Slashdot Mirror
MA Governor Wants More New Tech
turnitover writes "Cryptically stating that Asia wants the U.S. to become 'the France of the 21st century,' Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney made a public call for more innovation in technology, reports eWEEK.com. He urged more investment and development and, yes, a move to OpenDocument, as reported previously on Slashdot." From the article: "Underlining the challenge, Romney said leaders of one technology firm in Massachusetts anticipated that 90 percent of its skilled labor would be in Asia in 10 years. He also pointed to statistics that show the United States graduating only 4,400 mathematics and science PhDs each year compared with 24,900 math and science PhDs for greater Asia."
OK....here's what I took away from this article:
Asia would like us to become the France of the 21st century.
Wow...one statement that manages to offend both the Americans and the French. Well done, sir!
China and India have a population a multiple of ours.
While I'm certain this statement is factually correct (it can't help but be), I nevertheless find myself wondering just what multiple Romney is alluding to here. Three? Ten? Two-fiths? i?
In foreign policy he [Romney] said we must win the war against a "radical jihad," but that we must enable jihadists to become part of the global economy.
Ahh...there we go...I bet the Islamic fundamentalists were feeling left out by this point. Nice to see Romney managed to squirrel in a jab at the boogyman of international terrorism during his call for more tech innovation....at this point, his speech is sounding spookily like a platform for running for office...
Romney, a Republican, has been mentioned as a possible presidential candidate.
OK, now I'm scared.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Yes, the US graduates fewer PhDs in math and physics. I'm trying to be one of them. But the quality of the US PhD programs are what brought me here (I'm not USian). You can graduate a million PhDs from a degree farm somewhere but if they haven't had the same level of education they aren't going to be as influential. I'm not saying that asian universities are bad, just that there needs to be a deeper insight into this than just raw numbers.
I suspect that one of the main reasons that this data could possibly be true is the substantial cost of Education here in the US. While one would argue that students come here to earn their advanced degrees, several of these are done on stipend while students must bear the cost of the undergrad education here.
Lets face it, education is a business FIRST AND FOREMOST here in the USA..
Make education possible for everyone at costs comparable to Asia/Europe/etc and you will have more PhDs.
Greater Asia has over 3.5 Billion people! The US is just scratching 300 Million. So we are still doing better than them in Math/Science PhDs, percentage-wise.
Perhaps you should compare the base population of "greater Asia" to the base population of the US... then the figure would seem incredibly skewed towards the US.
Romney needed to act on this 3-4 years ago.
I've been part of the tech downturn at the time. Many of my ex-co-workers left the state because there were too few opportunities.
The state spent lots of money paying unemployment insurance, and the unemployed were effectively prevented from starting up their own companies because they would lose benefits the day they registered their company.
All these well qualified individuals could not use their skills during that time. Instead, they left for less costly pastures.
Massachusetts was the only state to lose population in 2004. And it wasn't losing those on the dole.
How does the quality of a typical American PhD program compare to that of a typical Asian PhD program? Is the research of a higher quality in America, or in Asia? Is it easier to "buy" your way to such a degree in America, or is it easier in Asia?
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
"Cryptically stating that Asia wants the U.S. to become 'the France of the 21st century,"
Wouldn't a better analogy be, "the England of the 21st century". After all we do have troops in the same cities around the world (Baghdad, Kabul) as Britain at the turn of the 20th century. We did take the position of world power from the British. Much of our common law is based from British law. But hey, the sun never sets on the British Empire....
"He also pointed to statistics that show the United States graduating only 4,400 mathematics and science PhDs each year compared with 24,900 math and science PhDs for greater Asia."
So let me get this straight. The U.S.A. has a population of 275 million or so and graduates 4,400 math and science PhDs, while greater Asia (just what is included in that, I have no idea??) with a population of 1 or 2 billion and graduates 24,900 math and science PhDs.
Where's the problem? It seems like we are doing fine in that regard.
Idiot.
"We need a fourth law of Robotics: Stop Fingering My Wife"
"Cryptically stating that Asia wants the U.S. to become 'the France of the 21st century,'"
Can't somebody please mark Governor Romney as (-1, Troll) ?
Anyone care to elucidate what The Gov is talking about?
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
We are still well ahead of the game.
That's as may be, but it neglects the fact that the US produces virtually all of the world's Intelligent Design specialists. And that's where the future is, not in the witchcraft practices of math and science.
please pick up a clue at the front door as you leave.
He, like most political "leadership" on this planet, is either an imbecile or refusing to acknwoledge the truth. We're seeing a downturn in the hard sciences because the market is rewarding the stupid and cruel for shipping those jobs overseas for short term gain. What exactly about the situation is so hard to understand?
He also pointed to statistics that show the United States graduating only 4,400 mathematics and science PhDs each year compared with 24,900 math and science PhDs for greater Asia."
Correct me if I am wrong, but since greater Asia has a population of 4 billion , as opposed to the US's 297 million , that is a pretty favourable ratio in favour of the US ( about 2.5 times as many graduates per capita ).
Even if he only means "Asia" as in "China and India and Japan", the US still has more graduates per capita.
Since "greater Asia" has well over five to six times the population of the US this shouldn't be so alarming. When it comes to graduating PHD's in math and science you cannot simply throw money at the problem and expect to see huge results. Going through grad school and writing a thesis is not for everybody, and manufacturing PHD's is not like making shoes.
This may be snobbish, but the stuff you have to go through to get through grad school is not for everyone. There is more to it than just smarts. Temperment, expectations, and other things play a big part. People are not going to get PHD's in science and math just because some politician thinks it will be good for the economy.
Besides all that, the good Governor needs to make the case that having more science and math PHDs will be an economic spur. Sure, folks with PHD's from ALL fields help. But just producing more PHD's may not have much effect. From the job market it seems that things are close to saturation despite all the rantings about the impending crisis of lack of mathematicians and scientists that we have been hearing about for the last fifty years.
I fully intend to hightail it to Canada after I get my Ph.D. in the US. The US is nice and all, but I'd rather live in a country that doesn't make a habit out of invading other countries.
I don't find arguments based on how many PhDs we produce to be compelling. How many PhDs do we need? Are there severe shortages currently? Do we need more PhDs or more BScs? I say these things as someone who has a PhD, and who has hired several of them. I have not seen evidence that we have a huge shortage.
USA has generally kept ahead by inventing stuff and that's why it'll probably stay ahead of Asia, the economies future isn't going to be reliant on writing some basic HTML code at minimum wage, it's going to be dependant on continuing to come up with great new ideas. Asia is generally looking to be a solutions provider for everything under the sun rather than making their own stuff. And they're renowned for making inventions slightly smaller and adding a clock. Anyway, good luck to them.
*ding*ding*ding*ding*
We have a winner!
Seriously, nothing gets by you, does it?
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
"He suggested paying teachers a $5,000 bonus for teaching Advanced Placement courses, as well as giving the top third of teachers a $5,000 bonus."
How does paying specific teachers more really solve the problem? I could be wrong here, but doesn't it just say that better paid people are happier?
Besides, if you think about it, don't teachers already want to teach AP classes as is? I mean, they usually have the smarter kids, that are more worried about their futures. Therefore, on average, the students that are most likely be hard working and willing to learn, not just to goof off and get a diploma.
From this logic, teaching AP sounds easier and more rewarding...
Am I open minded towards open source, or closed minded towards closed source?
Your figure would only be correct if an American PhD is equivalent to an Asian PhD, namely in how easy it is to obtain one.
It is easy enough in the US to obtain a doctorate from a relatively unknown college. I have worked with such people, and they are often quite lacking in the skills that would be expected from people with their supposed background. The quality of an American PhD relative to an Asian one might be quite significant. I haven't worked with anyone who received their PhD in Asia, so I can't say for sure how they compare.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Interesting that California might be the only state with higher cost-of-living that the Boston area. Taxes are higher too - Mass really doesn't have high personal taxes other than the property tax on houses (I don't know about corporate tax). There are three areas for biotech/pharma growth: Boston, San Diego and San Francisco (with some occuring in the I-95 corridor).
Housing costs are pretty horrid in both places, but Cal has the weather and the surfing...
"Cryptically stating that Asia wants the U.S. to become 'the France of the 21st century"
It's only cryptic if you don't understand that France is a former world power that has been permanently eclipsed economically, technologically, culturally, and militarily, and it has an almost obsessive desire to act as if it is America's nemesis, complaining almost reflexively of most of America's moves on the international stage.
