Sky not falling, American tech not doomed

Danny Taggart's Blogarama ^ | 01/07/2005 | Danny Taggart

[billybudd]

The publisher of CIO Magazine, Gary Beach, writes an ominously titled article, "The Education Crisis", in the December 15, 2004 issue. I suppose it's the fad nowadays to bemoan America's fall from its position as world technology leader. This collective sense of doom oftentimes produces incoherent arguments from otherwise smart people. This is one of those times.

Beach is particularly concerned about the decline in US engineering graduates. To support his concern, he engages in some fuzzy math. He claims that:

So in the 16 years from 1985 to 2001, there was a 40 percent drop in the number of engineering degrees awarded.

However, he extrapolates this figure from the ratio of engineering degrees to total degrees earned over a number of years, without looking at the change in total degrees earned. If you look at the National Science Foundation statistics, the number of Bachelor's degrees in engineering was 77,572 in 1985 and 59,536 in 2000, a 23% decline. If you count Master's and Doctoral degrees, the totals are 101,710 in 1985 and 90,592 in 2000, an 11% decline. This is a far cry from the 40% Beach claims.

Next, Beach says that this decline is bad news for the "tech business." But surely, the "tech business" consists of more than just engineering. In fact, the number of US science and engineering degrees earned was 422,515 in 1985 and 521,848 in 2000, a 23% increase. How does this square with Beach's claims? The answer is that the decline in engineering graduates is offset by increases in other S&E fields. For example, natural sciences degrees are up 23% from 1985 to 2000.