Phys.org January 21, 2022
The Biden administration announced policy changes to attract international students specializing in science, technology, engineering, and math—part of the broader effort to make the U.S. economy more competitive. The State Department will let eligible visiting students in STEM fields complete up to 36 months of academic training. There will also be an initiative to connect these students with U.S. businesses. Homeland Security will add 22 new fields of study—including cloud computing, data visualization and data science. Government data shows that international students are increasingly the lifeblood of academic research. However, U.S. Tech Workers, an advocacy group critical of the post-graduation visas, said the changes will encourage companies to discriminate against native-border job applicants…read more.