Momentum - March 2018 - 21

CAREER PATH

MORE U.S.-BORN FACULTY: A
UNIVERSITY RESPONSIBILITY

Higher stipends, more scholarships, and advising are needed to
ease the U.S.'s risky reliance on international graduate students.
The January 2016 Prism article "A Matter of Degree" discussed some
of the reasons why U.S. citizens are not going on to graduate school:
"Tempted by starting salaries of $60,000 to $80,000 and often saddled
with debt, only an estimated 20 percent of engineering students across
the country opt to go directly to graduate school."
According to figures from the American Society for Engineering
Education (ASEE), international students earned 55% of engineering
doctorates at U.S. universities in 2016. In a 2017 report on the National
Science Foundation's Engineering Research Centers program, a
National Academies panel warned: "The United States faces a critical
workforce imperative: Either increase the number of U.S. students in the
engineering pipeline, including more American women and minorities, or
increase dependency on foreign scientists and engineers."
Doctoral students go on to become faculty members and researchers
in industry and national labs. Because U.S. citizens are not pursuing
engineering graduate degrees in sufficient numbers, particularly in
doctoral programs, faculty positions are increasingly filled by foreignborn graduates. A 2005 National Academies report stated that foreignborn engineering faculty who earned their doctoral degrees at U.S.
universities have increased from 18.6% in 1973 to 34.7% in 1999. We
are fortunate to have these graduates, many of whom have become
distinguished faculty members. But the trend of increasing numbers of
foreign-born faculty is risky, as noted in a 2007 Duke University study:
"The nation cannot continue to depend on India and China to supply
such graduates. As their economies improve, it will be increasingly
lucrative for students to return home." Already, the pipeline of
international graduate students appears to be shrinking as the United
States adopts a less welcoming attitude. Universities are at the mercy of
federal laws and regulations dealing with immigration that flow from the
political process. For instance, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) has suggested
capping the number of H-1Bs a single employer can seek and requiring
additional proof that employers had tried to hire an American first.
What can be done to get more U.S. citizens to go to graduate school,
particularly students who want to teach engineering? One of the
problems is that graduate research assistant and teaching assistant
support levels are not high enough to compete with starting salaries
of B.S. degree engineers. Support needs to be in the range of $60,000
to $80,000 a year for tuition plus stipend (depending upon tuition and
living costs). Scholarships and fellowships directed to U.S. citizens must
be expanded. Universities, technical societies, industry, foundations, and
individuals need to fund these scholarships. Another approach would
be a program to provide loans that are forgiven if the student goes
into teaching engineering. I led an SAE International forgivable loan
program in 1984. Now these funds will be given annually as scholarships
for $10,000 each to two Ph.D. students who plan to become faculty
members. (Visit students.sae.org/scholarships/doct_eng/)
Departments and the faculty could do a better job of advising
MOMENTUM

SAE Fellow and former
SAE Board Director John
Johnson has served on
a number of National
Academies Committees.
He is a Presidential
Professor Emeritus at
Michigan Technological
University, where he
formerly served as
Chair of the Mechanical
Engineering-Engineering
Mechanics Department.
students on the career benefits of an M.S. or a Ph.D.
degree. ABET should require a defined effort for "faculty
advising" to discuss graduate education in depth.
Universities need to take responsibility for the lack of
U.S. citizen graduate students. They need to review their
graduate program policies, including who gets financial
support, so that there are goals and plans to graduate
more U.S. citizen Ph.D.s who become faculty.
In addition, the National Academy of Engineering and
the National Academies' Board of Higher Education and
Work Force should conduct a new study that discusses
trends of tuition and student debt; trends of graduate
engineering degrees by U.S. citizens and foreign-born;
future demand for Ph.D.'s in industry, universities, and
national labs; and H-1B and student visa programs. The
end point would be to recommend policy and actions to
increase the number of U.S. citizen graduates qualified to
become faculty members. If you agree this issue deserves
study, write to the president of the NAE.
For over 30 years we have been heavily dependent
on foreign-born students in our engineering graduate
programs. This has resulted in a heavy dependence on
foreign-born faculty. Now is the time to determine what
needs to be done to get more U.S. citizens to study for
the Ph.D. degree.
(This article first appeared in Prism, ©2018 American
Society for Engineering Education.)

By John Johnson, SAE Fellow

March 2018 21

http://students.sae.org/scholarships/doct_eng/

Momentum - March 2018

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