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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 10, 2023

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Many European universities are like this (especially in Italy, Germany, France to some extent outside the Grandes Ecoles). I see no evidence it produces any particularly better talent than the American system.

Something to keep in mind is that part of the American system's "production" of talent is brain-draining the rest of the world...

I would wager America is only "producing" talent in Computer Science. Rest of the sciences ~70% (guesstimate) of the faculty/researchers in US Universities are foreign.

Ironically enough selection into CS programs is relatively much more meritocratic.

That’s around the right percentage for grad students.

Foreign-born workers are about 50% of PhD engineers and computer scientists, and the fractions are lower for other sectors or with less education. They’re around 18% of the broader category of technical workers. Of course, some of these people are foreign born but naturalized. So I can’t give an exact number, but 50% is an upper bound.

I’ll also note that foreigners are concentrated in engineering/compsci relative to other fields. Including medicine. So we are quite probably producing significant fractions of skilled doctors, lawyers, and other prestige careers.