[geebee]

Yes, that's certainly a factor.

If US citizens who go to med school are heavily protected by licensing laws from competition, whereas US citizens who go to grad school in engineering experience the opposite, you should expect more US Citizens to go into medicine, and more international students hoping to gain entry to the US to train as engineers.

This, rather than deficiencies in the US educational system or problems with making programming "cool", goes a long way toward explaining why US citizens tend to avoid certain fields. It would also explain why the "shortage" of US citizens going into certain fields is actually a highly rational response to a market distortion created by government policy.