U.S. losing lead in science and engineering-study

[tocqueville]

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=585&e=2&u=/nm/20050708/sc_nm/economy_usa_science_dc

The United States has had a substantial lead in science and technology since World War II. With just 5 percent of the world's population, it employs almost a third of science and engineering researchers, accounts for 40 percent of research and development spending and publishes 35 percent 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 U.S. military's technological dominance on battlefields.

But the roots of this lead may be eroding, Freeman said.

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.

In 2000, the paper said, 17 percent of university bachelor degrees in the U.S. were in science and engineering compared with a world average of 27 percent and 52 percent in China.

The picture among doctorates -- key to advanced scientific research -- was more striking. In 2001, universities in the European Union granted 40 percent more science and engineering doctorates than the United States, with that figure expected to reach nearly 100 percent by about 2010, the study showed.

[kodi]

1. in pursuit of unbridled capitalism, we have begun to eat our seed corn

the nation with the best scientists rules the world.

in 50 years itr will be either china or india, unless the US invests the equivalent of another manhatten project in education.

unbridled capitalism will kill this country.

[cornermouse]

6. Yep. Companies have decided that it is cheaper to import

their labor or export the work. Quality doesn't matter when compared to the salaries that they're paying for these people. They can afford to have more mistakes made with the larger profit margins.

[fujiyama]

7. Why is it assumed

that the quality here is greater?

The fact is our education system has been lagging for years. It's finally starting to show how rotten it is.

[cornermouse]

11. Baloney.

Why is it assumed that the quality of education is greater there than here? Why do you base your assumption on something that is clearly a falsehood.

The major problems that the school systems are experiencing right now is lack of financial support for educational activities (by the way, when is the last time your voted for a tax increase for your local school system?), excessive interest in and support for sports, and lack of interest by parents. ...Are you a parent?

In spite of this, the fact is there are plenty of well educated, qualified people here. The corporations don't want to pay for them.

[ooglymoogly]

25. lack of funding generally adds up to a lack of quality

if not absolute at least a huge contributing factor.

[kodi]

20. why? the influx of foreign scientists have sustained us for decades

you are connecting two things, US education and US based scientists, that are not directly related.

[H2O Man]

16. Well said.

It is sad, indeed, to see the direction we are heading as a nation. Our destination is within view. While it is not too late to turn around, the "unbridled capitalists" driving will take us over a cliff.

I admire short, direct answers to complex questions. You cut through the baloney, and gave a great answer.

[NewJeffCT]

17. the unbridled capitalism is ok in China and India, though?

Chinese schools have tests at every level to decide which level schools the students should enter the next year. Their schools emphasize a lot of rote memorization. Upon graduating high school, students take a rigorous 3 day exam to determine which college they get into - the first 18 years of their life are boiled down into a 3 day exam. High school grades are irrelevant, outside activities are irrelevant, it's all that one test.

The difference is that in China and India, students are really pushed to do well in school, they are taught to respect and listen to their teachers (my wife is from China and was surprised to learn that US students don't rise to greet their teachers when the teacher enters the room, and that US students don't thank their teachers at the end of each class...) and that the whole childhood of the child is geared towards doing well in school.

[kodi]

24. US firms think of the next quarter, china the next quarter century

american companies are driven by pleasing the stock holders immediate concerns. in china, india, japan, the leaders of industry think of long term sustainability and successfully fight off the demand for immediate reward. call the differences whatever you want, but the american demand for instant gratification forces american companies to be short sighted and not plan for the future like foreign companies.

the result is that american companies find it more difficult to plan 20 years out and use capital investment to secure for the long term. if they leaders do so they are attacked in the market as not returning the maximum return on investment.

that is the affect of "unbridled capitalism" of which I speak. greed may be good, but its foolish if it undermines long term health. oddly we understand this problem in other areas of our lives but not economics. this attitude is why we tell our kids not to do drugs, the short term affect may be pleasing, but the long term affect can be deadly

it is why i used the phrase, "eating out seed corn." you can eat a little today, or harvest a bumper crop next year. americans want it now and it is the affect of the attitude of instant gratification that free market capitalist imbues in Americans.

as an old university professor, a scientist who taught young potential scientists i find no fault in your post, because i too noticed that most of the american kids did not do as well nor expended the energies that the foreign kids did, there were exceptional american students too, but they represented a lower percentage than did the foreign students, but even there, perhaps just to get to the US there was a weeding out process that meant that only superior foreign kids got to come to the US to study.

[kestrel91316]

2. People in the US don't want to be educated,

they want to be ENTERTAINED.

