Silly article. Economic nincompoops like George Will often have absolutely nothing to say, but their bread-and-butter requires them to fill up a page in a magazine, so they bluster about something.
How about this:
Quality, not quantity. Despite our “paltry” 16% in science and engineering, we get most of the Nobel Prizes in physics, chemistry, and medicine, and most of the world’s modern inventions — everything from the lightbulb to the computer — came from us.
How about this:
Despite their higher percentages, South Korea and China garner no Nobels in physics, chemistry, and medicine, and have contributed little in the way of innovation.
How about this:
The same idiocies used to be spouted by the George Wills of the world in the days of the former Soviet Union; i.e., “look at how many degrees in science and engineering they hand out; they will surely move ahead of us in science and technology!” The facts were these: (i) many bright students in the Soviet Union personally would have liked to go into one of the humanities — history, philosophy, economics, psychology, sociology, journalism — but DARED NOT DO SO, because those fields had been completely taken over by the State for the purposes of propaganda. If a historian or economist, for example, told the truth about Marxist history or Marxist economics, he would find himself in a gulag or a re-education camp. So many otherwise fine historians, economists, etc., went into the “hard” sciences and became mediocre engineers, physicists, and chemists, instead. They went into so-called “value-free” fields to keep themselves out of possible trouble with the political authorities. (ii) Despite the high number of students who became engineers and scientists, it didn’t help the Soviet Union; they still crashed and burned.
U.S. public education is completely screwed up, but it appears to be so across the board: it’s as screwed up in the quantitative sciences as much as it is in the social sciences, so the “paltry” 16% that somehow manage to tolerate the system and get through it to earn advanced degrees in science, probably represents exactly that proportion of the population that actually WANT to go into those subjects. There is absolutely no reason to force a greater number into a field that they have no gifts for.
George Will — like many ignorant journalists — doesn’t understand the idea of division-of-labor under conditions of freedom: everyone contributes, in his or her way, to the total economic health of the economy and therefore the country as a whole. The social sciences have as much to contribute to a country as the quantitative sciences do. And like everything else, it’s the quality of the contribution that counts, not the quantity.
I would hate to live in a country where a first-rate economist like Thomas Sowell was forced, for political reasons, to work as a third-rate engineer.
How long until Thomas Sowell’s job is outsourced?
You sound like a liberal arts grad.
Don’t be upset just because you couldn’t make it into engineering school. You’ll still be running the country with all those political science and journalism grads who produce nothing and screw up life for the rest of the populace that actually tries to create stuff.