That's not to say that the French aren't nice people, nor that I wouldn't love to hang out on one of their topless beaches, nor watch Paris's nightly display of lights, but in the realpolitik world, France doesn't matter! Thus their desire for a strong, core European Union, which along with Germany, they hope to dominate, to unite Europe as a strong and meaningful entity on the global stage.
You will know that the US is screwed when it seeks to create a transnational government with Canada and Mexico.
The world will not get better through technology. We must seek to be better people.
or perhaps you should read the news:
& btnG=Search+News
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=france
...is that Mitt has bogus information. The US graduated 25,258 science and engineering PhDs in 2003 and has been generating comparable numbers for over a decade. 25,258 > 24,900. If you just restrict yourself to science PhDs, the number is still ~20,000 PhDs per year in the US.
See for yourself: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf05300/dst.htm
"Cryptically stating that Asia wants the U.S. to become 'the France of the 21st century,'
It's not cryptic. He's saying Asia wants to reduce the U.S. to being irrelevant cheese-eating surrender monkeys.
Insert witty sig here.
I got presented with salary numbers yesterday from a director in my company. Even though chinese wages raise much faster, because they start so low, we actually will be widening the wage-gap until 2020 and we will only meet again in 2040. So the challenge is there, no doubt. But whassup with the France cryptic stuff?? Ok, so quite a few people around Paris are reading car-brochures right now. But if you go on holliday in RURAL France, you will soon see that "Living like God in France" is still quite close to reality.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
Teaching AP should then also be more work correct? You have better students who are then going to cover more material and write more tests correct? Should the effort the teachers put in not be proportional to their salary? Secondly why should top teachers not get higher pay i mean you know teaching is such a good paying job i am sure you will find plenty of qualified and smart people just rushing for a chance to make barely enough money to live...
Science, math, and engineering education and professions are disrespected by the educational system (we'd rather fund our sports teams), the government (your scientific results don't support our politics), businesses (your work is critical to us but we can't pay you more than your overseas competition), and media (entertainers are cool, geeks drool).
I doubt this will change until it's too late.
Moderation in everything, including moderation.
"Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney made a public call for more innovation in technology"
It's my opinion that the current IP laws tend to be causing less innovation just as much as having fewer graduates in certain fields. Every day I read about some new product that got cancelled or some company that closed down because they were trespassing on someone else's overly-broad patent and got sued. While I do believe in patents, sometimes the patents issued these days are so broad that a person can't even really tell what they are protecting.
How many people are in Asia, 2 billion? US 300 million. As Asian populations become wealthy of course there will be more skilled labor there. (excuse my numbers off the top of my head)
Please sign petition to restore sanity to our banking system!!!
http://financialpetition.org/
These sound an awful lot like the kind of things they said after Sputnik went up in October 1957. Back then, politicians fanned those flames too. Mind you it got us to the Moon and made Neil Armstrong wish he'd stayed on the farm, but still the motivation behind it turned out to be a little overdone. The Soviets burned themselves up just trying to keep up with us technologically.
From eWeek: Underlining the challenge, Romney said leaders of one technology firm in Massachusetts anticipated that 90 percent of its skilled labor would be in Asia in 10 years.
Read: rather than hiring US programmers at a decent wage, we'd rather send those jobs overseas to slightly less-skilled and cheaper workers. I wonder which firm that was?
From eWeek: He also pointed to statistics that show the United States graduating only 4,400 mathematics and science PhDs each year compared with 24,900 math and science PhDs for greater Asia.
Ok, I'll bite. Imagine how you can turn statistics to your advantage! Let's do a little math based on figures from the The Census 2000 Report. We'll take it as read that "Greater Asia" encompasses mainly India and China; as of 2000, there combined population is 2.3 billion. The US in 2000 tops out at roughly 281 million. Let's assume 60% of each group is capable of going through the motions to get a Ph. D. (I know it's not accurate or based on anything concrete; in Asia, it's probably closer to 25%).
Let's see:
- US: (4400 / (281m *
.6)) * 100) = .0026%
- Asia: (24900 / (2.3b *
.6)) * 100) = .0018%
Hardly the same. But then this is wholly unscientific (I have had to do stats in years). Still, it seems a bit premature to claim they are overwhelming us.Does that mean we can be complacent? No. Our school system in this country is still not functioning effectively and is certainly not turning out top-notch students like it used to. Too much touchy-feely, not enough 3R's. And money will not solve this problem; getting back to fundamentals will.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
He also pointed to statistics that show the United States graduating only 4,400 mathematics and science PhDs each year compared with 24,900 math and science PhDs for greater Asia." 4400 to 24900 is a ratio of 1 to 5.7. The US has about 300m people so, apply the ratio and you figure we have the same % graudated, that is 1.71 Billion. Given that the population of Asia was 3.44 Billion in '95 and is estimated at over 3.68 in 2000 (http://www.unhabitat.org/habrdd/asia.html) I would say that we are actually graduating mathematics and science PhDs at twice the rate of asia. Note: There may be a distinction between Asia and Greater Asia I do not understand and my population numbers are for Asia as a whole.
Take 1-part flattering bio, stir in some fear-of-others, mix with more-money-for-you, but leave out the real-plan-to-spend-the-money (or at least leave out the how-more-money-will-make-a-difference) throw in a dash of social-policy and flavour with a foreign-policy to taste.... yes sir, what we have here is some pre-election soup...
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
Isn't it unfair that many of these other countries offer FREE SCHOOL to students who score well?
Here in the US, a few lucky folks get free scholarships, but that's tough to do and not the norm.
It's obvious: to balance things, Asia will have to switch to a money-based system of education. Besides, there's only so many jobs to go around anyways, so there's no reason to educate hoardes of poor children. Where is the WTO when you need them??
I never thought of that... I suppose I remembered my high school days of problem sets and tests. And assumed the work would be the same quantity, just different quality.
I think teachers should be paid more in general, not just the top ones.
Am I open minded towards open source, or closed minded towards closed source?
Refer to this comment. If you believe the poster is who he says he is (a non-American seeking a math/science PhD from a US college), you can accept his synopsis: the "dumb PhD" problem is only worse in Asia.
I have a relative in a chemical engineering program at a university in Georgia. He was saying that many of the other students studying for their masters and doctorates were not American. I think he quoted about 60% of them as being Asian, Middle Eastern or Indian. That is, people who came directly from such areas to study in America, not Americans of such descent.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
While I'm no fan of the decline of America's standing on the educational chart (word to you, Kansas), this guy is using an arbitrary number to jump on the bandwagon of "China's going to 0wn the US in a few years."
China makes, and for some time, has made its fortune making things...from cheap plastic toys to electronic components, circuitry, you name it.
The US (and several other advanced economies) have made their fortunes, for the most part in the last 30+ years, not from manufacturing (which has been in decline in the US since the 70s) but from the conceptualization, specification, packaging, marketing, and just moving the objects. The US will no more become a manufacturing powerhouse than China will start cranking out Google (granted, a lot of PhDs there), Madden NFL, G-Unit, and Spiderman 3. That's where the US is making its $billions these days.
Will China move up the food chain economically? Of course. Will they turn the US into a satellite economy? No. The US spends a lot because it makes a lot. There are a host of economic factors that can't be adequately explored here, but our money isn't going to up and fly away to China.
Perhaps, if this bandwagon jumper is so concerned about America's economic future, he should convince his fellow politicians that it's bad long term policy to create massive national debt that is bought up by the Chinese with all their new manufacturing profits. That's more of a financial danger than getting out-PhD'ed.
Teaching anybody anything is challenging, but teaching highly intelligent and highly motivated students is a special sort of challenge. By offering incentives we get teachers who may not have considered taking on this challenge to consider doing so, and in the process we'll discover some real gems of teachers who'll turn out higher quality AP-educated students.
I think the focus on PhDs is unfortunate, we need to be graduating more bachelors in engineering and science disciplines. We're already a world leader in fundamental research, we need the folks who can take fundamental breakthroughs and turn them into innovative products. Those transformations are what create wealth, and by extension jobs.
as long as they're freedom fries.
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
No? You mean that the Ruling Class isn't flocking to the sciences? How many of Governor Romney's children has he convinced to make a future in science and technology?
Let me guess: his kids are being groomed for careers in law, finance, and government as befits their station in life and more realistic estimates of long-term prospects.
I wonder why he's not advocating more of the Great Unwashed go after those jobs in competition with his own ...
Oh, wait a minute!
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
right on dude.
plus, when I was in high school, what was the difference between a regular course and an AP course.... more worksheets!!!
is that worth $5000? don't think so.
