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.
Ping for later reading.
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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"... :-(
2008 story by the same author: http://www.scienceprogress.org/2008/08/its-the-money-stupid/