American universities attract the best students from all over the world. For example - at Tandon School of Engineering about 80 percent of graduate students hail from foreign countries - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/03/education/edlife/american... American academic STEM research is sustained by the constant flow of the best students from all over the world who are willing to spend 12 hours a day for 4-6 years for a meager grad student stipend. Some are actually even willing to pay for the privilege.
Your point is the most salient of the comments imo. And better than the self-congratulatory article.
US science benefited from a huge influx of European scientists and then sustained itself with large scale grants motivated by the cold war.
The US doesn't have great academic freedom but reasonable academic freedom compared to many places and US achievement is the gold standard for many things in many places so a lot of the best people come here and indeed, sacrifice to be here even as lots of money flows into universities - allowing that money to be effective even when some portion flows into pork also.
It's paradoxical which allows things to seem "better than ever" and "worse than ever" simultaneously.
My recollection: We attract students from all over the world because you simply can go to school here. Most other countries have significant barriers to entry for college that we lack.
In some countries, you have to choose between a trade school track and a college track around the time you enter high school and there is little to no opportunity to change tracks at a later date.
People from around the world work for low pay in grad school because the opportunities afterwards are much better in the US, either in industry which is where most go now, or even in academia. The federal government dumps more money into research grants than any other country, and this is able to support a lot of researchers and generate a mountain of scientific output.
