I think that "Graduate School in the Humanities - Just Don't Go" is a gem of an essay, because it does a good job explaining why students still enter these programs when the data screams out that they shouldn't.

https://www.chronicle.com/article/Graduate-School-in-the/448...

One thing that is often overlooked is that the US does have a very restrictive immigration system for people who don't have relatives here and can't leverage family reunification. In this case, getting advanced STEM degrees provides a path towards residency, work rights, and perhaps eventually a green card or citizenship. So in the US, these folks wouldn't be looking at a choice between getting a PhD and becoming a florist, because it would be illegal to come here and work as a florist. But there's a "shortage" of people getting PhDs in STEM fields, so we allow people to come here under conditions of limited personal freedom provided they agree to work these positions.

This power on the part of universities (the power to bestow residency and limited work right), I think, is one of the reasons STEM PhD programs haven't collapsed or faced the reckoning that would force them to change.

> In this case, getting advanced STEM degrees provides a path towards residency, work rights, and perhaps eventually a green card or citizenship.

At my very first job, nearly all of my coworkers were Indian. As I met more people at work and started adding them on LinkedIn, I noticed one thing in common with all their LinkedIn profiles: they all got their bachelor's in India and their master's in the US.

One day, I was riding either to or from a company lunch with a coworker, and we started talking about our lives. He asks me about my education, and when I told him I only did my undergrad and never went to grad school, he told me that in his case, he had to go to school here as a condition of getting into this country, and since he already had a bachelors in CS, he went for a master's in CS.

This was before I learned how fucked-up our immigration system is. Once I learned that, his words made so much more sense.

> before I learned how fucked-up our immigration system is.

Fucked up because they give higher-educated people preference, or fucked up because corporations lobby for more H1B workers to depress engineering wages industry wide?

It's fucked-up because there are very, very few ways to actually get into the US legally.

And in this case they're not giving educated people preference. They didn't come here on a rule that says that people with postgraduate degrees get to come to the US. They came here on a student visa because coming here on a student visa is one of the few ways to get in at all, and it just so happens that a student visa can be upgraded to an H1-B later if the student lands a job with a company willing to sponsor them.

I'd recommend reading this flowchart which explains in detail how fucked-up our immigration system is:

https://reason.com/assets/db/07cf533ddb1d06350cf1ddb5942ef5a...

Interestingly enough, it doesn't mention coming here on a student visa and then upgrading to an H1-B; it's basically the only loophole around that depressing flowchart. Vox's slideshow on immigration, though, does link the flowchart and mention student visas are one of the only other ways to get in (the other is a tourist visa, which is useless for immigration because you can't upgrade, and you'll be denied a tourist visa if the US thinks you're interested in immigrating):

https://www.vox.com/cards/immigration-immigrants-reform-us/h...

The academic route is basically a form of modern-day indentured servitude, which is another way in which wages for American students who decided upon pursuing a PhD for "the life of the mind" rather than economic reasons are depressed (e.g., Indians are willing to work for much less because it's their only way in, and the money is much better than developing countries). I have little faith that efforts at unionization among grad students and adjuncts will gain any traction until this is addressed.

tl;dr: Immigration reform would be a godsend for restoring some sense of sanity to the system.

It's also fucked up because a vast majority of the people who come via this route are rich kids with parents ready to back them up with cash if shit hits the fan. Lower middle class/lower class students usually don't even dream about taking a 4 million rupee loan, because they realize how fucked they would be if something goes wrong. No wonder what this kind of a sampling bias will do to the average quality of people coming in. It used to be different when a vast majority of students used to come on scholarships, but there are plenty of colleges now who run the MS program like a cash cow.

The quality of the degrees are very different. The US is known from having a good level and it's respected in most places around the world.

Is it that unappealing for US citizens to get a STEM PhD? Especially in the US the private sector ought to offer enough jobs at the PhD level and pay to make the PhD worthwile.

Depends on the particular stem field but in general, if the goal is a well paying job, STEM PhDs are one of the harder ways to get there.

Hard ? Because of getting the PhD in the first place or refocusing your career afterwards ?

Well, again, it depends on the particular field, but both reasons can apply. My study of black holes was hard and didn't exactly make for a ton of usable skills other than knowing how to learn.