Even the STEM graduates from colleges across the nation can’t compete with the skills of many foreign college students. I studied computer science, then computer engineering, then electrical engineering before finally settling into English Comp, and I can tell you that most American students struggled in collegiate math and Engineering courses. Our children are not being taught higher level maths in high school which puts them at a significant disadvantage in college.
There was an article recently that showed the number of students in remedial college math courses has skyrocketed over the last 20 years. Students are not graduating from high school with an understanding of math and science the way that Indian and Chinese students are.
I often found myself struggling with high-level calculus questions while Indian and Chinese group members were blazing through the calculations, oftentimes in their heads. I’m more advanced than most with my understanding of math, but you put me up against a Chinese or Indian kid out of a middle-tier grade, they’ll blow my doors off.
“Even the STEM graduates from colleges across the nation can’t compete with the skills of many foreign college students.”
That’s a load of bullsh*t.
It is well known that the vast majority of foreign IT workers do a terrible job and many of us have made careers out of going in behind them and cleaning up.
I have a friend who’s in the STEM business, and who sits in on the hiring interviews. He says there are one of two things that he nearly always finds: (1) the English is so bad that the knowledge is not useful. It can’t be communicated in technical builds. (2) the knowledge is subpar, because so many foreigners live in countries in which certain classes of people are guaranteed passage due to connections, transfer of payments, or caste.
Despite reported differences in the STEM knowledge of our own people, there is a real concern that we are testing ALL of our students while they are testing only those who qualify for academic tracks in their economies. Not everyone continues in school in many other countries and are out in the work force as young as mid teens. If we are test A-F students, and they are testing only A-C students, then you can see there would be a great discrepancy.
I often found myself struggling with high-level calculus questions while Indian and Chinese group members were blazing through the calculations, oftentimes in their heads. I’m more advanced than most with my understanding of math, but you put me up against a Chinese or Indian kid out of a middle-tier grade, they’ll blow my doors off.
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They are excellent at memory skills, but terrible at improvising. They make good robots or slaves, which is what poorly managed companies love.
“compete with the skills of many foreign college students”
BS. The skills learned in India are all theory and no implementation. I have never seen one Indian yet take a project to completion without massive assistance and I have been in software since late 80’s.
Only if you sample incorrectly. The US, even at the university level, is more open than many countries for the same education. Why else would they want to go here if they could snag a slot at home?
As for foreign students, I’ve seen good but a lot more “group test takers”. While one can’t speak for the entirety of them, but it is a well-known and easily observed practice. That kind of academic dishonesty is how they manage to overrepresent competence.
As for my own studies, I stuck with a more technically inclined discipline - Management Information Systems - which combines the technical side of CS with the long-terms skills of business management. Yes, there was math in it, although I opted for statistics when filling in that requirement.