(here in oklahoma, where the teachers are paid close to the lowest in the country, $5000 is a major chunk of a teachers yearly income).
I'm not sure how it's working in his schools up there, but for Florida, that $5000 needs to be used to actually PAY for the classes to be taught, not the teacher to teach it. Ask any High school teacher and I bet they would all take AP Classes over regular classes. The students are actually WILLING to learn, they do their work (home and class), they listen and don't talk while the teacher is. It may mean more grading for the teacher, but the headaches I bet are far, far less. Perhaps the US should stop trying to teach to the lowest common denominator and teach a subject for what it is, those who get it, get it. Those who don't... see you next year/semester. (It wouldn't be a popular decision, but tough ones rarely are). Stop giving hand outs, just offer a hand up, Humans achieve through adversity.
"If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door." - Paul Beatty
... when I can do less work, spend less time in school, make a whole lot more money and have less risk of outsourcing by getting an MBA?
Damn it, Jim! He's a politician, not a mathematician!
As Barbie teaches us, "Math is hard." The other key lesson is that hard work is for the underclasses, not the ruling class. From this we learn why he wants more math and science graduates: so he doesn't have to do hard math for his own speeches.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
then employers will pay competitive salaries instead of farming out the work to H1-Bs or offshore. Only an idiot will pay 4+ years of college tuition for the privilege of competing with people whose education was totally subsidized.
The credentials of some of the offshore people are not all that great. I know someone who was an IT worker in India at age 15. His labor was being sold to US companies who were told he had a BSCS. Employers could hire US high school students with alot less muss and fuss; the results would not be much different.
When the money is right, the supply of engineers and other skilled labor will take care of itself. Until that time, rhetoric is a poor substitute for balancing supply and demand.
Right now, things are out of balance. Salaries are low, tech. people are leaving the field. As a result, the supply of tech workers is low. Employers respond by outsourcing and offshoring (which perhaps caused the problem in the first place). If you start shopping at Walmart because the prices are low, don't be too suprised when you go shopping next time and discover Walmart is now the only store in town.
For what they pay the average programmer/analyst these days, you might as well sell cars. Wages and job security might actually be better, no degree required, and the work will NOT be outsourced.
Many would say that you don't get a doctorate degree for the money alone. It was not the main motivation for me either.
I live in MA, and Romney has been one colossal pain in the ass.
The man is a calculating, cold, arrogant, mean, power-brokering son of a bitch.
Please help metamoderate.
Start with an American Free trade area. LOL.
. stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4407300
Deleted
I think the focus on PhDs is unfortunate, we need to be graduating more bachelors in engineering and science disciplines. We're already a world leader in fundamental research, we need the folks who can take fundamental breakthroughs and turn them into innovative products. Those transformations are what create wealth, and by extension jobs.
No, we don't need any more bachelors in engineering and science at all. We already have far too many. Look at the typical salaries for these professions: they're very low. By simple supply-and-demand, if there were a shortage, the salaries would be very high. Science and engineering are low-paid professions in this country, so either we have too many, or obviously our society simply doesn't value these careers.
Romney's part of the party that is responsible for supporting and enlarging the outsourcing wave. The Other Guys were the ones who wanted to institute measures against it during the last presidential election. This is just posturing on Romney's part for his bid for the Republican Presidential nomination in 2008.
Paying more money to teachers makes the NEA happy which is always good for your reelection bid.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Asia has over 5 times the population that the US does so I believe this leaves us fairly even: 4,400 * 5 = 22,000 ~ 24,000.
Exactly.
How many fulltime jobs can one man have?
But I like my car -- I don't want it burned to a crisp!
We had a program like that at my kids' high school. There was a lot of competition as a result for slots teaching the AP classes.
Too bad that the teachers with math and science degrees didn't have the political clout to get those slots. The ones teaching the AP sections may not have known anything about the material, but they had great lesson plans!
I hope that the (former) teachers with math and science degrees are happier in their new jobs, whatever they are.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Freedom Fries?
I want them made with real French people.
France does not have obcessive desire to act as America's nemesis!
Get with it: France was one of the few countries to stand up for themselves in the run-up to the 2nd Iraq vs US war. Nothing obcessive about that.
I know this is an American forum (mostly) but surely it cannot have escaped your notice that not everybody likes the americans? And with good reason too.
They could have said that they wanted to become the USA of the 21st century... Now *that* would have been scary!
Except along the way he was accosted by a bum who asked him if he was running for President or not (I'm dead serious) and was nearly attacked on one of the subway platforms by a woman who was in the news for keeping about a hundred cats in her house (a fair number of them dead, and a bunch of the dead ones in several freezers.) MBTA and State Police took care of both problems.
Adding insult to injury, a reporter asked him how much the fare was, and he said "a buck". Except the MBTA has been $1.25 for over a year. The MBTA comissioner became enraged when reporters made something of it. "The governor can't be aware of everything". Except it was a MAJOR issue in the eastern end of the state- the rate hike affected commuter rail, bus, and subway customers.
It pretty much proved that not only did he not give a shit about issues that affected citizens in his state, and that he could barely be bothered to take the subway for one stop- he didn't even pay for the fare himself.
Please help metamoderate.
as much as that we're letting so many math/science/engineering/programming smarties fall by the wayside by continuing the hollow out these type of jobs from the economy.
How about finding ways to re-employ these people for the national good? I'm sure most of them have great ideas to contribute!
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
Because we Asians want to get more of the US PhDs being churned out each year.
Muahahahahahha!
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
To have a society that innovates, you need a culture that promotes innovation. A few points:
... well, you get the picture.
The quality of the education can promote or stifle innovation. The German and Japanese education systems produce people with much better 'skills' than the American system. The American system, on the other hand, produces better innovators. It is possible to train the innovation right out of someone. They end up seeing only the solutions they were taught.
To innovate, you need a surplus. ie. you need enough time and money to innovate. If you're working sixteen hours a day just to scrape together a meal, you aren't going to innovate much. If the economy goes down the tubes, we will be in trouble because the level of innovation will go down. So, US economic policy has a lot to do with how well we will be able to continue innovating. Bad news. The huge deficit
The law shouldn't stifle innovation. The DMCA, the Patriot Act and Software Patents have all been cited as innovation killers.
It isn't a given that Americans innovate just because it's the American thing to do. If conditions change then we may find that innovation just doesn't pay. We can kill the goose that laid the golden egg.
get rid of software patents and copyrights on ideas and you'll have a *great* start to enabling innovation.
MA governor needs to learn about Per Capita calculations...
Figures from CIA world factbook.
China has a population of 1.3 Billion
If he includes India as part of "Greater Asia" then the total population is 2.3 Billion
America has a population of 296 Million...
Per capita PHD rates then...
Assuming he means China+India for Greater Asia:
2.3 Billion / 24900 PhDs = 1 PhD per 92,000 people
If he means just China:
1.3 Billion / 24900 PhDs = 1 PhD per 52,000 people
US Per-Capita PhD:
296 Million / 4400 PhDs = 1 PhD per 62,000 people.
Perhaps a better measure is number of PhDs as overall college graduation rates.
Remember people, when talking about numbers, use per-capita statistics. Worst case, "Greater Asia" means just china, in which they are 'beating' us. If you add more countries to the term "Greater Asia", the US is still the leader in PhD per Capita production. It gets worse the more countries you add to "Greater Asia".
This is of course NEW PhDs, not just the ones that already exist, or those foreigns PhDs that eventually move here, etc...
Another thing, is the quality of education at this level. How good are Chinese versus US universities? ( Why do a lot of them come to the states anyways? ).
When you see newspaper reports of Indian Doctors believing a village girl 'really does cry tears of glass', it tells you something. Don't get sick in India. BTW, it turned out to be a hoax... Go Figure...
I heard the Brits are gonna stop calling the NFL "American Football" and start calling it "Freedom Football"....
Boston was recently rated the most expensive city in the US primarily due to housing costs (see bugmenot if you don't want to register for the article). Rewinn is right that the overhead of running a small business is driving employment opportunities away. Maybe it all balances out since the cost of housing is driving potential employees away.
