October 9, 2014: STEM, Immigration, and Controversy: Does the U.S. have enough STEM Workers?
Thursday, October 9, 2014
Kalmanovitz Appellate Courtroom, UC Davis School of Law
Michael S. Teitelbaum is a Senior Research Associate in the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School. He is a demographer, with research interests that include the causes and consequences of very low fertility rates; the processes and implications of international migration; and patterns and trends in science and engineering labor markets in the U.S. and elsewhere. He is the author or editor of 10 books and a large number of articles on these subjects.
Among his previous roles, he has served as Vice President and Program Director at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, as a faculty member at Princeton University and the University of Oxford; and as Vice Chair and Acting Chair of the U.S. Commission on International Migration. He was educated at Reed College and at Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.
The United States has a long history of concerns about shortages of scientists and engineers, which has resulted in the government subsidizing STEM education and R&D. More-recent policy responses have included large increases in visas for science and engineering students and temporary workers from other countries. Today, international students earn most of the Ph.D.s awarded by U.S. engineering schools, and they constitute a large share of Ph.D. students and postdocs in the sciences. Those in computer-related occupations receive half of all H-1B visas, and in recent years have been filling 20 to 25 percent of net new IT jobs. Professor Teitelbaum, author of Falling Behind? Boom, Bust, and the Global Race for Scientific Talent, will discuss how the demand for and supply of STEM workers has been shaped and reshaped by public policies since World War II.
Agenda
4:00 PM: Lecture
Michael S. Teitelbaum, Harvard Law School
5:30 PM: Reception
Sponsored By: The Office of the Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor, the Gifford Center for Population Studies, the Temporary Migration Cluster, the UC Davis School of Law, and the Community and Regional Development Program