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Immigrants are pursuing advanced degrees because a) the immigration system incentivizes it and b) specific immigrant populations have specific experiences in living memory where education was the only path from medieval subsistence farming to modern industrialized life in the cities, and/or the only asset that Communists couldn’t effectively seize.

I don’t think it’s at all the case that CS PhD programs are causally responsible for Silicon Valley’s progress, except to the extent that brilliant people were also incentivized by immigration authorities or their families to be in PhD programs at some point.