The further development of Asian (more specifically global) manufacturing is unstoppable. This is not a bad thing. America's response will (hopefully) be increased automation and higher quality (as in German automobiles). The great thing about Asia is cheap labor. So reduce labor as a factor and you can come out ahead. This is an idiotic numbers game. Pursuing a PhD in mathematics or science requires a certain constitution. Urging more Americans to consider such degrees is unlikely to produce a wealth of qualified candidates. And besides, a Harvard PhD will tell you that he's worth at least 10 PhDs from God-Knows-Where in Asia (this is a joke). This is the only credible solution presented by Mr. Romney (the OpenDocument initiative is interesting but it has nothing to do with innovation). And it is a very unconvincing one. Wouldn't it make more sense to concentrate on students with the DEMONSTRATED potential to succeed? The education gap (which is a POVERTY issue, not a racial issue) is obviously a detriment to free society. But come on: it has nothing to do with high tech. A vague improvment in the general intelligence of the public will not change drastically the ability of American research and design.
I find it most amusing that Mr. Romney praises Asians for being "hard working" and "ambitious" but does not encourage instilling those qualities in American youths. Increasing the salaries of educators (which should be done for ALL educators on general principles) based on their performance is a terribly uncomprehensive plan. Implement this and students will be demonstrably better at whatever metric is used to determine which teachers deserve raises. What a wonderfully superficial improvement! Until more children are motivated (by their parents and their community) to excel at school, nothing will change.
How can this be done? I dunno, I'm not a Governor =).
France only stood up to it because they were trading with Iraq under the table.
The parent was being sarcastic, not trollish. So please remove the Troll mod.
...so it wasn't just me that felt like this article was campaign rhetoric?
Yeah, I'm sick to death of politicians jumping on the Open Document Format bandwagon. I expect we'll hear from Hilary Clinton about her great love of emacs next. *Yawn*. Same every campaign.
Well, I think the problem is a combination of the two points you made.
The highest trained are undercut by those with a lesser education.
This is probably because of what you said. Higher education isn't valued and treated the same as a lesser education, because the lesser education is easier, more people qualify to do it.
So it isn't that we need less bachelors per se. It is that we either need to respect university education more, or have less people with a lower education.
Am I open minded towards open source, or closed minded towards closed source?
Especially in Massachusetts -- the teachers union there is very influential.
FOOD without A MICROWAVE!
WINE without A SCREW-OFF CAP!
SEX without GUILT!
and UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE!
Those French are such idiots not being exactly like us.
Maybe an easier solution would be to channel people into the type of education that suits them.
If academics don't suit a person, teach them a trade. Wouldn't this make students and teachers happier? (other than the teachers who would lose their jobs in a few years because fewer students are learning academics)
Am I open minded towards open source, or closed minded towards closed source?
"Greater Asia"? What's that? The Asian continent includes China, India, most of Russia, Japan, lots of 'Stans. It's got something like 4 BILLION people. The US has something like 300 million people, 13x the size of the US. Graduating only 50% the technical Asians per capita as Americans per capita, compared to their local markets, isn't really a threat, although it does close a historical gap that made US technical superiority easy.
A factor that does make that a thread is the lack of Asian consumers of those technical skills. I remember through the 1990s hearing free marketers drooling over China's huge new market. They explained that Chinese production would eventually rise to compete more with American production, but the increased consumption would keep all our production lines busy. Then those free marketers outsourced all the production they could to China. I know that consumers need money to consume, therefore jobs, therefore represent production. And that economics is best when self organized, rather than centrally planned - even China's mafia Communist government couldn't grow their planned economy without thousands of foreign industrialists jumping in on their own greed. But we'll do a lot better by combining American scientific production growth with Asian scientific consumption growth.
I know the Massachussetts governor doesn't make foreign policy directly, but this one has been running for president for over a year. If he's going to make national domestic policy announcements, they should be analyzed in the vacuum of associated foreign policy he hasn't announced. And the product he's pitching to the market beyond Massachussetts, himself, should be considered on those terms.
--
make install -not war
That's an excellent point, fewer people are going into PHd programs now...
The real question then is - does it matter as much? Sure the Chinese are producing many more PHd's, and have been for a while - so then why are all the major innovations seemingly still coming from other countries (not just the US). I would argue that to some extent the role that PHd's play in research has been taken over by businesses, I know people think that businesses now don't do much R&D anymore but there still are substntial R&D workings in big comapnies like IBM or GE, not to mention countles startups.
The startups point to why it might not be as much of a problem as it would seem either, bucause in China people simply do not have the same freedoms to innovate or be creative that they do elsewhere (and again here I am talking about all over, not just the US).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This potentially a huge step towards improving the quality of American public schools - and presumably the eventual quality or quantity of our Science and Math graduates.
Paying teachers for performance rather than just for showing up represents a major departure from the current American system of continuing to employ tenured teachers (at low wages) irrespective of their effectiveness. Adding pay for AP teachers should increase the competition for those teaching positions and help ensure that America's best and brightest (public school students) are taught by the best (public school teachers).
Articles like this one, where someone starts an argument by bashing a third party, only proof the obvious: the person who is bashing others has no clue. Just look at projects like the Ariane 5-ECA, ITER etc.. France is a major player in these 21st century high-tech projects.
One thing still going for us is despite stifling laws, people in teh US still respect and strive for innovation. So overall I think the feeling is it's OK to break the law for innovation... it gives un Enrons but it also gives us countless osftware that probably violates a whole mess of patents.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
For the US to maintain it's economic leadership (per capita income, services, law and order) its per capita economic output must continue to grow. This is done by innovation -- creating new ideas, having more power at your fingertips. Taxachussetts has a doubly heavy burden because of its heavy gov't (not unlike France).
There are two solutions to this problem: pouring money into R&D, and opening the floodgates of immigration of the highly qualified workers into the US, to take advantage of those R&D dollars. Unfortunately, the current federal administration isn't on board with either of these, and the tech community is split on the latter.
with a decent wage and not fire them when they turn 40. Or 35.
That's it. Graduation and education will take care of itself.
Most fired PhD's over 40 will never get another technical job again, unless they have a top security clearance and want to work in military industries. (With the budget deficit in USA, this spending will stop soon as well.)
There have always been many Asian students in graduate programs in the USA.
Before, they could get a job here. Now they can't, but there are tremendous
opportunities in Asia, especially for those with high-quality American PhD's.
American PhD's can't get those jobs. Chinese and Japanese and Korean are much too difficult for a non-native speaker, and in India + Korea + Japan there is plenty of ethnic and nationalistic discrimination. "Why should we hire you foreigner, when we have plenty of smart natives trying to get that job?"
I'd agree with you if we lived in a technocracy. But the best people don't always get the best jobs.
Of course, I don't know how teachers get promoted.
Am I open minded towards open source, or closed minded towards closed source?
More technology than Asia to suit the xenophobes, but no stemcells, to suit the ChrisTaliban. Hey, which state did the Puritans start as their utopia?
--
make install -not war
No, this is all wrong. You're talking as if "we" have some control over what society values. We don't. We're just some weirdos on Slashdot, and are not representative of either 1) the overall population, or 2) the people who run businesses in this country, and decide what to pay people in technical professions. We're at the mercy of those two groups.
Those two groups have decided that technical professionals (scientists & engineers) are simply not that valuable to society or their businesses, and are rewarding them accordingly. So if you're thinking of going into such a profession, you need to be aware of what type of reward you're likely to get for your work, and make your decision accordingly. If you're interested in being treated well and rewarded well for your work, you'll probably decide to not enter a technical profession at all.
Sure, it'd be nice if society in general respected university education, and especially postgraduate education, but the simple fact is that it doesn't. So people in technical careers need to recognize this fact, and either move to a more rewarding career, or move to another country that values these careers more.
Getting an education is something that paid off for just a few years. Historically it never has. That isn't why we do it though.
In the 1800s doctors earned less than those without educations. However it is the works of doctors (plus many other factors) that gave us modern medicine.
Back when I was first in college the McDonald's I worked for part time (as management) offered me a store manager position - but I would have to quit school. (This was only half serious, they knew I wouldn't quit, but the person offering it was frustrated enough about that store that he would have liked me to take it) It has been over 10 years now, and there has not yet been a time when I would be making less money if I had gone for it, and my prospects of moving up their company ladder for more money are higher than here in engineering. Not to mention McDonald's hires lots of girls at their peak of beauty, while engineering essentially never does.
Engineering, math, and science are great fields to be in. Don't do them for the money though, it isn't here.
REVOLUTION!
Actually, I meant "we" as referring to western society.
I probably should have used a more specific term...
Am I open minded towards open source, or closed minded towards closed source?
Just as the center of manufacturing moved from Europe to the U.S., they want to keep it moving to Asia.
It's been in Asia for some time, Mitt.
Perhaps he should head across town to chat with several of the renowned economists at Harvard or MIT. American manufacturing has been in decline (much of it double-digit, iirc) since the 70s. I see that our economy has not followed suit.
