The Science Education Myth

Business Week ^ | October 26, 2007 | Vivek Wadhwa

[Sopater]

Forget the conventional wisdom. U.S. schools are turning out more capable science and engineering grads than the job market can support.

Political leaders, tech executives, and academics often claim that the U.S. is falling behind in math and science education. They cite poor test results, declining international rankings, and decreasing enrollment in the hard sciences. They urge us to improve our education system and to graduate more engineers and scientists to keep pace with countries such as India and China.

Yet a new report by the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, tells a different story. The report disproves many confident pronouncements about the alleged weaknesses and failures of the U.S. education system. This data will certainly be examined by both sides in the debate over highly skilled workers and immigration (BusinessWeek.com, 10/10/07). The argument by Microsoft (MSFT), Google (GOOG), Intel (INTC), and others is that there are not enough tech workers in the U.S.

The authors of the report, the Urban Institute's Hal Salzman and Georgetown University professor Lindsay Lowell, show that math, science, and reading test scores at the primary and secondary level have increased over the past two decades, and U.S. students are now close to the top of international rankings. Perhaps just as surprising, the report finds that our education system actually produces more science and engineering graduates than the market demands.

[Sopater]

The report indicates that the U.S. is "graduating" more scientists and engineers than the industry requires, but are they graduating students who can function as scientists and engineers? That's the real question.

Link to NEW REPORT

[cripplecreek]

How many of them are graduating and returning to the countries of their birth?

[Cenobite]

While I cannot speak for the whole, my niece and nephews are all PhD’s or doctoral candidates. All for the hard sciences, mind you, no women studies, thank you very much.

[Archon of the East]

We still need to be careful about agenda driven “hard” science. IPCC “scientists” don’t really care all that much about science. I like to call it post modern math and stuff.

[nuke rocketeer]

Hell, my company is hiring like crazy. Another customer submitted their COL for a twin unit nuke plant at the old Bellafont site. There are plenty of engineering jobs, you just might have to move to a different area.

[The_Reader_David]

I thought the same, but the figures in page 2 of the article were for US citizens and permanent residents (and Green Card holders rarely go back to their country of origin).

[ClearCase_guy]

U.S. schools are turning out more capable science and engineering grads than the job market can support.

Great News! Now we can tell all the H1-B's to go home, right?

[Wonder Warthog]

"The report indicates that the U.S. is "graduating" more scientists and engineers than the industry requires, but are they graduating students who can function as scientists and engineers? That's the real question."

And the answer is no. My wife taught petroleum engineering for a number of years at a major state university, and she said that the relative level of ability had decreased significantly over the time she was an instructor there.

[a_chronic_whiner]

Theres a simple answer for that. Most smart kids go to elite universities, and are pretty much concentrated at the upper echelon. The downward trend of intelligence you’re seeing is probably due more to this natural process of partitioning by talent rather than anything else. At the top universities (UC berkeley for example, GO cal! = ) , a university teacher who’s been there for a while would notice just the opposite trend.

[Wonder Warthog]

"Most smart kids go to elite universities, and are pretty much concentrated at the upper echelon."

This WAS at an elite university. And I've heard similar statements from profs across the university spectrum. Even places like Harvard and Yale bemoan the lack of preparation of students entering compared to those from (say) ten years ago.

Even the "smart kids" are educated to a lower standard due to the "dumbing down" of secondary education curricula for "politically correct" reasons.

[Jim Noble]

None of them can think.

Million dollar labs are a complete waste of money in high school, and perhaps to an extent in college, if you are not teaching them to think first.

[a_chronic_whiner]

That’s not good...if it’s true, our country is in deep trouble, not to mention my theory going straight out the window. I’m going to ask some family members for their input on this and get back to you, but I hope it is just a difference in points of view and not a wider overall trend.