Too Few American Scientists? Maybe Not

Posted by michael on Saturday July 10, 2004 @06:00AM from the simple-economics dept.

An anonymous reader writes "We've been hearing about bad K-12 science education, too few American science and engineering students, and the real-soon-now employment nirvana in technical fields for, like, the last 20 years. The reality: rising undergrad enrollments and unemployment rates, long years as an underpaid postdoc for those who finish a Ph.D. The Chronicle of Higher Education article quotes Harvard economist Richard Freeman: 'They're not studying science,' he says, 'because they look and say, "Do I want to be a postdoc paid $35,000 or $40,000 at age 35, with extreme uncertainty working in somebody else's lab, and maybe getting credit for my work and maybe not getting full credit? Or would I rather be an M.B.A. and making $150,000 and hiring Ph.D.'s?"'"

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Re:You're obviously not a foreign student by foidulus · 2004-07-10 06:56 · Score: 0, Redundant

No you won't, you take an American education as an entitlement, just like the Chinese students who protest that they are not allowed to go to the US to study because of visa restrictions. They think it is their right. Guess what, it's not. And closing the borders won't help. What I would like to see is to get people who actually do like the country to come here, not people that hate the US.