in millions of foreigners with totally incompatible values and cultures destroys a nation and is a treasonous betrayal of that nation's posterity. There is no amount of money or Nobel Prizes in the world that can make up for the profound destruction of America's once unique, high-trust culture. Our youth can't even conceive how good daily life in America once was--a place where children played outside unsupervised and real art was still being made (no longer). When the people who chose America as an economic zone over the welfare of the descendants of the original Americans reach their Final Judgment, He will not look well upon them.
Now I know more!!! I already know that it is hard to get into our State/Flagship university (very engineering oriented) because in state tuition is a lot less than out-state or international tuition. They play games with the acceptance letters for in state students. Now, I really understand what the deal is! Thanks.
Good post. I had no idea that the truly soft degree programs could be STEM. What a scam.
But one note: my discipline, landscape architecture, is (IMO) appropriately STEM. It's a widely misunderstood discipline; I know this because I rarely meet an adult outside of my work environment who knows what it is. People assume it's equivalent to ornamental horticulture, or primarily about garden design.
There is actually a significant overlap with civil engineering, structural engineering, and environmental engineering. A considerable overlap with urban planning. Landscape architects have to know how to do technical grading design, design stormwater/hydrological systems, design retaining walls and other site structures, design roads, work with principles of agronomy, ecosystems, etc. Planting design is part of it but rarely the primary focus of a design office.
Central Park in NYC is a work of landscape architecture. Sometimes people imagine it was preserved from development, but it was wholly created by the design team of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux: massive site grading to create topographical drama, internal roads, walkways, bridges, ponds, fountains, plazas, site structures, walls, buildings (Vaux was an architect), etc. A good example of contemporary landscape architecture in NYC is Brooklyn Bridge Park, or the High Line.
Occasionally we get students in our BLA program who wash out because they cannot handle the technical courses.
This isn’t all criticism. The key information here is in plain sight for anyone who chooses to look. If a stranger grabs my arm as I’m walking to keep me from stepping in the dog poop that I hadn’t noticed, I don’t concern myself with their name.
Says the guy with the Hugh Laurie avatar. You wouldn’t be an OPT beneficiary now would you?
The author isn’t alleging some vast, secret conspiracy without providing evidence, he’s publicizing something no one in mainstream media has bothered to check. Everything he’s written is true and verifiable down to the source documents.
> The original idea behind the STEM OPT extension was simple. OPT stands for Optional Practical Training, a program created by regulation in 1992 that lets foreign students on F-1 visas work in the U.S. after graduation.
It’s right there in the post, granted a bit farther down than it should be, but if you didn’t read that far you have no business commenting.
i get your concern and now i know about it and it is illuminating.
However literally every foreign worker and student i have ever met or ever heard of is here on an h1b visa in the “hard” stem fields like tech, engineering, and medicine. Literally never do i meet foreign drama students or comms majors.
The trump admin is too stupid to know the difference either and yes, we are going to take hits because of it. I suggest apply to them so we don’t pay for this in the long run.
First, he’s talking about OPT, not H-1B. Second, there’s no STEM requirement for the H-1B, all majors qualify. Third, students are on F-1s, never H-1Bs, so half your assertion is nonsensical. Fourth, your little bubble isn’t the universe but this is exactly the kind of uninformed comment I’ve come to expect from TDS ignoramuses.
You’re a bigger ignoramus than I thought if you have to ask this question. Do you think the Berklee College of Music (31% foreign students) is secretly an engineering school?
I see your point, although, if we are going to train them, I am happy to keep the brain drained folks in the USA. My lab does have several foreign nationals, but that is largely who the admission committee admitted that year when my most recent grant was funded (we dont have alot of say into the admitted pool). They are good people, and the tax payer has paid to train them and they will contribute to the USA.
BUT, if we take it back further in the STEM “food chain”…. the reality is that the “shortage” of American’s going to grad school in STEM (and the need to bring in foreign nationals to fill the need for graduate students) is also likely a manufactured issue. There are tons of Americans who would like to get STEM Ph.D.s but cant get admitted, particularly when considering “top” STEM programs such as MIT or Stanford. I just saw this first hand with my own kid. 3.9 GPA from top 20 Engineering program, three years of undergrad research, summer REU, numerous awards, and not even an interview at several top ranked engineering Ph.D programs. She got into the top program in her field and has a spot with a great fellowship, but the lack of even a zoom interview for many other top ranked programs which have large foreign enrollments demonstrates that too many American schools are not serious about training US citizens… When you routinely see entire labs of foreign nationals at top engineering programs things are messed up. Even in the “second tier” school that I teach at, we can usually find US citizens interested in doctoral education in STEM, and they tend to do better than many of the foreign nationals even though the foreign nationals may have stronger “paper” credentials.
