82.6% of academic articles (in the study) were retracted due to academic misconduct (plagiarism, duplication, fabrication, fake peer review, paper mills. CS and EE were among the worst offenders: ones who especially used paper mills.

This is extremely telling.

""" Consistent with earlier studies, 82.6% of articles were retracted due to various forms of academic misconduct. In recent years, however, the forms of academic misconduct have changed significantly. Nearly a decade ago, academic misconduct was primarily attributed to occasional individual actions such as fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, duplication, and so on, called traditional reasons in this study. However, in recent years, new forms of academic misconduct have become more prevalent, including Fake Peer-review, Paper Mill, and the emergence of artificial intelligence-generated content (AIGC). """

""" Hence, 12,250 instances of academic misconduct were found to involve Fake Peer-review, accounting for 45.6% of all reasons for misconduct. Additionally, a significant number of retractions are also related to Paper Mill (8.5% or 2,275) or AIGC (4.4% or 1,170). On the contrary, traditional reasons account for 41.6% of all reasons. It should be noted that multiple reasons may be given for a retracted paper. """

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10912691/

All those international students in masters and PHD programs....a huge portion of them in computer science and EE.

Coincidence?

If the "best and brightest" involves cheating and plagiarizing, maybe we need to reevaluate our criteria? This is a legitimate concern that our government should be taking into consideration when it refers to foreign guest workers and international students as the "best and brightest".