We believe that the large increase in graduate engineering students along with companies' desire to hire engineers with the latest education dampens wage growth for experienced engineers. Foreign students are an important part of the story. The data point out two potential education problems. The first is a possible lack of continuing education of experienced engineers. Companies have little incentive to train older engineers because they can hire from the large flow of newly-trained and cheaper engineers.
Companies save money on training since the recent graduates already have cutting-edge knowledge.
Any decision to increase visas for foreign high-tech workers should be accompanied by the requirement that companies provide training for experienced engineers to ensure that the young engineering graduates are not simply displacing older engineers. The other potential problem is the allocation of graduate engineering training to U.S. citizens. Since graduate training is subsidized and since this education guarantees a middle-class lifestyle, as a country we should ask to what extent we want to allocate this training to foreign students instead of U.S. students. If we decide to continue the current policy of admitting large numbers of foreign students for graduate engineering education, then we need to rethink our visa policy for these graduates. Our educational and immigration policies are not consistent, as foreign engineering graduates face major hardships in trying to receive visas.