That’s an interesting data point. What do you think is driving the foreign preference? I was under the impression that all or most STEM PhDs are full rides and cheap labor for the university, so there’s no tuition-based incentive to admit foreigners.
probably a combination of 1) cultural affiliation ie foreign born scientists/PIs tend to collect doctoral students from their home country to the point that some labs speak only Chinese, or Bengali, or Arabic within the lab 2) foreign students are less likely to push back against abusive advisors and/or are more willing to work 12 hours per day/7 days per week than US citizens- in fact, there is a Chinese whats app group that is devoted to the abuses of US based Chinese born computer science faculty to Chinese F1 visa holding grad students 3) the (mistaken) perception that perfect math GRE scores and/or extra coursework in a foreign country mean that the student will be more productive/creative as a STEM researcher.
In the end, most STEM grad programs at top schools allow admissions to be done by faculty primarily while the admissions committee has no real power
I agree that extended OPT for folks with "STEM" degrees that were "tuition generating" needs to stop, it is really just a back door to the US immigration system. However, many graduate STEM degrees (like a Ph.D. in engineering or biochemistry) are fully supported by US tax dollars since the students are paid by grant supported research assistantships. Now, whether admissions practices into those programs are favoring foreign applicants (in some cases yes) is another question. That said, it IS in the national interest to retain those folks in the USA since the US tax payer paid to train them. My fear is that the extended STEM OPT will be removed with no subtlety.
There needs to be a distinction made between tuition generating BS/MS programs (many of which are low quality even at top universities), and fully supported doctoral programs. There is no national interest in retaining those poorly trained MS students but paying to train Ph.D. students then kicking them out of the country is just dumb.
"Paying to train Ph.D. students then kicking them out of the country" is a gift to the rest of the world. If you think sending food aid to famine-stricken nations is good, then you must admit that "paying to train Ph.D. students then kicking them out of the country" is even better. The former is sending corn to eat; the latter is sending seed corn to flower into rising civilizations.
(I mean no dishonor if you oppose sending food aid to famine-stricken nations; at least then you're intellectually consistent.)
There is more than enough American-born talent to staff all America's needs. In fact, American-born talent is grossly underutilized. There will be no measurable lessening of America's STEM preeminence if we send foreign-born Ph.D. recipients home. There will be a measurable boost in the salaries of American engineers and scientists, though. We owe that to our posterity.
"Paying to train Ph.D. students then kicking them out of the country" is a win-win. Foreign countries reverse their brain drains and get back cutting-edge scholars. American universities get extra grad students without undercutting jobs for heritage Americans.
If you send all foreign born PhD recipients back to their home country, you are going to lose a lot of top talent. If you look at the last 100 American Nobel prize winners across all fields, 34 were born in a foreign country. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_by_country)
I think having less Nobel winners if we kicked them out is a measurable lessening of America's STEM preeminence, but we could probably measure it in other ways too (patents, citations).
If they went back to their home countries and won Nobel Prizes there, in what sense would their contributions be "lost"?
You greatly underestimate the number of Americans who would have won Nobel Prizes but didn't because there was less room for Americans in academia and other US scientific institutions.
Anyway, neither of those points is of primary importance. What's of primary importance is that bringing in millions of foreigners with totally incompatible values and cultures destroys a nation and is a treasonous betrayal of that nation's posterity. There is no amount of money or Nobel Prizes in the world that can make up for the profound destruction of America's once unique, high-trust culture. Our youth can't even conceive how good daily life in America once was--a place where children played outside unsupervised and real art was still being made (no longer). When the people who chose America as an economic zone over the welfare of the descendants of the original Americans reach their Final Judgment, He will not look well upon them.
Now I know more!!! I already know that it is hard to get into our State/Flagship university (very engineering oriented) because in state tuition is a lot less than out-state or international tuition. They play games with the acceptance letters for in state students. Now, I really understand what the deal is! Thanks.
Good post. I had no idea that the truly soft degree programs could be STEM. What a scam.
But one note: my discipline, landscape architecture, is (IMO) appropriately STEM. It's a widely misunderstood discipline; I know this because I rarely meet an adult outside of my work environment who knows what it is. People assume it's equivalent to ornamental horticulture, or primarily about garden design.
There is actually a significant overlap with civil engineering, structural engineering, and environmental engineering. A considerable overlap with urban planning. Landscape architects have to know how to do technical grading design, design stormwater/hydrological systems, design retaining walls and other site structures, design roads, work with principles of agronomy, ecosystems, etc. Planting design is part of it but rarely the primary focus of a design office.
Central Park in NYC is a work of landscape architecture. Sometimes people imagine it was preserved from development, but it was wholly created by the design team of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux: massive site grading to create topographical drama, internal roads, walkways, bridges, ponds, fountains, plazas, site structures, walls, buildings (Vaux was an architect), etc. A good example of contemporary landscape architecture in NYC is Brooklyn Bridge Park, or the High Line.
Occasionally we get students in our BLA program who wash out because they cannot handle the technical courses.
As an architect, I came here to defend the hard science creed of my landscape architect colleagues but I see you have already done that.
I hadn't heard of this--thanks for the info!
I’m always skeptical about people who are so cowardly that they have to post criticism anonymously.
