US losing to India in Science

More than half a century of US dominance in science and engineering may be slipping as America's share of graduates in these fields falls relative to Europe and developing nations such as China and India, a study released on Friday says.

The study, written by Richard Freeman at the National Bureau of Economic Research in Washington, warned that changes in the global science and engineering job market may require a long period of adjustment for US workers.

Moves by international companies to move jobs in information technology, high-tech manufacturing and research and development to low-income developing countries were just "harbingers" of that longer-term adjustment, Freeman said.

Urgent action was needed to ensure that slippage in science and engineering education and research, a bulwark of the US productivity boom and resurgence during the 1990s, did not undermine America's global economic leadership, he added.

The United States has had a substantial lead in science and technology since World War Two. With just 5 per cent of the world's population, it employs almost a third of science and engineering researchers, accounts for 40 per cent of research and development spending and publishes 35 per cent of science and engineering research papers.

Many of the world's top high-tech firms are American, and government spending on defense-related technology ensures the US military's technological dominance on battlefields.

Numbers of science and engineering graduates from European and Asian universities are soaring while new degrees in the United States have stagnated -- cutting its overall share.

To this day I remember telling my grade school teacher that I had figured out how to "take away" a bigger number from a smaller one. She told me firmly and with irritation (I had responded with a "but...") that it was impossible!

I wish I could convince my bank of that when I overdraw my checking account.

I've subsequently spent a signifcant amount of time searching for ways to teach math to kids. At this point I'd say that since there are two subjects: arithmetic and math, they should be taught that way. And math should only be taught to the upper 1/3 of the students, at most.

You make some good points. Your grade school teacher was restricting herself to the natural numbers with do not include negative numbers. You were ahead of the class and "discovered" the integers which do include negative numbers. It was probably beyond her skill to explain the difference to you.

One difficulty that your story points to is that not everyone is a good teacher. It is not possible to make good teachers come out of college like cars in a factory assembly line. The demand for mass education produces a lot of mediocre teachers.

I do agree with your solution. Let the students good in math go to a more advanced class taught by a better teacher. They won't be bored by a class geared for the average or below average student. But that would mean rewarding excellence and neither the schools nor the public will tolerate excellence. Somebody's feelings might get hurt. It is better to dumb down the class and make everyone equally incompetent.

What you are suggesting is loser talk, typical of folks who are scared to compete. You are literally suggesting that US hand over its entire R&D to Chindia because future is over there ? You want US to be a nation of lawyers and bankers, while science and engg are being done in Asia ? Who are you, some liberal socialist ?

You are generalizing a bit too much.. R&D jobs wont be outsourced to India/China even though it would be lucrative to do so, because those jobs need people with advanced degrees which majority of Indian Indians or Chinese Chinese lack..

Those who come to the states to pursue higher education will eventually settle down here (which is a good thing) and contribute to American R&D. This trend is not gonna alter, because Chindia can never compete with American infrastructure or funds.

p.s. dont take my initial outburst to heart, I am just a bit irked when people use the bogey of outsourcing to discourage youngsters from taking up science and engg, and moreover research in those fields.

You are dead, dead wrong. You have completely misread my post. I suggest none of those things. Everything I have posted on this subject has pointed out the danger of becoming a nation of lawyers and service workers. A robust and vibrant economy needs a strong technological and industrial base to be competitive as an economic and military power, not just service-based economic activity.

I am not discouraging the best and brightest from entering technical fields. As a teacher of those disciplines at the post-graduate level, I do everything I can to encourage them. We offer fellowships and research appointments and teaching posts, all to try to do something to attract qualified US students to the programs. What I tell students who will listen is that if they find themselves in a position to make a difference, do not to sell out their country or their fellow citizens to the highest bidder in the marketplace. Rather, build, create, make long-term investments, and have the vision to see that often greater benefits are reaped from slow, steady growth rather than get rich quick sell-outs.

My point is that no matter what I do it is swimming against the tide. When the business model in this country is geared towards short-term profit and maximizing the bottom line at the expense of everything else, long-term investment in knowledge, infrastructure, development, and people tends to be neglected. Students are stupid. They see those trends and get make their own judgments. Why spend four or six or eight years getting a degree only to have to train your replacement in Bangalore? The message they are getting from American business is that you're better off to not waste your time with those things. Get a law degree or MBA and then you'll be the ones making your daily bread suing other people or outsourcing their jobs (until they come for yours).

What I see every day in the trenches, in the classes I teach, the same classes that I sat in over thirty years ago as a student, when there was perhaps 70-80% enrollment by U.S. students, is now 70-80% foreign nationals. I just sat on the dissertation committee of one of the best students I ever had in materials science who is getting his degree this summer and going back to India. I had a Japanese student a couple of semesters ago who could eat your lunch in neutron diffusion, and went home to Japan. I had a Romanian student who was absolutely top-drawer in radiation measurement instrumentation get grabbed up by Siemens in Germany.

Conversely, we've had U.S.-sponsored fellowships go begging for lack of qualified American students. The last student we had who took one of those ended up washing out because of poor academic performance and transferred over to the school of education (of all things!).

I have posted often on these threads that this country is in real danger of selling out it's technological and industrial future for the sake of a few pieces of silver. The labor of generations spent in building what we have today may all be lost because of the short-term greed of a few. And we not only lose things, but people. The intellectual capital of how to actually build things and get things done is being eroded. I for one will work against that tide, but so far it has been a losing battle.

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