[unishark]

I teach at a university in STEM. Our classes are increasingly filled with international students precisely because domestic students are not interested in majoring in STEM. Schools actually hire agencies to try and increase their number of domestic applications, but they continually get worse anyway. It's a less-than-zero-sum game as the pool shrinks. In public schools there's even an explicit preference in state law for domestic students. And they put in rules like high verbal test score requirements that increase the domestic advantage yet more. Nonetheless we get more African students literally from Africa than we get African American applicants.

People are putting STEM on a pedestal (very) recently, then decrying why people weren't allowed into the FAANG/A.I./data science holy land that most in the field probably aren't profiting from anyway. But historically, jobs in STEM are not the highly-coveted prize people think it is. More of a lower-middle-class stepping stone that ranks below the more prestigious professions like medicine/law/etc. Harder work and harder classes for lower pay.