He might also discover that nationalized plans to keep "manufacturing jobs" have been implemented in Germany and Italy, and despite the fact that they make some fine automobiles, they have not experienced the economic advantages of a service-based economy the way the US and UK have. To the contrary, they are threatening to destabilize the economies of those countries in the future. As soon as asian countries learn to truly create (and not just produce to spec) products of similar quality (no simple task) for a lower price, then EU manufacturing economies will suffer considerably.
Unfortunately for Germany and Italy, currently the creation of new businesses is a bureaucratic nightmare, making their transition that much more difficult. Not so in the US.
Twit Romney hates ham radio.
We're outsourcing only the low level technical jobs not Phd level jobs. Right? Because if we are outsourcing those, that's sure going to send the wrong message to US graduate students. "Hey, spend a lot of time, money, and effort getting your Phd and we're going to hire cheap foreign labor anyway."
I probably wasn't taking enough time reading your post anyway, since I was in such a rush to rant.
You're right; western society (especially the USA) really *should* recognize the importance of scientists and engineers, but currently, it does not. I simply don't see this changing any time soon. Business is far too powerful here, and greed is all-consuming, so that businesses try to screw their employees as much as possible and keep all the profits for the owners or top execs. Other professions, such as doctors and lawyers, don't usually have this problem because in those fields, the practitioners also usually happen to own and run their own businesses. This is rarely the case with scientists and engineers: they usually work for a corporation.
I think this problem is more centered in the USA, too; I believe (but don't really have any proof to point to, maybe someone in other western countries can say something here) that in many other western countries, scientists and engineers are much more highly respected and treated better than they are here (such as in Germany).
People go for the MS for more money. PHD is about passion for the subject and other non-monetary compensations.
I find Romney to be a crass opportunist, who got himself elected as a political moderate running against an admittedly corrupt and complacent Democratic state house. As soon as he sees a chance to go national, he breaks to the right, hard, changing his position on abortion faster than you can blink, coming down against gay marriage (which he could reasonably capitalize on as a "freedom to marry" libertarian position) and pushing for capital punishment while other conservative states are suspending their programs.
Mitt's got a point, among all the muddled statistics and campaigning, though. Massachusetts is doing okay economically, but could do a lot better. We got our stem cell bill through the legistlature too slowly to keep a lot of the biz from moving to California, and we've trailed CA in other tech sectors for a long time. Our colleges, including the UMass system, are excellent, and have spawned a lot of buisnesses from their research; my friend's dad (Richard Schrock) just won a Nobel for some basic, and very profitable, chemistry.
We won't ever be able to compete with places like California (or India or China) in tech manufacturing, because of the high cost of living throughout the state. But we can bring down the cost of housing in the Boston area, to help keep recent graduates around. We can bring the education level of the state up for all residents by agressively reforming K-12 education funding, and keeping tuition at UMass low. If MA can grow and keep an educated workforce around, we can do better.
Before you mod me down automatically, let me make the case that graduate degrees aren't really important anyway, at least in high tech, and that what's really going on is a difference in culture and lifestyle, NOT the horrifying end of our culture.
Let me begin by saying that my understanding of "the problem" is that Americans have lost interest in spending tens of thousands of dollars (possibly over a hundred thousand) to continue with their already expensive education, particularly when it is perfectly clear they're never, ever going to make that investment back in the workplace (if, that is, they get a job at all).
Furthermore, many American students may just find it extremely annoying that colleges expect them to pay a premium to be taught by someone whose broken english they can barely understand in the first place (this happens a LOT).
Add to this the fact that, at least when it comes to high tech, you can learn anything you want by buying the text online for under a hundred bucks, which is far cheaper than the hundreds of dollars per credit it takes to have a teaching assistant mumble at you for two hours a week while the professor fiddles with his research. Most students learn most of their knowledge from the textbooks ANYWAY.
On top of all that, the dirty truth of high tech is that anyone can do research anywhere, with inexpensive equipment bought on Ebay, and doing it in your apartment instead of in a college means that YOU OWN THE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY and can start a business based on it.
Add all these things together, and I think you'll be able to see that the type of people who may once have stayed in school for the 8 - 12 years required for a Ph.D are probably now much more comfortable just graduating with their B.S, getting a job, and spending their free time trying to invent something that will one day make them rich (alternately, maybe they become consultants, or do something else). I believe they see this as a much better use of their time and money, and that they see the opportunity cost of attending graduate school to be far too high.
In contrast, in asian cultures there seems to be a much higher emphasis on the "piece of paper", with which one may impress ones parents and grandparents, and attract a much better wife when the parents go arranged-marriage shopping. Where we Americans don't give a rat's ass whether our parents approve of our girlfriends, and really couldn't care less about appearance and status, in some of the cultures being considered, approval, status and appearance are VERY important.
Perhaps what's really going on is simply a cultural difference. In some asian cultures, having official recognition of ones status is important and desireable, and in rough-and-tumble, individualist America, nobody gives a crap and they do their own thing.
Both approaches to life are just as valid. Both have advantages. There's no reason to run around with your hair on fire.
And in our own defense, we Americans haven't really had much use for those highfalutin' pieces of paper, anyway. I seem to remember that Thomas Alva Edison was completely self-taught, as are most hackers. And look how HE influenced society.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
"He also pointed to statistics that show the United States graduating only 4,400 mathematics and science PhDs each year compared with 24,900 math and science PhDs for greater Asia."
Considering the United States has a population of approx. 230 million people as opposed to greater Asia's 1+ billion people, this is nothing to be concerned about. Get real.
...give companies tax credits for performing research in his state/city....
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
yes, I'm too lazy to look up the demographics right now
This coming from a man who supported bolgers brother and said he was a good man. When he resigned/got fired, he kept an insane pension, which resulted in lay-offs. Romney is politically smart, but technically an idiot. The number of Phd's doesn't mean anything. It's the quality of the Phd's produced. Romney needs to move to a southern state and show how much of a red neck he really is.
I am telling my kids NOT to go into a tech field.
If Mitt wants more tech grads, he has to look at what a tech career is.
I am in IT.
The amount of information I need to know doubles every year, yet my plumber, lawyer and doctor make more than I do. I have a working life of about 20 years. After that, companies want to hire the new kids out of school, or workers on H1B visas (Congress just approved 230K more).
Companies don't want to do development here, so why should I be a developer?
I do not mean to sound bitter. There is no law saying that there has to be a tech job for me or anyone. If those positions pay too little or are done in other countries, you are not going to get tech grads in MA.
. . .when you know it's a losing proposition when it comes to actually getting hired by Corporate America? Unless you're a scientist lucky enough to score a job with the likes of Raytheon or another defense contractor, you're destined to work for nonprofit organizations squeaking by on grants or working in something other than your chosen field, because Corporate America will hire one scientist and three engineers on H1B or L1 Visas (or simply offshore the job) for the salary you would demand.
Scummy, yes, but it's reality. It's sad when your future looks brighter if you want to become a lawyer and litigate than if you want to become a productive member of society and innovate.
It is a situation similar to that of IT - industry was demanding more IT grads, more IT training programs, etc. and and clamoring for IT personnel. Many answered that demand, only to get stabbed in the back with offshoring. Many left the industry - some went back to school to become attorneys, some sell real estate, some opened restaurants, others started their own tech companies, etc. etc. and won't go back to working in technical departments for other people. Now industry is really hurting for tech help, demanding yet more H1B and L1 visas (and getting them approved) and many very qualified people won't go back to IT because the same cycle would repeat itself. Now college and voc-tech-training students are avoiding IT and going into trades (you'll always need carpenters, welders, electricians, etc.) and industry is going to be facing a severe shortage of IT help in 5 to 15 years. Folks who left IT couldn't give less of a &@%! about the companies who will be hurting, because it's those companies which started the backstabbing cycle.
Why bother with sciences and technical training when you know you don't have a future you can count on? You're better off becoming a plumber and charging $100/hour to fix clogged drains and leaky faucets and choose where and when you want to work rather than be on-call 24 hours a day for a company who pays you only $30/hr to $50/hr (well, more like $15/hr to $25/hr in reality when you figure the hours you ACTUALLY put in vs. the hours you get paid for) and deal with shit from whiny users and pointy-haired bosses.
(Note: this post is not flamebait nor a troll, but merely introspection/mental masturbation. Disagree? Shake your head and move on.)
