The truth is we don’t need any H1B visas. What we do need to do is to get better at teaching our own students how to do math and science in K-12. The teachers unions will have a hard time doing that without a kick in their collective rears. My hope, is that as boomer engineers retire they will get into teaching higher math and science on a part time basis so our high school kids get a decent education. As for the youngers, which is where the problem really lies (because of the progressive nature of mathematics instruction), I’m not sure how we should proceed.
As a child of the Boom we faced a severe teacher crunch in the late fifties early sixties. My class had the pleasure one year of a laid off engineer from a steel company teaching us algebra. It was a waste of time. No doubt he knew his stuff, but as for explaining it to a bunch of kids, forget it. I like the concept in theory but it would require some preparation in communication skills first.
Even at 20 years out of the disciplines, many of them would still run rings around either foreigners OR new US graduates.
Cheers!
I was alarmed when I found out that our highly rated high school (98% go on to college) was showing movies like "The Little Mermaid" to high school kids when they should have been teaching them.
I began supplementing my daughter's education with summer math, science, reading and writing in elementary school. That doesn't have to be a boring experience for parent or child. if the parent will try to make every experience a learning experience.
I always thought of the H1B program as a way of balancing demand. The system can't always predict how many engineers to educate. Remember the 70s when aerospace shut down and engineers got pink slips. But when these days we are forecasting a constant shortage we are really permitting, even encouraging our domestic system to underperform.