No Future in American Science

An anonymous reader writes "Science Blog reports America is facing a dangerous shortage of eggheads: "America's top college graduates increasingly reject careers in science and engineering, researchers have found, raising concerns about America's technological future. Faced with the prospect of low-paid apprenticeships and training lasting a decade or more - and constricted job opportunities even after that - more of the brightest young Americans are instead pursuing the quicker and surer payoffs offered by business and certain professions.... 'With the notable exception of biological sciences, many of the top U.S. students with potential to become scientists are turning toward other career paths,' said one of the study's co-authors.""

Comments

Not surprising !

[IIEFreeMan]

In a country where scientific absurdity can be taught in school (creationism) it is not surprising that a scientific career does not appear very engaging to people with a clue.

Re:Blame the chinese

[Spock the Baptist]

Timeline: 1980s
Place: Texas A&M, Department of Physics
Problem: Chinese grad students*(CGSs) are blowing American Grad students out of the water in terms of grades in classroom work. However, once the CGSs are appointed to research assistantships they, and the profs running the labs they're doing their research in, experience major difficulties.

*Disclaimer:
I would caution readers of this post that I'm speaking in general terms about CGSs in the above context, and have no intent to imply that the above situation was, or is universal. I've never had a problem with CGSs on a presonal level etc..

From what I could tell the Chinese students had been through a system as undergrads that emphasized theoretical of physics, and placed little emphasis on experiential work. Many of the CGSs hadn't the faintest idea of the proper use of power tools. One story, I can't vouch for it's accuracy, was how a CGS had been ask to paint a steel box beam. He allegedly placed the beam on the concrete floor of the lab, and begin to paint the beam by brushing on latex house paint sans primer.

Again, this story may be apocryphal. However there were a number of incidents that I witnessed where CGSs would go about doing experiential work by starting way out in left field. I suspect that there is a cultural biases that predisposes CGSs toward theory, and American students to be more gizmonically inclined. In my case very gizmonically inclined. Well, Dad was an *master* aircraft mechanic. :)