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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."
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.
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?
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.
"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?
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
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.
I have several Doctor Friends that were trained in Israel (as an example) and then quickly left Israel (after paying next to nothing for their MD) to come to the US to collect the big almight BUCK..
This has actually been one of the traditional reasons for the vibrancy of the US economy. As a lot of academic US workers are trained abroad, the US has not had to go to the expense of educating them. Other countries have.
This is the "Brain Drain" effect, where, it is argued, the US economy is buoyed by the educational expendature of less wealthy countries. There's a certain element of truth to this.
I wonder what will happen if US academic graduates begin to emmigrate overseas? Will the Brain Drain effect be felt in the States too?
May the Maths Be with you!
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.
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,
And tell me, how many of those other universities you know in depth to make that statement? 5? 10? 100? NONE? Are you SURE that no other country in Asia has "the quality of the US PhD programs"?
The answer lies in a question: Would you want to undergo quadruple bypass heart surgery in a US hospital or one in Asia?
Having met some really, really, really scary medical students who were near graduation at a prestigious school in the U.S. I can honestly say I think I'll go to Europe for any surgeries. When a med student does not understand why you should wear gloves while handling DNA samples and equipment and calls his mother to ask what he should do when his car gets a flat tire you sort of lose confidence in the general intelligence and competence of the profession. This is more than backed up by the experiences of me and mine in medicine, with more than 75% of issues being misdiagnosed at least once before a correct diagnosis is reached.
1. It seems to be pretty much ignored thus far, but the U.S. definitely has state sponsored higher education. I claim this, because pick a state, put "University of" in front of the name, and wham, you have the name of a real university, which probably receives a lot of funding, grants tuition discounts to in-state residents, etc., etc.
2. The tax issue -- let's get this straight. If you have a Ph.D. in the maths and/or sciences area, let's just pull a number out of nowhere. You have a 'right' to command a wage near $75K, say (more or less, depending on the field, but yeah). Now, let's suppose you're Jimmy, the 'average' American citizen. Wait! You only make $45K. Why will you be excited to pay for some kid to go to college so he can make more with your money? That's going to be an exciting bill to pass... Why would you vote for someone who takes that kind of money from you?
3. The prestige factor -- let's suppose we jack up taxes so that anyone who wants to go to a PhD program can afford to. Well, that's a nice sentiment. Then what? The first response is probably that anyone without a PhD gets the shaft, both in finding jobs and in compensation, because now PhDs are a dime a dozen. Since they are a resource in greater supply, demand goes down, as does compensation. Suddenly, the average citizen has extra letters to put to their name, but their standard of living probably doesn't significantly change as a whole.
The wonder and curse of the free market system is that people will pay what a degree is worth for people who have it (compare all those jokes about engineers and liberal arts majors involving asking for wanting fries with that). If there was a huge shortage of qualified PhD holders, having a PhD would be like a ticket to big money, and there would be huge incentive to get them. I don't see that as being the case -- in our society, if you have one, you make more, but not a ton more (in fact, I remember being counseled when graduating with a BS in CS that pursuing an MS or a PhD full time was not cost effective, as you never made up the time * salary in terms of the difference in remuneration went).
If this was really an issue, it would correct itself. What we *should* be concerned about is if big tech companies bring foreign PhDs into the states to do their research, and I don't see that happening much, other than those that are in fact better and brighter than the American counterparts. Free market wins again.
In Soviet Russia, us are belong to all your base.
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.
Personally I think the MA governor is right on in his statement.
"International Terrorism" is a boogeyman in that it is most powerful in its imaginary force. Besides, if terrorism were really all that we were facing, we could all win by ignoring them. After all, they would fail in their grand plan to terrorize us, right?
What is fairly funny is that the Bush Administration is doing as much of a "terrorist" agenga as Bin Ladin by using bin Ladin's threats to inspire terror that he will protect us from, especially if we give up essential liberty. Sounds sort of like Mafia protection to me. Or at least Pat Robertson recently became an international terrorist in terms of making international threats of violence against civilian leaders of other countries to further a political position. BTW, don't assume that I don't think that Clinton would have done the same as Bush, unfortunately.
