Posted on 11/30/2005 4:17:44 PM PST by indthkr
Ted Rappaport came to Austin just a few years ago to set up a wireless-technology center at the University of Texas at Austin. The Wireless Networking and Communications Group, which Rappaport directs, has attracted a dozen corporate sponsors and 14 world-class faculty to the wireless center. It is a huge success story.
But there are two problems, and they are related.
The wireless group has 70 students — all but five of them graduate students. Nearly all of them are from China, India and other non-U.S. countries. They gain entry by attaining essentially perfect scores on the graduate record exams.
The first problem is that the vast majority of these students now want to go home, either immediately after earning their graduate degrees or after getting a few years of work experience. And the problem is not confined to the University of Texas at Austin. Rappaport went to the University of Florida not too long ago to give an invited lecture on wireless technology. He asked the Chinese students there how many of them planned to go home right after earning their graduate degrees. About two-thirds raised their hands. He then rephrased the question, asking how many would want to go home after working in the United States for a few years. All of them raised their hands.
Going home wasn't a very attractive option a decade or two ago, when all the good jobs were in America. Now, there are plenty of good jobs back home.
There's nothing wrong with going home. As the cliché reminds us, that's where the heart is. Most people ultimately feel most comfortable on their own turf, with their own culture, living near family, speaking their native language. But America's success has been about having so much to offer that turning one's back on the comforts of home becomes an acceptable trade-off.
The second, related problem is that so few U.S.-born students are gaining entry to U.S. engineering graduate schools. Some universities, such as Rice in Houston, are establishing scholarships targeted to American citizens. Some American-born engineering grad students say they feel isolated, with few friends to talk to in the cafeteria. How ironic is that?
We want bright foreign students — lots of them — to come to America. We want Them to become Us. But if U.S. taxpayers are going to spend their tax dollars to set up wireless-technology centers, they have a right to expect a reasonable share of the benefits. We need to keep more of those bright, foreign-born engineers in America, working here, starting companies here, putting down roots here.
And there are plenty of jobs to fill, especially in the wireless sector. Motorola intends to hire 250 people by the end of 2006 for its Austin Center of Excellence. Those research jobs are aimed at developing Motorola's 4G technology, including Linux and Java software. Texas Instruments, Qualcomm and other large companies are establishing or growing their own wireless centers in Austin. Freescale Semiconductor is hiring, selectively, for its wireless operations.
Alereon, an ultrawideband startup with about 80 employees, has a dozen job openings for UWB RF engineers and digital-ASIC and baseband designers. PropheSI, a startup focused on power amplifiers for cellular basestations, has its own list of job openings, which CEO Graham Haddock said are increasingly hard to fill.
Texas has succeeded in attracting premier wireless scholars such as Rappaport, succeeded in attracting some of the smartest students in the world to the Austin campus' wireless-communications group, succeeded in creating job openings at companies large and small. The academic, corporate and political leadership should be commended for creating such momentum.
The next phase should be to balance the student body better, so that women from the suburbs or Hispanic students from the Rio Grande Valley, for example, feel welcome. U.S. students should be sought after and granted scholarships. We need affirmative action, of sorts, at the engineering schools of our great universities.
Meanwhile, American companies must attract foreign graduate students and quickly bring them into decision-making roles — a different form of affirmative action. The human resources managers at most U.S. corporations need retraining in how to make non-U.S.-born employees feel like they are on track to better jobs.
Without these adjustments, we may be left with a major mismatch: spending tax dollars on graduate programs to train engineers who go home to Shanghai or Bangalore to work, leaving U.S.-based companies searching for the engineers they need to compete.
My son was intent on pursing a degree in astrophysics. He was doing fine in his classes, but was having trouble covering his living expenses slinging burgers at In and Out. A hot little honey he was dating suggested getting a real estate sales license on a whim. He did. That was over two years ago. He just got his real estate broker's license yesterday. He has been running an office in San Diego with over 100 closings each year. He is 22 and intent on finishing his business degree in June. The income from his real estate business will slap down the student loans pretty rapidly. The LSAT is next on his target list.
That's bull, with all due respect. I owned a tool & die shop for 20 years and tool& die makers make the same or less than they did 15+ years ago. When all of our manufacturing jobs were running out of the country in the 80s, everyone scoffed at us. We, "weren't keeping up with technology ...... too greedy .... etc". Needless to say, I can't even get a job in manufacturing management because I can't speak spanish!
Now, to all who say, "Learn to speak spanish", ..... I say bull! This is America (or used to be). I learned my trade starting in 1959 at age 13 part time. After coming up from the bottom but with only 2 years of college, I am no longer needed. If you think the computer part of engineering is heading downward, we in manufacturing of the basic products a country needs to function have a 20+ year head start at the losses you are experiencing.
When knowledge and experience are lost, it takes decades to recover. If I remember correctly, NO rare earth magnets are manufactured in the USA now. The last production machines were sold to China in the last year or two.
Nam Vet
Russia and the Former USSR are also generating a lot of top level engineering students.
==Many learn, but some never interact enough with American students (or other english speakers) to develop functional english skills. 800 verbals, indeed.==
GRE Verbal is just a bunch of rules. It has nothing to do with real life.
When applying to grad school speaking skill is not tested. GRE, TOEFL only check writing, reading and listening skills.
Makes absolutely no sense, unless you seek to actually weaken the USA.
The answer is worse than that. Nobody really cares any more. They're all busy gettin' "their's".
I bet the skids are greased both ways for these minorities by our benevalent government.
I imagine these aren't bad folks at all but how about giving preference to the home grown students first?
I bet the security there against industrial espionage is impossible to crack.
/ sacrasm
The fools.
Sadly, I believe you are correct.
==We have lots of Russian friends, and it amazes me how many are engineers.==
Soviet education was highly accented on egineering. USSR graduated engineers 3 times more than humanitarians or economists.
Now it's a problem since Russia need more good economists and managers.
And that's the reality of it and I don't blame them one bit. I spent 3 years working on my second, IT degree. Three years of sitting in computer labs till the sun came up. Three years of breaking by neck reading manuals that would put any insomiac into a coma. And for what? So I can watch half the jobs off shore? So that salaries will fall? So that I have spent 1 of the last 3.5 years unemployed? No thanks. Next month, with my MBA in hand I'll show US IT the middle finger and start a job that has real stability, growth, bonuses, etc.
In my ungrad IT course (1998-2001), 1/3rd were Chinese, 1/4th were Indians and the remaining 5/12 were everyone else.
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