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
I went through the Navy and received eduaction in electronics. When I went back to civilian life, I found that employers wanted a college degree. I went to college to get the degree. I only got credit in phys. ed and communications simply because the courses were designed a bit differently. After about 3 years and several thousands of dollars, I got my degree. I work for about a year in the electronic field before my job was shipped to China. Most electronics engineering jobs are now moved to overseas. This is happening to all kinds of professions. Why should people spend tens of thousand of dollars in order get the right paperwork for a career only to see that effort wasted when the next round of outsourcing comes about? I am seeing the same thing that happened to the electronics industry happen to the computer industry. I am just glad that I do not have to pay back a student loan. If the American government wants to increase graduation rates, then it would do something about the flood of slave-made goods and services crossing our borders. In fact, something will give due to the high number of dollars that America bleeds each year. In America, a worker cannot support a house and pay living expenses on a dollar a day. How do we compete with slave labor except by becoming slaves ourselves. This is where America is headed no thanks to the U.S. government's refusal to do its job. http://www.fija.org/ Take back the power usurped by corrupt judges. http://www.lp.org/ Take back our freedoms that have been stolen by the goverment. http://www.constitutionparty.com/ Time to go back to a limited government where people are free.
Remember, you retard, that it's still orders of magnitude more likely that you will die in a traffic accident causeed by a fellow citizen than die at the hands of international terrorist action.
But where is the $300 Billion campaign to wipe out traffic fatalities?
Blar.
Boston is the Chenai of America
or
The Seatpost-Clamp of the Solar System.
What kind of reply is this? Did anybody call the US a boogyman? I didn't think so. So what does the US have to do with his reply?
I know, it's because you have nothing to say, so it's back to the old "US is bad and even worse!!" standby. It's not insightful in the slightest.
You kids are cute but I just utterly and totally destroyed your illogic. Go back to school, boy.
I don't care what kind of a degree someone has... or where it's from. A high education doesn't necessarily mean that you're more innovative than someone with a lesser education. In fact, some people believe that being taught a set of rules may block one from being innovative. True innovations comes from dreamers who believe that "anything" is possible. But to be able to make that dream come true, you may need the skill that's required to make it happen.
Western Europe looks at their engineers and see quality products being created to satisfy real consumer demands. Its easy for a German to be proud of their engineers, they've got high speed rail lines, well designed and produced automobiles, they contribute heavily to the success of Airbus. Same goes for the Asian countries, they all have tangible results that indicate high quality engineering.
The US government contributes a lot to this problem as well with legislation that stifles innovation and invention, and that benefits large corporations. Big companies don't create jobs, and they especially don't create the jobs of the future, something we desperately need. We've lost our way in the US, and we desperately need a loud, vocal public debate to refocus the country on regaining our leadership role in the world economy.
Our governor is the same person who laughed at the KKK joke when he was introduced by a fellow politician as somebodoy who had to run a state led by KKK (Kerry and Kennedy Klan). I would not expect this man to say anything meaningful; just listen to any of his speeches and you will see why.
The fact that Asia has more advanced science degrees does not mean anything. First of all, Asia is not a freaking country. Secondly, having education has very little to do with success if you do not know what to do with it. Take a look at the republics of the former USSR. They inherited the knowledge and school systems that minted the best of the best. I do not see those countries to be on the top lists when it comes to human rights or levels of prosperity. The fact is the rest of the world is catching up.
More educated people around the world is not such a bad thing. The economies will prosper and prosperity along with business relationships leads to peace. Let's face it: Why bomb your neighbor if you have something to lose? Instead of shrinking the markets and alienating the public, we should embrace the fact that people around the world are interested in learning, building, creating and brining economic prosperity. In the end, all of us will benefit from it. Just like American companies are seeking to expand in Asian markets European and Asian companies will aim to do more business in the United States. You cannot do that without hiring Americans.
Education is good for everybody... And Mitt needs get back to fixing the damn Mass Pike.
Sheesh people - it's funny.
I always see things I really, really want to moderate when I have no mod points.
Very good points.
Of course, the truth about crappy products from the USA is that this is the fault of corporate management. Ultimately, everything in a company can be blamed on management. Engineers can't very well create exceptional products when they're not allowed to by management, who control the budget and schedules, and which projects are done (even if they're obviously a bad idea).
I don't think we're going to regain our leadership role until things become much worse than they are now. Average Americans still aren't hurting, and think things are great because they're able to buy lots of cheap stuff from China thanks to the difference in currency valuation. Once our currency devalues to what it's really worth, Americans won't be able to buy much from overseas any more, and other countries won't buy much from us since we no longer do very much (raw materials, maybe? We still export coal I think). When this time comes, then people might start thinking about these things, but by then it'll be far too late because all the technologists will have left the country, and gaining a leadership role isn't something you can do overnight (especially when most of the population is so ignorant, thanks to our horrible education system).
Everything Mitt has done since he was elected has been a painfully transparent stab at looking good on the national stage. Unfortunately, if you live in Mass, you will have noticed that he's done precious little governing. He can stand up in front of a crowd and say what he'd like to do, but I for one would be happy if would just *do* something. He's left the leadership of the state up to the Congress while he's jetting off to international trade conferences. It's pathetic.
On the bright side, we didn't even have to wait that long to find out his opinion of Massachusetts -- one of the first things he did after getting in office was to make the state the butt of a series of jokes at some big Washington, D.C. dinner. I can't wait until he's making fun of the U.S. while lobbying for King of the Earth.
He damn well better get elected president -- nobody in Massachusetts is going to want him as governor for another term.
// This is not a sig.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought those particular boogymen got vaporized. Are there other ones you know about that we don't?
// This is not a sig.
"xcept stories about how poor it is when compared to foreign universities; especially ones in India."
No, you hear stories about how poor our primary and secondary schools are; I've never heard anyone (outside of India) claim Indian universities are superior to anything.
Based on my experience, a masters in mathematics from an Indian university is approximately equal to a bachelor degree from an accredited U.S. University. Everybody in Indian has an MS in Math. Hello?
To insinuate that France is some kind of tech backwater is straight out of the warped and slowly dying rednekkk bullshit freedom fry loving ass hats that now inhabit the White House, et al.
Even though I could mention AirBus, I won't...
A simple acronym will suffice to put this Franco-Bashing to bed:
ITER
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Actually, car salespeople are having a hard time due to the Internet and sites like carsdirect.com
You beat TripMaster Monkey to a first post. Shame on you.
Fellow citizenry of Slashdot! Expel this infidel from the site! We must not allow this to continue!
--
Trolling all trolls since 2001.
I'm addicted maaaaan
http://www.sawthetableleg.com/
Invent something!
I see the political class' idea of command everything is spreading...
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
From the part called "Problem is economic" here http://www.dateline.ucdavis.edu/dl_detail.lasso?id =8521
"A 1989 National Science Foundation internal report argued a need to limit growth in doctoral salaries in science and engineering, and proposed as a solution bringing in more foreign students and scholars. It recognized the negative impact this would have on domestic student enrollment: "(If) doctoral studies are failing to appeal to...the best citizen baccalaureates, then a key issue is pay. The relatively modest salary premium for acquiring a (science and engineering) doctorate may be too low to attract a number of able potential graduate students."
Mmmm Lets see. China Population: 1.1 Billion. India Population: 800 million. Together they don't make up all of Asia, but I digress. Together they are 1.9 billion people. The US has a population of 1/3 of a billion people (333 million, roughly). Thus, Asias population (roughly for the purposes of this exercise) is approximately 1.9 Billion / 0.333333333 billion or roughly 5.7 times as large as the population of the US. Now the US graduates 4400 PhD's per year. 4400 multiplied by 5.7 equals 25080. To be on par, Asia would have to graduate 25080 PhD's per year. So far they are graduating 24900, or 180 short of the proportional number to the US. There aren't enough jobs in the US for all the PhD's graduating now though. What you would have to do is: provide a climate where businesses invest in the US including research related jobs where PhD's would be most useful and 2. graduate more PhDs. Right now US banks/investors/industry is betting on China/India. It's been 35 years since they bet on the home team. Intel can't shut down US wafer/fab plants fast enough! The only part of his speech that made sense is for OpenOffice to have better screen reading capabilities for disabled people. (Microsoft is supported by 3rd party vendors which provide services to disabled people. OO.o needs it's own so sight-impaired people maintain their productivity. This is the next big push for OO.o).
china surrenders?
So why is the USA not invading Saudi Arabia?
'Them thar Sauds, theas got mor Black Gold then them thar Iraqids!'
Geez, if the USA captured the Whole Middle East Oil supply,
that oughta keep them SUV's a-runnin' at full speed for another 3 weeks,
at least!
