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March 2, 2006
Solving a crisis that may not be a crisis?Maintaining or increasing America's global competitiveness through increased attention to math and science appears to be this year's hot education-related issue for Congress, with the administration and members of both parties talking it up. As we noted previously, even if the details of the proposals garner support, the overriding question will be "where will the dollars come from?"
But on the merits of the competitiveness issue itself, some sound skeptical. Washington Post and Newsweek columnist Robert J. Samuelson weighs in under the headline "A Phony Science Gap?" A few of his key points:
But it's emphatically not true, as much of the alarmist commentary on America's "competitiveness" implies, that the United States now faces crippling shortages in its technological elites.
Judged realistically, China and India aren't yet out-producing the United States in engineers. Widely publicized figures have them graduating 600,000 and 350,000 engineers a year respectively, from six to 10 times the U.S. level. But researchers at Duke University found the Chinese and Indian figures misleading. They include graduates with two- or three-year degrees--similar to "associate degrees" from U.S. community colleges. And the American figures excluded computer science graduates. Adjusted for these differences, the U.S. degrees jump to 222,335. Per million people, the United States graduates slightly more engineers with four-year degrees than China and three times as many as India. The U.S. leads are greater for lesser degrees.
Only about 4 percent of the U.S. workforce consists of scientists and engineers. Having an adequate supply depends on what thousands--not millions--of smart college students decide every year to do with their lives. People choose a career partly because it suits their interests. This applies especially to science.
Although we don't now have an S&E shortage, the retirement of baby boom scientists and engineers may cause one. There are some sensible ideas for avoiding this, including making it easier for foreign students who have earned advanced U.S. degrees to stay. But the main solution is obvious. "If we want more [scientists and engineers], we have to pay them better and give them better careers," argues Harvard economist Richard Freeman. The high-tech executives who wail about scarcities are part of the problem. They "would love to have more S&E workers at lower wages," he says.
Much food for thought. Read the whole column.
Meanwhile, the well-respected Public Agenda has a well-timed report out that reveals most parents are satisfied with the amount of math and science their children study. Parents' concern on this issue had declined steeply in the past decade. Many students told Public Agenda they don't have an interest in a math or science career. That factor should not be overlooked, as Samuelson noted in his column. It also raises a question for Congress: How much impact would there actually be by throwing money out there for scholarships if most students just aren't interested in such a career track?
Posted March 2, 2006 12:01 PM
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