Posted on 06/22/2010 1:32:21 PM PDT by AreaMan
I will rad through this at some point.
As a parents it’s not hard to see what’s WRONG with Science education in the U.S.. It is LITERALLY dumbed down. It’s often JUNK SCIENCE and the standards are lower and lower each year. Asia has the OPPOSITE happening. At some point, if the U.S. doesn’t WISE UP, our kids will be thrilled to go to CHINA for higher education, IF they will have U.S..
The U.S. is bopping along with SELF ESTEEM boosting and GROUP THINK. It isn’t working. Knowledge is being REJECTED at a rate that makes one turn white haired over night.
“It’s not an education story, it’s a labor market story,” Salzman says.
Bull! Coming from an educrat that is outrageous!
It IS the EDUCATION that prevents them from being a WORLD CLASS scientist or math wiz. The PROBLEM is WHO IS TEACHING AND THE CONTENT and lack of challenge in those disciplines. If they an’t be honest and identify the root problem, then it will NOT be solved.
This is a long article and, frankly, it was difficult to see the point. The “problem” seems to be that there are too many research PhDs chasing too few jobs. But I’m not sure why this is a problem. By the law of supply and demand, if demand dries up, then the supply should follow. Is it possible that too many smart, young people are being sold a pack of lies?
Surely, if they are so smart, they are aware of the situation and can make choices accordingly. The article seems to be arguing for someone (the Government?) to ensure that these people have a career path. In short, it seems to be calling for them to be “bailed out”.
Honestly, I feel bad for a newly minted PhD who can’t find meaningful work in his/her field. But, its not the Government’s job to ensure that. If nothing else, these people are much smarter than the norm. They should be able to apply their talents somewhere, even if its not quite the way they envisioned in grad school.
Interesting article. Thanks for posting.
But it is equally bad for government to weigh in on the side of industry and universities to proclaim a lie (that there is a dearth of scientists) in order to justify H1-B programs and the like.
Ping for later reading.
But it is equally bad for government to weigh in on the side of industry and universities to proclaim a lie (that there is a dearth of scientists) in order to justify H1-B programs and the like.
It is the government's job to ensure the future strength of our country. It is not the government's job to train scientists from all over the world using American taxpayer dollars. It is the government's job to at least control the number of foreign workers coming into the US.
These people are much smarter than the norm. They should be able to apply their talents somewhere,
So the incentive is for smart young Americans to avoid science. How will that help ensure the future technological dominance and prosperity of the US?
I went through the article, and it is an exercise by the education in doing what it does best - redirecting blame away from itself.
The problem is not in the structure of the labor market. The employment of scientists by industry has exploded since WWII, and those jobs are better paid than the average university job. In fact, we have entire industries today in which a scientific background is virtually a pre-requisite for any kind of higher level job. Even in the law the demand for scientifically trained intellectual property lawyers has exploded upward.
The culprit is and has always been aq corrupt education establishment that foists politically motivated, faddish “social justice” math and science curriculum on students, that makes “school” an absurdly hostile environment for boys, and that protects incompetent teachers.
An article that references something published in the Phi Delta Kappan is presumptively trash. Our children can’t possible become scientists and engineers in significant numbers because they are being crippled by the government school establishment.
The analysis of the TIMSS was absurd, btw.
I went through the article, and it is an exercise by the education in doing what it does best - redirecting blame away from itself.
The problem is not in the structure of the labor market. The employment of scientists by industry has exploded since WWII, and those jobs are better paid than the average university job. In fact, we have entire industries today in which a scientific background is virtually a pre-requisite for any kind of higher level job. Even in the law the demand for scientifically trained intellectual property lawyers has exploded upward.
The culprit is and has always been aq corrupt education establishment that foists politically motivated, faddish “social justice” math and science curriculum on students, that makes “school” an absurdly hostile environment for boys, and that protects incompetent teachers.
An article that references something published in the Phi Delta Kappan is presumptively trash. Our children can’t possible become scientists and engineers in significant numbers because they are being crippled by the government school establishment.
The analysis of the TIMSS was absurd, btw.
Hey, if you want to free up more $$ for Science and Technology by eliminating entitlements, I’m all for it. But let them work on programs that will pay real dividends—like colonizing space. Short of that, however, I am AGAINST make work programs for scientists.
You're wrong. You've got your own little agenda about education, but the fact is that the main assertion of the article is correct: technical work has increasingly been shipped overseas.
If you deny that ... well, you've simply shut your eyes.
~~~~~~~~~~
The flip side of that is short-sighted industrial business MBA CEOs, whose first place to cut is anything that doesn't put money in to their golden parachute accounts at the end of every week -- and that means R&D...
Many former Fortune 500 companies no longer have the infrastructure or technical staffing to survive beyond the current generation of products. I have personally already watched several such firms die from shortsighted focus on revenue to pay exorbitant executive packages...
Talk about "eating the seed corn"... :-(
I actually have a big agenda on education.
That aside, technical work is increasingly done by foreigners here and overseas primarily because there is a lack of trained talent here.
If it weren’t for foreign students most science and engineering programs would shrink drastically. The problem is that, unlike prior generations, our students can’t do math and science. If one doesn’t understand things like the 1989 NCMT standards, then one doesn’t have much of a chance of grasping what has fundamentally gone wrong.
