WHERE HAVE ALL THE COLLEGE-EDUCATED GONE?

LONG TIME PASSING

Perhaps this is old news, but the U.S. appears to be losing its edge in attracting and retaining not only the best and the brightest, but even those who possess a minimum of an undergraduate degree.  According to a recent study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (“OECD”) at present, 25% of the 255 million people worldwide with a bachelor's degree or higher currently reside in the United States. But that share is expected to shrink in the coming years, as developing countries such as Korea and China push more and more of their citizens into college. China already accounts for 12% of the world's college-educated working population and, among young workers aged 25-35, China accounts for 18% of the college-educated. 

For reasons unclear to the authors of this blog (other than that the United States charges more in tuition than any other country in the survey), the United States is showing no growth in the share of young people who go to college compared to a generation ago.  According to the OECD study’s author, the United States is quite alone in that young people entering the labor market are not better educated than people leaving the labor market. Indeed, as the OECD writes, “the expansion of tertiary education in many countries has narrowed the advantage of the United States both in overall levels of attainment and in the sheer number of individuals with tertiary education.”

While a meaningful reduction in U.S. college tuition across the board is, of course, not in the cards, there are other avenues available to attract and retain the college educated.  A step in the right direction would be to eliminate altogether the H-1B cap that has been arbitrarily set by Congress.  The U.S. caps the H-1B “specialty occupation” visa at 85,000 per year. As of September 9th, USCIS advised that it has received 32,200 regular cap cases and 16,700 against the U.S. advanced degree cap. Based on current projections (with usage about the same as that of the last fiscal year), this year’s limit is likely to be exhausted in January 2012—which means that, after such date, employers will be unable to hire new H-1B workers who are subject to the cap until October 1, 2012.

Another option would be to implement a plan proposed by Mitt Romney—one in which foreign nationals with a foreign master’s degree in science, engineering or math (rather than an advanced U.S. degree) would not only be exempt from the H-1B cap, but also be eligible for a green card.  The latter green card plan is one that has been proposed previously by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle without success.

In today’s economic environment, no doubt it may seem counterintuitive to some to implement any plan that enables more foreign nationals to work either temporarily or permanently in the U.S.  A futuristic view, however, of the continued shrinking of our college-educated population certainly does not seem to be a good alternative.

WHEN WILL WE EVER LEARN?

WHEN WILL WE EVER LEARN?

Post Authored By: Anthony F. Siliato, Esq. and Scott R. Malyk, Esq. of Meyner and Landis LLP

Comments

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The H-1B Visa Blog by Siliato and Malyk: WHERE HAVE ALL THE COLLEGE-EDUCATED GONE?

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The H-1B Visa Blog by Siliato and Malyk: WHERE HAVE ALL THE COLLEGE-EDUCATED GONE?

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The H-1B Visa Blog by Siliato and Malyk: WHERE HAVE ALL THE COLLEGE-EDUCATED GONE?

[Ali]

up there, Mr. Cotton-top. Wish we could have been there to cebrleate with you, but at least we got to see pics thanks to the photog in the family. Love you!

[Moncler Speichern Online]

Go for someone who makes you smile because it takes only a smile to make a dark day seem bright.

[uk immigration lawyer]

College education is the most important. It determines your future job. So college students should value their education.

[Dhamon]

Well spoken . For every H1-B candidate hired by a corporation here in US it means 1 less US educated citizen / person havign green card employed.

It's not that equivalenet to a Medical degree whihc takes 10 years of education to acquire one. We should be curtaling the number of H-1B visa people to help employment numbers. In IT sector we are losing jobs to Indian IT companies who bring people on H-1 B and even L-1 category to bring people for IT Services jobs

Its a wage suppressing service technique employed by US Corporations

[Dhamon]

I work in the Software sector and there are no dearth of people in te IT Sector looking for jobs. Any open position has 20 resumes coming for any software related jobs.

People with advanced degrees need to be immigrated but we dont need to increase the quota for the H-1B limit. We need to reduce it so that outsourcing companies ( Infosys, TCS, Accenture and IBM Inida dont keep shipping thier folks here for filling contract jobs)

We need not the people from Indian software companies come here on H-1B visas work here a few years and after collecting some savings here and then using the same money back in thier home country to develop other countries economies.

[John Spiegel]

While cost is a factor, the US’ relative overall affluence should offset that to a notable degree. To some degree, saturation is a consideration. With a much higher percentage of college-able already educated, we have less room for growth.

Most concerning may be a question of opportunity cost. A US student is faced with living in what he perceives as poverty for four years only to rack up tens of thousands of dollars in debt. That same US student sees recent grads finding they can’t land jobs in a down economy where corporations and his government are complicit or even active in the practice of providing similar jobs to foreign citizens / companies. Meanwhile a less education-centric trade will pay fairly well, immediately, with no incurred debt. For those looking forward, careers where your output is a direct product of your thought start to look to be easily sent elsewhere, whereas the hands on trades at least can’t be performed remotely. Conversely, once the barrier of how to attain an education is broken, a student in a less affluent nation faces a very clear cut choice of long-term, even lifelong poverty or college.

At the end of the day, in its current form, the H-1b visa you suggest opening up is putting us as many steps back as it is forward. For every innovator with potential to be a job creator, it lays someone off. Rather than lamenting our inability to learn from the past, why not suggest smarter use of the visa? Police the fraud and open more doors to actual innovation rather than wage-suppressing services.