I would like to see just one hundred billion dollars
being spent on solar power, wind mills, and alternative fuel car funding.
It will balance out the $300 billion+ that's
getting dumped down the drain to bring freedom to the average iraqi citizen,
well - the ones that are still left alive, that is.
Too bad the USA spent ALL its reserves on warfare - the people caught in hurricanes and other storms will just have to sign up and join the Army!
I think you mean the American Federation of Teachers (AFT ). Believe it or not, teacher's unions have typically opposed bonuses based on above average performance. The thinking is that every dollar of bonus paid to top teachers takes away from the teachers who are below average or average, but who make up a voting majority within the union.
Unfortunately, for all their rhetoric, the NFT as an organization is more interested in lining their pockets than in improving education in the US. Because of their selfishness, common sense remedies to the appalling state of the American public school system such as pay for performance are politically untenable.
...that it would be nice for the tech industry to pick back up again. I'm not sure I want to take any direction from anyone in MA, though. The taxes are stupidly high, the roads suck, and let's not even mention the Big Dig (oops!) Maybe he means that MA is the France of the US?
When we are all classified as a "Development Resource" or a "Testing Resource," (or whatever you happen to be called today), instead of valued for our unique abilities to contribute, we will all be subject to brain drain.
Brain drain is about paying the minimum amount possible for a given task-- thus, Project Managers or Business People find people with the minimum price to perform the task. Our efforts are commoditized when they are marked as "just needs a tester." Why pay more?
Until we as a community can find a way to show PMs and business people that we can contribute in unique ways-- past "Development Resource," we can just forget our jobs. Some of us may impress our capabilities upon individuals, but for the most part, PMs and business people follow the same best practice: purchase commodity work at commodity prices.
If nothing in your skill set or bag of tricks makes you unique to your situation, or if your boss is not using your unique capabilities, you are a commodity. Further, if your boss is paying you more than average for commodity effort, Don't Tell Him. Save the difference between an average salary for your position and what you make. You will need it when he figures out how much he really should be paying for commodity work-- for a resource on a Gantt chart-- and discovers that the next person to do your job will be from a country "guilty" of Brain Drain.
Heh. Guilty of Brain Drain == ability to deliver commodity work for less.
[Error 407: No signature found]
France stood up because 10% of their population is North African and like the rest of the Arabic-speaking world, there was a lot of resistance to the invasion of Iraq there.
In short France stood up against the war on Iraq for the same reason that the US Gov't keeps standing up against Europe's attempts to open more trade with Cuba but not against efforts to trade with China.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I'm so fucking sick of the idiot AC cocksuckers acting like France is some sort of bunch of losers because they "surrendered" to Germany in WWII. They didn't just roll over and surrender, asshole, pull your head out of your ass. The Germans swallowed up Austria (to the cheers of welcoming crowds), then spent a few weeks polishing up their war machine on Poland. They were nice and warmed up, with the best weapons in the world when they turned on France.
And sure, the French aren't the military freaks SOME countries are, but they still fought against a vicious adversary until FORCED to surrender. All wars end when the victor accepts the surrender of the loser. Why don't you jizzbags ever call Japan sushi-eating surrender monkeys, or the Germans spaetzle-eating suicide monkeys? Should the Vietnamese call us burger-chomping shrapnel-monkeys? It's fucking easy as hell to sit with thousands of miles of ocean between you and the enemy, not to mention decades of smug idiocy building up between then and now. Nobody in the forties and fifties criticized the french for this bullshit; it's only now that WE'RE the assholes and they sometimes tell us so, as any good friend ought to do.
Fucking asslicking troll.
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
the hot, loose women in the engineering field
:)
Such as the women here?
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
Mitt Romney will be our next President. Mark my words....
Brent
"Mormon- a religion which used to promote treating women like cattle and marrying as many as you like."
That's a blatant falsehood. Why don't you go look up the facts before opening your mouth?
I challenge you to find any religion (or philosophy) that treats women with as much respect as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
Is it oxymoronic to encrypt your Open Document Format files?
math is for losers.
qntm.org
France has plenty of innovative, high-tech companies (look at Thales, Alcatel, Airbus, etc.) French workers (the 90% not unemployed) actually are more productive per hour on average than U.S. workers, but the French work fewer hours per year and are less productive on a yearly basis.
What France doesn't have is GDP growth and low unemployment. These are explained by high tax burdens and strong labor regulations.
French GDP per capita compared to the U.S. is now at about 70%, down from about 80% during the early 1980's.
The French model of only allowing the 90% most skilled people to work, and having those people pay big taxes for welfare for the other 10% seemed like a pretty cool idea for a while, until that whole riot thing.
Interestingly, the U.S. has a more equal distribution of income (in terms of Gini inddex) than France - before government income redistribution. Only after government income redistribution does France has a more equal distribution of income than the U.S.
Good deal! Nice to have THOUGHTFUL and INFORMATIVE posts on here instead of idiots quoting the stupidest tv character so far. I was unaware of a lot of that. Thanks.
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
Very good point. Everybody here ought to rent "Grave of the Fireflies" and watch it. It tells the story of some japanese kids during the war. That's all.
On a related note to the above discussion, suicide bombers may or may not (from their point of view) deliberately kill civilians; everyone they blow up is the Enemy, whether by being an actual soldier, or by being some kind of supporter for those soldiers. These people are quite simple-minded; that is to say they don't spend much time thinking about every little detail, they just lump everything into one category and turn off their brains. Just like our Fundamentalists. And our bombs kill a hell of a lot more people than suicide bombers'. The only real difference is that it's okay if our side does it. That's all. We do the same things they do. Kidnap and torture people, commit atrocities, make up lies and spread them about the other side and people who live near them or look like them or have similar ethnic extraction. We're scum too.
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
I work for the repair department of a telephone company, and we get to talk to all the loonies who aren't busy posting BS on the internet. It was just in the last two years or less that they're all talking about terrorists being out to get them, watching them, tapping their phone lines, listening to their incredibly inane boring conversations, etc.
Before that it was always drug dealers. Interesting how it took a good while after 9/11 for it to happen though. This is caused by the constant repetition of the word 'terrorist' on TV. Terrorists became the villains in tv shows and movies, and the fear spreads. Maybe soon we'll give up the 20-year old (and lost) drug war.
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
To quote: "leaders of one technology firm in Massachusetts anticipated that 90 percent of its skilled labor would be in Asia in 10 years." This is because they're hiring in Asia and laying off in the US! The problem is not that there aren't enough engineers and scientists here! The problem is that JOBS here are disappearing.
For reasons that are going to become obvious, I am going to use statistics from 2001.
t eid=0&title=people&title2=all_victims&year=2001#qu ery1
Take a look http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/FinalReport.cfm?sta
Most fatal accidents occur in normal weather, and over half occurred not only in normal weather but also during daylight.
So I don't buy the "Act of God" explenation. Most of these are caused by negligence and are ultimately avoidable.
Now, 42191 were killed in 2001. Under any scenario I can find, it looks like more people were killed in September 2001 by auto accidents than by terrorists. This is what makes this significant from a public safety perspective.
I.e. Al Qaeda would have to carry out a 14 Sept 11th magnitude attacks every year to make this a bigger threat to public safety than that posed by the automobile. Indeed in Israel when more Israelis were killed by terrorists than auto accidents it made national headlines because it has only happened once.
So my question is whether we should be worrying about terrorists or auto accidents. Clearly from an objective perspective, auto accidents are where we should be spending most of our effort.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I bet one thing that would help the state of Education in this country is if Public Universities were properly funded.
Mitt Romney has cut funding to UMass and other state schools 32.6% between 2001 and 2004.
Just yesterday there was a rally about how we aren't getting funded.
MA is the only state that spends less money on higher education now than it spent ten years ago. I'm so glad we have good Ole Mitt fighting the good fight.
> just a scare number, not a real metric.
So it's okay if we have only a small edge in the types of highly-trained people who drive our economy? Does that mean you're okay with having only a small edge in GDP, adjusted for population?
It's not "just a scare number"---the claim is that if we lose our edge in one, we'll lose our edge in the other. That claim may not be true, but simply saying "well, per-capita..." does nothing to lessen the ramifications if it is.
