The United States is losing its ability to attract and retain the world's top scientific talent, with at least 85 American researchers joining Chinese institutions since the beginning of 2024 and European universities reporting unprecedented interest from U.S. academics looking to leave, according to an analysis by L. Rafael Reif, president emeritus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, published in Foreign Affairs.
The brain drain is accelerating at the worst possible time, "Hvylya" reports. Federal grant freezes and cuts are forcing universities to reduce the number of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows they support. Harvard announced it is halving the number of science PhD students it admits for the upcoming academic year. Crackdowns on student visas, travel bans, and overzealous immigration enforcement are dissuading international students from studying in the United States.
The numbers tell a stark story. Over the past 20 years, 38 percent of science and engineering doctoral degrees awarded by American universities went to international students. "International students earn the majority of doctorates in computer and information sciences, engineering, and mathematics," Reif wrote. "They are instrumental in the discoveries and inventions that emerge from university laboratories." Forty percent of U.S. Nobel Prize winners in chemistry, medicine, and physics over the past 25 years have been immigrants. Immigrants have founded more than half of the country's startups valued at $1 billion or more.
In artificial intelligence - a field of intense competition with China - the talent flow has reversed direction. An analysis by The Economist found that in 2019, only a third of researchers at the world's leading AI conference who completed their undergraduate degrees in China remained there. In 2025, more than two-thirds did. The share of Chinese researchers who received graduate degrees abroad and then returned to China more than doubled over the same period.
China has already surpassed the United States in training scientists. In 2022, China awarded more than 53,000 doctoral degrees in science and engineering, while U.S. institutions awarded fewer than 45,000. "With less than a quarter of China's population, the United States can't compete with China unless it welcomes international students and makes it easier for them to remain in the country after they earn their degrees," Reif wrote.
Also read how FT's Martin Wolf warned that AI could shake the educated class in ways no previous technology has.