How Young Engineers and Our Economy Are Betrayed

ChristianWorldViewNetwork.Com ^ | 5/1/09 | Phyllis Schlafly

[ReformationFan]

The Georgia Dome, home of the Atlanta Falcons football team, was recently crowded with cheering fans and adrenaline-filled competitors. A thrilling competition crowned new champions. But this was not a football game. It was a robotics competition for high school students interested in engineering, a program that now attracts about 200,000 student-competitors and nearly 100,000 volunteers.

Known as FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), this program demonstrates that there is no shortage of American engineering minds. Started nearly 20 years ago by Dean Kamen, the inventor of the clever Segway that officials scoot around on, this competition develops future American engineers.

The students are extraordinarily diverse, coming from public and private schools and homeschools, rich and poor, urban and rural, athletic and disabled. Colleges provide up to $10 million in scholarships.

Obviously, there is no shortage of teenage interest and aptitude in engineering. But their prospects for good American jobs are very limited.

[CodeToad]

Who in their right mind would ever become an engineer when they can become the engineer’s manager by getting a 6 week certificate such as a PMP???

[1rudeboy]

If you had bothered to attend one of those schools, you might have noticed that I'm making a distinction between H and F/M visas. To suggest that H visa holders are here on our dime when, in reality, they pay the dime (and 40% of us do not) is FR garbage.

[org.whodat]

All foreign students are here on our dime to one degree are the other.