The allies (US,UK,USSR,France) starved to death around 900,000 German military POWs in camps, or as they are now known as "insurgent detainees" after the war ended. They literally worked them to death through the winters with very little food and quite inadequate clothing. It wasn't just "hey the war ended, go back to what you were doing". They kept the POWs and maintained some pretty dismal "camps" for several years after the cessation of hostilities. A lot that didn't die were shipped to the US and used as slave labor for up to three years after the war ended. And a lot of the more heinous military/industrial complex scumbags elite from the germanic and japanese hierarchy were miraculously cleared of warcrimes and sent right back to work -for the "allies"- doing whatever they were doing before, rocket research, biological warfare research, propoganda and brainwashing research, etc.
There were an even larger number of German POWs *and* civilians from the war areas disappear into Stalin's camps in numbers much larger than the numbers claimed for the "semitic holocaust".
All researchable, start with looking up german pows after ww2.
And if you want to see how things have progressed, look at the US finally admitting this week that they used white phosphorus as a weapon when they genocided falulah in iraq, after claiming they didn't right up until it got exposed on italian tv.
Let's face reality, all large governments, now and through history are liars, killers, jerks, and this guy or that guys rah rah rah nationalism supporting them blindly is so much illiterate moronic tribalistic babbling when they claim their side does no wrong and are all the good guys and the other side is all bad guys. It just ain't so. Current atrocities against civilians in the middle east are just as high with referring to mad jihadists as with good ole mom n applie pie johnny boy yank recruit. Just is, is all. I have both european and "stay behind" cherokee blood in me. Am I supposed to be proud of the trail of tears pure unadulterated genocide committed by the "support our troops!" US, or proud that some of my red ancestors missed that little pleasure cruise and didn't fight back either, or embarassed by the lot of them for just being lamers?
Humans are just vicious nasty creatures more often than not Stupid, too, easily lead around by the nose by whatever gasbag is currently in charge. All cultures/religions/lack of religions/tribes/nations etc are guilty of "bad things". If not today then yesterday, and no one really knows about tomorrow...but we can sure guess and go by previous track records.
This logic is flawed. It suggests that somehow, you could figure out a way to make "X" right out of your undergrad or masters such that as X increases, it will stay ahead of "Y" - your post-PhD earnings. Salaries are not linear, no matter what industry, as far as I've ever seen.
That, and Economists rarely take both sides of opportunity costs into account - and financial analysts never do, in my experience (I say that as a recovering analyst).
Consider the 'hybrid car' issue - studies show you'll never recover the additional cost via saved gas - but the point is that you don't pollute as much (in CO2, anyway) or contribute as much soot to the environment. So, did you come out ahead, or did you take a loss? Confused yet?
Ask yourself, who is morelikely to develop a saleable idea, a PhD in CS, or someone with an undergrad degree? Sure, undergrads come up with great ideas, BUT I suggest that more knowledge translates into a wider skills base which raises the probability of them 'puting the pieces together'. I would be highly surprised if the study looked at such trends.
Now, my arguments are far from perfect, but they are at least as theoretically sound as some BS in Econ. could make. Maybe a PhD could do better...
Besides, who goes in for higher education, just for the money? I mean besides MBAs, who I work with and for whom I worked as the employee of an MBA program. From my experience, MBAs are not an 'academic' degrees by pretty much any standard - we had a professor who taught at Northwestern (top 10 MBA school in the US) who explained, when I asked him about the 'lightweight' class content, that it was ok - it was impossible to get less than a 'B' unless you just didn't go to class or do the work. The students were nice enough, but wanted a ticket-punch and a golf outing to network at. That was it. Intellectual curiousity? Not part of the student profile.
I think you also need to look at what happens to PhDs AFTER they graduate. Where do they work? Do they stay in the same country they studied in? I think THAT'S the real measure. The funny part is, a lot of PhDs from India and China are being used in those very countries. About the quality of education, you'd be surprised at how good some universities in Asia are - some of them are ranked higher than well known US ones. The real thing to think about is that the talent that is being produced is being re-cycled in the same country. Both India and China's economies are booming, all because of the simple fact that their currencies are weaker than the dollar and living expenses are less - that's what makes out-sourcing practical. I am from India and yes, there was a time when the big thing to do was to go to the US and work there. Not any more. In fact, now the trend is to go study in the US or Australia and then to COME BACK because you have a MUCH higher standard of living to look forward to.
You can quote percentages, numbers and figures about PhD graduates and PhD graduations as a ratio of the population, but you do need to take into account what happens after they graduate and where they go. I feel that is a statistic that would have more meaning to a particular country or continent.
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
Romney could very well become be the next President. It is best to ignore the liberal posts bashing Romney. Surely a Boston liberal. Romney vs. Sen. Clinton? Romney vs. Sen. Kerry?
The economy pretty much collapses when you get lots of elderly
people and hardly any younger people.
Russia, Japan, much of Europe, and some of S.E. Asia (Singapore?)
have a difficult future to look toward. Lots of the rest of us,
like the USA, don't have it much better.
He also pointed to statistics that show the United States graduating only 4,400 mathematics and science PhDs each year compared with 24,900 math and science PhDs for greater Asia."
In other news, greater Asia is having 30 times as many babies per second as the US.
Population of greater Asia (Calculated from CIA World Factbook, including only China, India, Japan, and Korea) - 2,585,330,265
Population of USA - 295,734,134
24,900 / 2,585,330,265 = 9.32x10-6 = 0.000932% of population
4,400 / 295,734,134 = 1.49x10-5 = 0.00149% of population
So we've got only 60% more math/science majors per capita, of which, I'm guessing, the Governor was not one.
He also pointed to statistics
I'm guessing that was a follow up to telling lies and damned lies.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
So does this mean I'll have an easier time getting in the MIT grad school?
The US as 'the France of the 21st century"? You wish...
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
I'm always leery of claiming that everything wrong with anything can be blamed on a subset of the people involved in producing whatever that thing is. There are plenty of examples of decently managed companies turning out crap products due to shoddy engineering. Perhaps management pressure influenced it, however rarely is management standing over the engineers shoulder telling him "Make it shittier, make it shittier!".
We've still got a lot to offer the world market, the fact that trade with most countries is in fact bilateral proves this. Everybody ignores the fact that we tolerate absurd tariffs in many other countries that prevent us from really competing in the world trade arena. We're more than happy to bring Chinese goods here, but we refuse to insist on equal access to their markets.
We've got a lot of raw materials to offer the world, coal especially, however thats not a road forward for our economy (as I think you agree). I'm always disturbed to hear people talk about the fall of the American manufacturing economy, despite the fact that a ton of small and medium business are still manufacturing in America and selling on the world market. We need government to be more supportive of these small business, and stop being so supportive of the mega-corps who're siphoning money out of the economy to buy $50K shower curtains.
I'm actually a big fan of the idea of allowing companies to write off 100% of their research and developement budgets on their taxes, in exchange for shortening patent durations to under 5 years. I think this would serve as quite a jumpstart to small innovative shops, the sort who create jobs and wealth.
For me France is a degrading oversocialized country with weak or no ecomonic growth and huge (10%), troublesome and not integrated muslim minority.
...
Do not wish that bad for Asia
Suppose everyone saves up for old age, but has few kids. The supply of workers to take care of old people will be low, but the demand will be high. By the laws of supply and demand, the price will be high. The money that the old people have will become devalued via inflation, since the supply is high and the demand (by the few young people) is relatively low.
Money won't get you out of this one I'm afraid.
Let's try that again with $ethnic_group.
Sounds pretty racist to me. If you're making an arguement try to avoid racism, it's like swearing, it's just filler that works against your message.
Mass. works best with a Republican Gov. and a Democratic "General Court" to prevent the Democrats from having total control to mess things up. Remember Dukakis' national aspirations?
People have this bad tendency to extrapolate everything linearly. While it is always good to have healthy paranoia, there are a lot of things that will come up to quell China's economic rise. First of all, their currency is artifically low. Bush is at least on the right track about that -- once it trades freely, Chinese labor might not seem quite so attractive. I've visited China several times, and the business folk I've met have nice cars, big screen tvs, etc. They can't keep living like that and be considered inexpensive. Plus, just look at the average annual salary increases for Chinese tech ...
Secondly, remember the "economic Asian flu" that hit Japan, Taiwan and Korea last decade. Well, China is due for the same thing. Their lending practices are weak, their corruption level is high. Just wait until some major embezzlement scandals cause lenders to ask for their money, then a dominino of load defaults ripples across the nation.
Lastly, infrastructure problems, resource limitations, and growing social inequity will start to gnaw at their society and slow them down.
I remember being really scared of Japan's economy, etc. and look at them now. Do you remember the sentiment in the 80's that created movies like "Gung Ho"?
Be paranoid, but don't be scared. The laws of feedback always kick in to foil growth!