Bread and circuses, anybody?

[theHandpuppet]

19. And parents have forgotten how to use the word, "NO"

Parents have control of the remote. USE IT. Turn off the damned TV for starters. Put the X-Box under lock and key. Personally take your kids to the library once a week -- make it a family tradition. For every trip to Disneyworld and Six Flags, take them to a museum, a play, a concert, where they can see for themselves how subjects like English and mathematics apply to their everyday world.

It never ceases to amaze and disppoint me just how many folks have abondoned the idea of parenting and have left this job to schools (ie, teachers), to the mall and to television. The problem with poor student performance in this country is not the quality of teaching, it is with the quality of responsible parenting. Look at the rampant anti-intellectualism in this society, a carefully groomed scheme that only benefits the unbridled capitalism of corporate fascists who prefer and uneducated, cheap labor force. Yes, the problem points to towns and cities all over this country whose citizens so devalue education they refuse to pay for decent schools but see no problem spending all their income on mini-mansions and driveways with multiple SUVs. The problem lies with parents who find it so much easier to send their kid off to the mall with a fistful of bucks rather than parent for a couple of hours an evening.

Teachers out there, I don't envy you your job, which used to be educating young minds. Now your job description includes babysitter, parent, psychological counselor, disciplinarian and -- if you can find the time in between the rest of these duties -- educating.

Of course, having an unbridled, intellectually indifferent IDIOT in the Oval Office provides a notorious example of just how far one can go in this greed-soaked society armed with nothing more than a family fortune and an atrophied curiosity. In a country where "intellectual" is a dirty word, however, you get what you vote for.

[CrispyQ]

26. Wow. I could not have said it better!

You can tell which children's parents put in the time & which don't.

[DeepModem Mom]

3. kick

[FreedomAngel82]

4. Of course

Now we're pro-war and fix the enviornment facts around oil companies. Can't miss that "American Idol" and other reality tv shows. :eyes: I gotta see "Average Joe"! :sarcasm: (last sentence)

[devilgrrl]

5. No surprises here, not with creationism creeping into schools anyway.

eom

[bobbieinok]

8. ex was a physics prof...decline in undergrad majors began for his school

in early to mid 80s........I know of 3 prize physics hs grads who went to Stanford, Princeton, Harvard with goal of majoring in physics....none of them did

at Stanford and more strongly at Princeton there was an attitude of 'physics is hard and this school is hard; we dare you to do well'

this to me was an attitude I had seen since my undergrad and grad days in the university teaching of German (undergrad degree in 61)....and guess what, there aren't all that many people taking German in the US any more

also, faculty in engineering said American students did not go on for grad degrees ...... they could immediately get very high paying jobs with just a BS.......the grad schools were filled by foreign students

this whole situation in physics and engineering could not be publicly discussed for fear the public and the legislators would decide 'you mean we in the great state of ______ are paying taxes to educate students from other states and (gasp) students from other countries'.....we can't afford that, so we'll drastically cut funding

[spooky3]

14. these are important points--need to be debated honestly

I'd add: A major reason for the decline in the number of grad. students is that since 9-11 it has been much more difficult for many international students to be admitted or to travel here and stay for the time it takes to finish a degree. Obviously, this decline is not a function of the quality of education but of something completely different.

[NewJeffCT]

18. another difference is now those foreign students are often going back

Previously, a many of these top foreign students would stay here in the US and eventually become American citizens. The life was better here.

However, now a good engineer or scientist can do pretty well for herself or himself in India or China and the lifestyle is often pretty good over there, too.

I personally know a Chinese national with a green card here in the US that is making $200,000 a year at a high level research job. He is going to quit that job, go back to China for a job making $80,000 a year there. While $80,000 in China goes a lot farther than $200,000 in the US, there is no way that would have happened even 10 years ago.

[bobbieinok]

9. double post

[Mr.Green93]

10. Good

This is a good way to stop the war machine.

[WLKjr]

12. I just wish I could keep going

but it is so expexnsive for me and I don't have that kind of money to throw around.


30k to get my AD, I want to get a BS, Masters and before I get really old a Doctorate in something.

[bklyncowgirl]

13. Think of this, The hottest topic in science education today is evolution.

Not how do we get talented young people excited about science, not how do we encourage innovation and free thought. Not how do we fund the research that will take us into this new millenium.

The issue is that a large number of Americans have a profound distrust of science and a total misunderstanding of the scientific method.

Add to that the corporate leaders who owe no allegiance to any one nation, who care not one bit whether our country is a vibrant leader in research and technology but who are simply content to feed off the carcass of a once great nation.