Anyway, back on topic....
The real struggle we are faced with is one with two sides. One one side we have the Secularist West, and on the other hand we have those who want to see society built on a foundation specified in holy texts (we will call them scripturists). Islam is probably has a slightly stronger tendancy to the second side because the Koran reads like a manual for building a society (though there are plenty of Christians who take the Bible in this way too). Indeed I don't blame the scripturists because it is a natural conclusion to the basic assumption of a singular Deity with a knowable will expressed in scripture.
However, the main problem with the scripturist conclusion was made evident in the 13th century when a reaction in Islam against such pursuits as classical philosophy, mathematics, science, and the like swept through the Islamic world. Had the Church in Europe not started translating a great deal of works from Arabic into Latin, it is quite possible that the writings of great Classical thinkers such as Aristotle, might have been forever lost to us. Yet, this change was what directly led to the Renaissance and inevitably the rise of secularism.
Why did this happen? It happened because context is lost with time. So a fixed text, such as the Bible, the Rig Veda, or the Koran sufferes degraded interpretation over time. In Islam, often the first parts of Sharia to be watered down are the substantial protections it offers the accused. In Christianity, we have lost the link to the Platonists that was important in the Early Church, and we have adopted stupid other trappings as well (there is *no* basis to believe that the Early Church thought that the name "Lucifer" had anything to do with Satan-- it would have been more likely associated with Christ). Similarly, Hinduism (in my opinion) exists in a fallen state based on my study of comparitive Indo-European mythology. Yet the fallen interpretations of sacred text remain strong because they fill a deep need for comfort even if they are demonstrably opposed to truth.
Soviet/Chinese Communism is a form of scripturalism IMO in that it creates a religion of the state with rituals thereof and looks to certain static texts for timeless guidance on building their society.
Politically the scripturalists point to issues where they see social injustice and use these to try to rally support for their agenda. With Al Qaeda, these include injustices relating to the treatment and human rights of Palestinians, and other issues.
So what is the answer?
Part of the answer is that we need to take issues of social injustice in areas of our influence very seriously. This means among other things that we need to attach many more strings to aid we give Israel and withhold aid sometimes (as, to their credit both Presidents Bush have done but not enough).
The second thing we need to do is help build a system that admits of less social injustice in the face of globalism. This means that we need to reach out and help the Jihadists (including, say, Iran) to participate in a global economy. Same with scripturalist governments regardless of their religion. We already to this with China and it is having a positive effect. We need to extend that policy to Cuba, Iran, etc.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
then spent a few weeks polishing up their war machine on Poland
And while they were "polishing up their war machine" on Poland, the French (and British) basically sat on their ass behind their fortified Magiot Line and did nothing to help their allies. Even though in 1939 the German military was not ready for war and the overwhelming majority of German forces were in Poland leaving the Western front completely exposed if the Allies had bothered to take the initiative to attack.
In fact for all the hooplah made about how quickly Poland was defeated, the Poles actually put up a pretty decent fight. For all the praise that Blitzkrieg gets the front in Poland basically turned into a siege of Warsaw. The Poles were screwed by "Allies" that were too afraid to help them and by the Soviet Union who invaded after the Germans had already engaged the bulk of the Polish Army.
Had the Allies (led by the French at that time) taken some initiative instead of ceding it to Germany then it's quite possible that Poland could have been saved. Think of how different history would have unfolded (no Cold War, no Holocaust, no fall of France) had the French shown the guts to take the offense.
You can make any number of excuses to justify the French behavior. The fact that they lost millions of men in WW1. The fact that most of the Allied military brass still believed in defensive warfare. But that doesn't change the perception that the French sat around and waited to be attacked.
You think Americans hate the French? The Poles have no lost love for them either.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.