The point may be valid but is this what we’ve come to?
How can anyone take this seriously?
That's fair. I previously addressed it here: https://www.facultyleaks.com/p/the-anonymity-question
Thanks. I will read that now.
This isn’t all criticism. The key information here is in plain sight for anyone who chooses to look. If a stranger grabs my arm as I’m walking to keep me from stepping in the dog poop that I hadn’t noticed, I don’t concern myself with their name.
Ha--great analogy.
Says the guy with the Hugh Laurie avatar. You wouldn’t be an OPT beneficiary now would you?
The author isn’t alleging some vast, secret conspiracy without providing evidence, he’s publicizing something no one in mainstream media has bothered to check. Everything he’s written is true and verifiable down to the source documents.
Nope. The Bertie Wooster Avatar is my spirit animal.
Don’t actually know what OPT is.
I assume it’s:
Occasionally Productive Today or
Outrageously Poor Timing?
> The original idea behind the STEM OPT extension was simple. OPT stands for Optional Practical Training, a program created by regulation in 1992 that lets foreign students on F-1 visas work in the U.S. after graduation.
It’s right there in the post, granted a bit farther down than it should be, but if you didn’t read that far you have no business commenting.
You’re assuming that I can remember anything that I read.
i get your concern and now i know about it and it is illuminating.
However literally every foreign worker and student i have ever met or ever heard of is here on an h1b visa in the “hard” stem fields like tech, engineering, and medicine. Literally never do i meet foreign drama students or comms majors.
The trump admin is too stupid to know the difference either and yes, we are going to take hits because of it. I suggest apply to them so we don’t pay for this in the long run.
First, he’s talking about OPT, not H-1B. Second, there’s no STEM requirement for the H-1B, all majors qualify. Third, students are on F-1s, never H-1Bs, so half your assertion is nonsensical. Fourth, your little bubble isn’t the universe but this is exactly the kind of uninformed comment I’ve come to expect from TDS ignoramuses.
i think it is universal that students and workers abroad from these visas are in the hard sciences
do we have hard numbers showing otherwise? that visas, no matter what their classification, are issued to Sri Lankan drama students?
You’re a bigger ignoramus than I thought if you have to ask this question. Do you think the Berklee College of Music (31% foreign students) is secretly an engineering school?
https://www.reuters.com/data/how-many-foreign-students-are-every-us-college-2025-05-22/
No Sri Lankans at Berklee but one person from Bangladesh. Is that exotic enough for you?
https://www.berklee.edu/sites/default/files/2026-02/2025-2026%20Berklee%20Factbook_2.pdf (page 14)
fuck if i know-music schools? yeah im sure we have thousands of unemployed violinists
but i know this-straight up hard sciences vastly outweigh anything else
NO SHIT
one kid from Bangladesh at Berklee?
You’re an idiot.
I see your point, although, if we are going to train them, I am happy to keep the brain drained folks in the USA. My lab does have several foreign nationals, but that is largely who the admission committee admitted that year when my most recent grant was funded (we dont have alot of say into the admitted pool). They are good people, and the tax payer has paid to train them and they will contribute to the USA.
BUT, if we take it back further in the STEM “food chain”…. the reality is that the “shortage” of American’s going to grad school in STEM (and the need to bring in foreign nationals to fill the need for graduate students) is also likely a manufactured issue. There are tons of Americans who would like to get STEM Ph.D.s but cant get admitted, particularly when considering “top” STEM programs such as MIT or Stanford. I just saw this first hand with my own kid. 3.9 GPA from top 20 Engineering program, three years of undergrad research, summer REU, numerous awards, and not even an interview at several top ranked engineering Ph.D programs. She got into the top program in her field and has a spot with a great fellowship, but the lack of even a zoom interview for many other top ranked programs which have large foreign enrollments demonstrates that too many American schools are not serious about training US citizens… When you routinely see entire labs of foreign nationals at top engineering programs things are messed up. Even in the “second tier” school that I teach at, we can usually find US citizens interested in doctoral education in STEM, and they tend to do better than many of the foreign nationals even though the foreign nationals may have stronger “paper” credentials.
That’s an interesting data point. What do you think is driving the foreign preference? I was under the impression that all or most STEM PhDs are full rides and cheap labor for the university, so there’s no tuition-based incentive to admit foreigners.
probably a combination of 1) cultural affiliation ie foreign born scientists/PIs tend to collect doctoral students from their home country to the point that some labs speak only Chinese, or Bengali, or Arabic within the lab 2) foreign students are less likely to push back against abusive advisors and/or are more willing to work 12 hours per day/7 days per week than US citizens- in fact, there is a Chinese whats app group that is devoted to the abuses of US based Chinese born computer science faculty to Chinese F1 visa holding grad students 3) the (mistaken) perception that perfect math GRE scores and/or extra coursework in a foreign country mean that the student will be more productive/creative as a STEM researcher.
In the end, most STEM grad programs at top schools allow admissions to be done by faculty primarily while the admissions committee has no real power