Moreover, many companies would prefer not to do research and development overseas because of the intellectual property theft that going overseas greatly exacerbates. In fact, offshoring presents a host of coordination and other problems that has caused some of the work to return. BUT, if the choice is between going offshore or hiring foreigners here and not being able to get the work done, the decision is easy.
Nothing in what I wrote indicated that work isn’t going overseas or that domestically it isn’t being done disproportionately by foreigners. Moreover, that is not the main assertion of the article. The article is trying to claim that we are chock-a-block with kids coming out of k-12 ready to tackle science and engineering but they aren’t going into those fields because the labor market doesn’t make it attractive enough. The claim about the labor market is wrong on several levels, but the claim about how prepared our kids are is beneath contempt. I realize that you aren’t necessarily addressing that point, but you seem to have missed mine.
The author spends most of the article bemoaning a lack of faculty positions. Only near the end does he make a good point. It’s that salaries for those who get advanced degrees aren’t high enough overall and that companies can fill these positions with H1b immigrants.
The author spends most of the article bemoaning a lack of faculty positions
“That aside, technical work is increasingly done by foreigners here and overseas primarily because there is a lack of trained talent here.”
Wrong. There is plenty of talent, they just leave as undergraduates.
“If it weren’t for foreign students most science and engineering programs would shrink drastically.”
All things being equal, that’s true but the market would adjust to pay for graduate level educated Americans. The premium for graduate school isn’t enough.
“The problem is that, unlike prior generations, our students can’t do math and science. If one doesn’t understand things like the 1989 NCMT standards, then one doesn’t have much of a chance of grasping what has fundamentally gone wrong.”
Can’t? BS. I’d be happy to whip out my frobenius to prove my point. Americans just don’t want to take the classes because the reward isn’t there.
“Moreover, many companies would prefer not to do research and development overseas because of the intellectual property theft that going overseas greatly exacerbates.”
No not at all. The reason they don’t want to do it overseas is because overseas researchers aren’t as good at carrying their efforts beyond a piece of paper. There is an analogy between foreign academics and our own president that is interesting.
“In fact, offshoring presents a host of coordination and other problems that has caused some of the work to return. BUT, if the choice is between going offshore or hiring foreigners here and not being able to get the work done, the decision is easy.”
Sort of true but only because it’s axiomatic.
“Wrong. There is plenty of talent, they just leave as undergraduates.”
If what you mean is that our students (non-foreign) abandon science and engineering as undergraduates, I don’t entirely disagree. But they are leaving mainly because they can’t do the work or they don’t have the discipline to do it. I also think the “plenty” is exaggerated. Even at Stanford some years ago, it was unusual to get TA’s that spoke english as a first language. At places like the Univ. of Texas today the serious sciences are full of foreign students and first generation students of parents from Asia (former Stanford TA’s ;-)
“Can’t? BS. I’d be happy to whip out my frobenius to prove my point. Americans just don’t want to take the classes because the reward isn’t there.”
Yes. Can’t. But you are making two points. First, on the “can’t”, do you realize that for years the vast majority of school districts use NCMT inspired curricula that discourage teachers from teaching such tedious things as, for example, the long division algorithm, let alone math facts? These sorts of things, of course, have a ripple effect. For example, a student who can do long division without a calculator is going to be rather discouraged when confronted with synthetic division. Our government school system has a well known international reputation for turning out students who are weak in math and science.
“No not at all. The reason they don’t want to do it overseas is because overseas researchers aren’t as good at carrying their efforts beyond a piece of paper. There is an analogy between foreign academics and our own president that is interesting.”
Other than the “No not at all”, which indicates you have some lacunae in your corporate experience, I agree with you. In fact, in my comment about work coming back to the US (to be done in large part by foreigners here)indicated that there are other problems with offshoring.
Your second point is repeated from the article; namely, that there would be American students flocking to science and engineering if only they paid enough. These are not low paying fields, but of course the issue is one that is subjective and is determined by those who are actually in the market. No one leaves a position as a chemist at Montsanto, for example, to become a greeter at Walmart or a hotel manager. A chemist might leave to become an investment banker, but that really isn’t a question of whether chemistry pays enough. You may think that the return on graduate work in science isn’t worth the effort. Fine, but many people like the work and know that they can earn a better living than most doing what they like.
But there is no question that math and science competence and a serious work ethic are barriers to entry to science and engineering that keep a much higher percentage of our students out than in generations past. This is what the education establishment doesn’t want to admit; it isn’t that electrical engineers’ salaries, for example, are so low that droves of highly competent high school graduates turn their backs on the field to pursue something else.
FWIW, the degrees that have very little return on investment are the various :”grievance studies” degrees and other areas of the humanities and social sciences that have been ruined by the left. Almost the only degrees that have any real market value are math/science/engineering - but even then one has to pay attention to which of the many specialties these terms encompass are in demand. There is, for example, nowhere near the demand that there used to be for Fortran and Cobel programers, but that is a reflection of changing market conditions not some general lack of demand for people with serious programming skills.
Moreover, in Obamalini’s disaster of an economy, almost everybody is having some trouble with employment.
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