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Tech Czar Unimpressed With US IT Workforce
theodp writes, "'The IT work force is not skilled enough and almost never can be skilled enough,' said Robert Cresanti, Under Secretary of Commerce for Technology. So what does the Poli Sci grad and ex-General Counsel for the ITAA think is the answer? Open the gates to more foreign workers, urged Cresanti, including H-1B holders."
But since he thinks the problem is that "there are not enough engineers with the appropriate skill sets", surely the long-term solution is to adjust your training and education regime so that there are enough such engineers? Hint to start with: degree courses in fields such as Computer Science and Software Engineering should not have teaching Visual Basic.Net and Java as the primary or only focus!
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
VISAs are essentially an import tariff on employees.
Remember the steel import tariff Bush imposed a year or two back? the steel manufacturers were overjoyed - and rightly so; since imported steel now cost 45% more, they could raise their prices to match, and they made plenty of money out of it.
Who suffered? well, *EVERYONE ELSE*. All the companies who use steel had to pay 45% more. All their products (cars, construction materials for houses, etc) went up in price to compensate for their costs. You and I subsidized the steel industry, by Bush's decree.
Back to VISAs.
If you have demand for a skill-set and a shortfall in supply, wages go up.
Just like steel prices going up, when wages go up, final product prices go up.
So if you restrict the supply of programmers, software prices go up to compensate.
Who benefits? American programmers. They have fatter pay packets (which they notice), but most things they buy will be more expensive (which they won't notice). (Things are more expensive since the part of their cost which covers the price of the software used to make them has gone up).
So who pays? you and I, by Bush's decree.
The "solution" is to import cheap labour to further erode your citizens' desire to spend the time/money/effort getting those advanced technical degrees.
... why, in his opinion, are Americans so much dumber than citizens in other countries?
After all, why rack up so much debt from school when there will be someone else willing to do the same job for less because his school loans (if they exist) are a fraction of your's?
And isn't in the corporation's best interest to get the cheapest labour they can find?
So, the question becomes
I don't think we are. But I do believe that our government is too closely involved with business's desire to get the maximum benefit with the minimum investment. Fuck that. I want to see scholarships for advanced technical studies. Lots of them. Put your money where your mouth is. When 50% of the computer science majors can get out of school and pay off their debt within 5 years, THAT will be sufficient. Only then can he talk about how dumb Americans are.
People don't make major choices about their broad vocations simply on money.
The hell they don't.
I'm inside academia right now, and my impression of what employers want is driven largely by what I hear industry representatives say. They want our undergrads to come out of the university ready to work with specific skills. They want graduate research to focus on applications, rather than basic research. There are various weasel words for these requests, but they are pretty apparent.
I don't blame them for wanting these things: its in their naked self-interest. But we shouldn't necessarily play along.