We have allowed the most ignorant and most greedy among us to set the debate.

[rfrrfrrfr]

15. Ever wonder why most schools look like factories?

For the most part the current school system we have was designed to prepare the majority of the general populace to go to work in the factory. Everything from what courses and how they are taught all the way down to the types of lighting and colors of paint all used to prepare a person to go to work on the assembly line.

Most class room curriculum emphasize memorizeation of instructions and methods of doing things over why things are done the way they are or the use of critical/creative thinking.

Lets look at a couple examples. In just about every history class I have been in (non college) you go through and memorize who, what where and when and then get periodically tested on how well you remember those things. Very little time is spent on cause and effect and learning from what happened in the past. Who what where and why are by themselves nothing more than trivia. In any good history class they are the tools used to analyze the causes and effects of the events not just when they happened and who did them.

Now for Math. If you have taken much math you are probably familiar with the pythagorean theorem. X^2 + y^2= z^2. The sum of the squares of the legs is equal to the sum of the square of the hypotenuse in a right triangle. In most high school geometry classes thats as far as they go. They don't go into much depth about how the theorm was developed or how it was constructed. The proof for the theorm is approximately 56 steps long. It will vary a bit depending on your methodology. To try and memorize all 56 is pretty difficult, but the proof is actually fairly simple to construct if you take the time to learn the how and why of it rather than just memorize it.

Another big problem that affects most curriculum is its repetiveness. In high school many students are doing the same type of math problems they were doing in elementery school. Same goes for English, history, reading, social studies, biology you name it much of the curriculum is mere repetition of what was done the year before and the year before that. If they are lucky there might be a bit more depth or even some new information tacked on.

So we have a school system that is preparing students to live in a world that no longer exists. What few factory jobs remain generally don't pay enough to support a family on, or if they do they require specialized training that the public school system generally doesn't prepare the students for.

Today's workplace requires people who can think on their feet, think critically/creatively, take the initiative, solve complex problems quickly and efficiently using multiple sources of data. This is the exact opposite of what the school system is preparing today's students to do.

So we have a broken, disfunctionaly school system and the kids know it. this fuels a lack of enthusiasim for shcool. So we try to fix it. We try to fix it by increasing funding and school "reform". The problem is that trying to reform the school system is like trying to reform a wooden clipper ship into the space shuttle. It just doesn't work.

Thats not to say there aren't any worthwhile programs or ideas out there, but what we need to do is scrap the entire k-12 system and rebuild it from scratch. Keep those things from the old system that do work. Things like Head start and such. Things are so bad now Community college's and even the big universities are having to devote time,money and other resources to teaching our students things they should have learned before they ever got out of elementary school, let alone graduate from high school.


Thats why we have an education problem in this country. The solution is not going to be easy or cheap.

[CrispyQ]

27. I had a programming instructor tell us

that when he goes into a beginning computer class & talks math, half the students drop the class by the end of the week. The university he worked at told him to drop the math, just teach programming. WTF? How do you solve problems without math? How do you design a well constructed program without logic?

on edit: I was watching late night tv & one of those "get your degree at home by mail" commercials came on. You know how they scroll their curriculum on screen. Well this was the first time I noticed that there was not one tech offering. A sign of the times.

[Eric J in MN]

21. Policies on Technology Visas in America means that

students are afraid that if they get a science degree, a compnay will just higher someone cheaper from another country, anyaway.

H1B Visas and L1 Visas are causing the problem.

[NewJeffCT]

23. see my post above

The problem is that these foreign students that came here 10-20-30 years ago stayed in the US at much higher rates than they do now. With improving economies in India & China, there is now much less incentive to stay in the US and contribute to our economy. Why stay in the US where your devotion to science is not appreciated when you can go to China or India and be treated as a national hero for your research or work? First stem cell research is eviscerated by Dobson, I mean, Bush... who knows what scientific research is next?

I can bet you that most Chinese school children know the name of top Chinese scientists, and can probably recite all the Nobel nominees in recent Chinese history... while in the US, the school children will know Shaquille O'Neal, Tom Brady or Alex Rodriguez before they know any Nobel nominees, let alone winners.

[ArchTeryx]

22. The perspective of a lab rat.

For all this talk about a 'shortage' of science majors, I have to say that I'm not tremendously sympathetic of the powers-that-be.

