Posted on 06/06/2014 9:38:59 AM PDT by reaganaut1
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In his recent book Falling Behind: Boom, Bust & the Global Race for Scientific Talent, Michael Teitelbaum (Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School) shows that the U.S. has been through at least five STEM-related cycles since World War II. In each instance, alarms about a perceived shortage of STEM workers led to federal action to stimulate STEM research and education. But after the government’s stimulus ended, we were left with a surfeit of people with STEM degrees but no work commensurate with their training.
Far from “falling behind,” Teitelbaum shows that the U.S. currently has a surplus of people with STEM education. After surveying the research, he writes that America “produces far more science and engineering graduates annually than there are S&E job openings—the only disagreement is whether it is 100 percent or 200 percent more.”
Nevertheless, many Americans instinctively believe that there is something special about science, engineering and technology. They drive progress. We might have too many lawyers or baristas or interior designers, but we can’t have too many STEM workers.
Furthermore, interest groups that want more STEM education, research funding and workers know how to capitalize on that belief to get politicians to enact the policies they want. Even through there is nothing approaching a crisis, they keep lobbying as if we have a dire one.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Another good question is how many foreign born students come here on student visas and study STEM and how many of them get H1B visas?
Another good question is how many H1B visas go to teachers, nurses, and management/professional?
Wicker Pedia is generally ‘safe’ for info on non-controversial subjects. Political people and partisan subjects really get ideologued to death, so I don’t use it for anything except general knowledge or science........................
The vast majority of H1Bs over the years have been STEM related although I have been told that nurses and doctors are frequently included.
I don’t know the exact numbers, but a lot of the undergraduate and graduate students in my courses seem to receive H1B or resident alien status. Students will bring their wives here and they enroll in STEM programs after getting here and the gov is getting ready to include spouses of H1Bs for H1B status, automatically.
I don’t recall it falling off after 2000, in fact it seems to have been growing since then. In some cases the H1Bs are hired to learn the specific jobs and processes in anticipation of the company then shipping their operations to the H1B’s home country and the H1Bs along with the jobs.
In these cases, the jobs are still occupied by the foreign worker and american workers who trained them are left out on the street.
Managers are usually pretty careful not to “outsource” their own positions.
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