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."

Comments

Pay as always is the answer

[cmorriss]

When faced with a workforce shortage, in no other field has the answer been to import skilled labor from other countries. The answer has always been to increase pay until the appropriate number of skilled candidates are attracted.

Allowing companies to import all of the skilled labor at cheap prices sets the stage for a dangerous trend. Ultimately it will sink wages throughout the workforce as companies see they can start trying this in other fields.

The government seems to think it has to use tarrifs to protect the iron industry but actively participates in the lowering of wages in the IT field.

I sincerely hope this starts to become a bigger issue and the word gets out. Undoubtedly if other fields start getting hit, the politicians will start to feel the pressure.

K-12 education

[bcrowell]

I teach the three-semester calculus-based freshman physics sequence to a lot of engineering majors to a community college. A lot of these people are intelligent enough to learn the material, but flunk out of physics because of their weak backgrounds. It's not uncommon to look at their transcripts and see them having started their community college careers by taking Math 20, which is basic arithmetic. It's extremely difficult to start from that level, and then work your way up to the level of competence required of an engineer. In addition, many of them have really weak language skills; sometimes this is because they're immigrants, but other times it's because they entered college with a sixth-grade reading level. Some of them also just don't seem to have put education very high on their list of priorities.

The net result of all this is that at my school, the total number of students who start the calc-based physics sequence every year is something like 300, and the number who finish it is roughly 30. (Some of the loss is from students who transfer before finishing, and or students who fail calculus, etc.)

There's a pretty simple solution to the problem, which is to set higher standards in math, English, and science in K-12; enforce those standards with standardized tests; and refuse to promote kids to the next grade if they can't demonstrate that they've mastered the material. Our present system is especially harmful to people who come from working-class backgrounds. They go to lousy public schools, and they and their parents get the impression that they're getting a good education. Then they arrive in college, and find out just how much they've been screwed over by our educational system.

Of course, Slashdot's readership is disproportionately composed of tech workers who are U.S. citizens, so I'm sure there will be plenty of people howling about the damn immigrants coming in and taking away our jobs. I'm none of their ancestors were immigrants. But seriously, would you rather compete for jobs against a coder who immigrated from India, and is expecting U.S.-level pay, or a coder who is still in India, and is therefore available for 1/4 of what you'd cost? If there's a problem, it's that H-1B visas don't necessarily lead to any opportunity to remain permanently in the U.S.