Though biotechnology has not quite been swept under the 'offshoring' rug like IT has, people in science have been hurting for close to 20 years in terms of their job prospects. When I graduated with a Master's in immunochemistry in 1995, I spent three years unemployed, unable to even get an *interview* with a company. I was told over and over again that the reason was that I lived in the Midwest (Chicago), and there were more then adequate Associate level people coming out of all the local universities on the coasts, to fill all positions and then some. When I finally GOT a job, it was a temp job with no health benefits whatsoever, a fact that ended up nearly killing me...

And yet, at the PhD, level, I hear so many stories of people that get stuck in 'post-doctoral' positions their entire working careers. Or worse, end up as Wal-Mart greeters. People that have dedicated close to 12 years to college!

And all this, before the offshoring craze finally starts to suck science jobs overseas to China and India. Then, the only competition is going to be between the Indian and Chinese scientists that want to work here, and those that want to work in their home countries. American scientists not lucky enough to already have tenure or political connections will simply be left behind.

If you're so worried about the lack of science graduates in the US, how about providing them with enough bloody jobs to make a PhD worth it!

(Edit: I still am pursuing my own virology PhD, because frankly, being a lab rat is my life's passion, and I've pursued it too long to give it up. But hearing all this talk about a shortage of science graduates, with no job market to back it up, just burns me up)

[Java]

28. Just out of curiosity

How many here, who read this post have a degree in a Physical or Life science discipline or in Engineering or in Mathematics or Computer Science?

Bachelors, Masters or PhD?

[dArKeR]

29. What does it mean when everything you preditct comes true?

But I've posted on the DU that actually is has been this way since 1982, when I became aware. Living in San Jose, CA, I noticed that most of the top Professors at universities were foreign and either remained foreign or became Resident Aliens or Americans. Every hospital Chief, Head of Surgery, Dept. Chief... Every research Chief at EVERY US Corporation was foreign... (In all categories it was usually Taiwanese, Chinese, Indian, Pakistani, Japanese).

Again, what I say can be proven by scientific facts of employment records if there is a Media Whore left with a gram of morality/honesty.

Add this to the Bush/GOP Crime Family butchering Nazi policies which have resulted in foreign students NOT atteneding American Universities. (Also what long time DUers might remember I posted 1.5 years before the General Accounting Office published the stats of 35% drop in foreign student registration after the Bush/GOP Crime Family slaughter in Iraq.

I have enough evidence to try the Bush/GOP leadership as Agents of Satan in the destruction of the United States of America.

[Lexingtonian]

32. on the other hand

it has in essence been this way throughout. People born on the American continent have prefered engineering over science and development over research since the Settlement began. Americans were not a people with a significant intellectual tradition other than imitation of the British, all the incentives of a society colonizing a materially underexploited continent were about grabbing its wealth as efficiently as possible.

With a few marked exceptions (Maxwell and a few others) the high power fundamental research done in the Americas has been very much a game whose champions have been first and second generation European immigrees. First and second generation Asian immigrees, for all their accomplishments, have fit far more in the nativeborn mold- going where all the financial incentive is, in bringing immature technology to market.

The present American situation is one of creativity utterly stifled as the last colonial elites grab as much wealth together as they can. There's also a generational lull of creativity in the sciences at the moment that goes back to Cold War choices and behaviors. The political justifications to funding science and expanding it to industrial proportions of the Sixties and Seventies have fallen into crisis.

It's rough. But scientists, among which I count myself, have to in part just endure the post-Cold War crunch and argue a reformulation of the rationales of the enterprise.

[iconoclastic cat]

30. Well, when a powerful group believes that photos steal their souls,

you start to lose ground in things like science and literacy.

[fasttense]

31. After reading everyone's posts, I've come to the conclusion

That a lack of jobs is the real reason. But it is not just the posts it is my experience as well.

My son took Chemistry in HS. He got by but didn't do outstanding. He is currently in college and taking Chemistry. He is getting all As. This tells me the HS teacher was great (true this is only anecdotal evidence but some folks here are saying the same thing).

He originally majored in Electrical Engineering. He has since changed to a medical field in Chemistry. Why, because he said when he did job searches for Electrical Engineers right out of college he found very few job offers. This tells me the jobs just aren't there in a large enough quantity to encourage students. Most people have to work before they can afford to get their masters of doctorate.

Something else we all seem to be forgetting about our scientists. The financial aid has been severely cut. Most students graduate owing from $10,000 to $30,000+ on their education. Today there really is no GI bill, and very little student aid from the federal government. If a society is going to make it very expensive for a person to get a degree, the person wants to make sure they are going to be able to market the skills. Many very capable students are opting out of science (even though they would love to learn the skills) because the cost is so great. Better to do something you don't particularly like and be able to pay off those loans than to do something you love and starve.