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State of US Science Report Shows Disturbing Trends
coondoggie writes to mention that the National Science Board is concerned about certain indicators in the science and engineering fields for the United States. "For example, US schools continue to lag behind internationally in science and math education. On the other hand, the US is the largest, single, R&D-performing nation in the world pumping some $340 billion into future-related technologies. The US also leads the world in patent development."
When did we all conspire to repeat the meme that the engineering job market sucks? It goes beyond the usual issue--outsourcing(linked almost every time to India). There's the annoyance with people who haven't been putting together and programming computers since age 5. There's the frightening realization in the programming world that anyone can learn it anywhere. You don't grow your industry by discouraging newcomers. People who work with computers will expand the market. As we get more people into atheism and computing, the demand for those same people grows. Check out monster.com's tech board. Pessimists abounds there.
Are we saying that Patent Trolling is the same thing as Developing?
Give a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day. But light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
This is a natural cycle of markets. (or greed, or laziness or whatever...) now the US is resting on their laurels, reaping the benefits of engineers past and eventually will pay dearly economically for this culture's unwillingness to churn out better engineers.... and 70 years from now you'll probably see another surge of ingenuity and wonder in western-hemisphere technology.
"Patenting the obvious, since 1994" :-)
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
...a creationist museum in Texas is closing
Mod US science +1!
Hardly, as many of the world's brightest researchers end up in the US.
A more interesting question is how much all that patent business is increasing the costs of R&D in the US and the West in general. Because one of the unlucky consequences of patents is that once a wheel is patented, it has to be reinvented 20 times, carefully treading around the patent each time.
It seems to me to be the height of hypocrisy that business leaders (Gates and company) complain about a lack of scientifically/technologically trained Americans, and thus we need to increase H1-B visas. These same leaders then turn around and support republican candidates who don't believe in evolution and want to water down the science curriculum by introducing Intelligent Design.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Wait, you mean in a nation where whole chunks of the population teach their kids that the world was created by an invisible sky daddy in six days isn't leading the pack in science education? We'd better pray harder!
This is bullshit. If foreigners are so smart, why do they have to come to the US for jobs?
Why are people surprised noone wants to go into engineering in the US: stagnant wages, offshoring, age discrimination, long hours. It's a shitty way to waste $100k on an education.
This is going to sound really cynical, but I feel inclined to say: No wonder current tech is not forward-thinking and is only innovating at a "comfortable" pace. You know, the kind of pace that enables companies to really milk as much as they can out of products without having to do very much R&D to improve the tech.
This is why we are still using countless seperate devices for our various everyday communication/information needs that can't communicate with each other, and why the concept of "integration" of the technological extensions of ourselves is largely overlooked. Oh, it's also why we pay $50+mo for, frankly, the most basic of cell phone and internet connectivity, for example. Companies that have the funds to do amazing R&D and amazing advances in the "human" aspects of technology aren't bothering, because they're rich as hell one way or another - they can crawl along at a comfortable pace with no problem (especially because "everyone else is doing it too").
Yeah, a bit of a tangent there, but I've been thinking about this stuff a lot lately. You know, we 100% have the means for technology to be so much more, but it's as though no one cares.
today, the usa is where you go when you want to turn your ideas into personal financial rewards. however, the usa can't rely upon this fact for long, as china will become the top dog soon in the $$$ department. and so the usa must indeed focus on nurturing it's own brainpower ...and watch them move to shanghai
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Consider:
That's what I hear from my freshman-sophomore math majors nearly every day. Sorry to pass the buck, but I suspect that HS math is either dumbed down or grade inflation prevents the kids and their parents and their parents' lawyers from complaining too much. So, they get A's in a "hard" subject, get lots of kudos because this must indicate that they're smart, and so some decide (quite logically) to choose math as a major in college.
Then if you get a prof who expects excellent performance for an A, average for a C, and F if you never did work enough to catch on, and then their world turns absolutely upside-down.
Should students study harder? Absolutely. And _13 years_ of public education ought to provide adequate training in how to study. If not, we'll get more of these "disturbing" trends.
At least it looks like there is some progress being made in revitalizing government support for basic research, although we will still have to wait to see if the damages done to scientific research in key fields can be repaired by the next Administration. Hopefully, people are starting to realize that the US doesn't exist in a magical opportunity bubble and unless we remain competitive at all levels of innovation, from basic research to patenting to bringing those developments to market, we are not going to hold on to our competitive edge. America is not immune to the global economy..it's that simple: the United States, like every other economically developed nation has to preserve its comparative advantage by ensuring that it retains a technological lead over its competitors. If we lose that lead, we slide in to economic stagnation and eventually outright decline. At the very least, maybe we'll get some leaders who actually listen to their experts.
U.S. students don't underperform their international peers because the school system sucks (although, it does suck). They underperform for two reasons. One is demographics. The U.S. has a much larger lower class than do most other nations to which it is compared. Kids who grow up in poverty with terrible home situations will, surprise surprise, not shine when it comes to academic performance. The second reasons is cultural. If you look at kids not from this underclass, a disproportionate number lack the desire to acquire math/science skills, or, really, the desire to excel academically in any field. One possible contributor to this is that students in the U.S. needn't pass an exit exam in order to graduate high school and enter college. The other is general cultural malaise, but it's harder to define that in any exact sense. There is a "culture of achievement" present in some countries (Japan and Germany come to mind) that is simply lacking in the United States.
They come because there's a market here, and one that isn't being filled domestically. This is pretty simple economics.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I think it is time to stop comparisons like "the US is the largest, single, R&D-performing nation in the world pumping some $340 billion into future-related technologies", because they give a distorted view of reality. The main reason the USA comes out on top so often with this kind of statistic is simply because it is sound a large populous county.
For example, the USA wins the most gold medals at the Olympics. But does that mean the USA is the best at sports? No. If we look at gold medals per capita, then Australia easily beats the USA. If we add countries together so we have equivalent populations, then we get another picture - Europe would often beat the USA if it entered as a single country, for instance.
If you looked at R&D per capita, or R&D as a % of GDP, or any other more reasonable metric that just comparing countries of different sizes, I expect you would get a very different picture than the summary suggests.
Half the graduate students in hard sciences in the US are foreign. They're the ones who shine. I don't mean second generation I mean foreign students on academic visas. If they stay in the US, yaay for us. If not? Oh well, the US is indigenously now a nation of retards.
My position has always been cutting funding to education. The problem is we have continually increased spending and gotten less in return. I recall a couple of years back when a high school senior in a tiny West Virginia town blew the national curve. I imagine his school district placed higher priority on learning and less on social engineering curriculums. Teachers need to make more, administrative services at school need to be cut. And these social education programs need to be shit canned. Spending can be cut, moneys prioritized (read, teachers!) and we can finally focus on what matters!
what i see as most disturbing not only in the article, but in the responses, is that no one seems to worry about what is referred to as "basic" research anymore. basic research is the research you do to figure out what is happening in a system normally, figuring out how it's supposed to work. this is the first step in ANY major breakthrough, no matter the field.
but it's the least funded.
i work in basic research in the medical field. the NIH is currently funding between 9 and 10 PERCENT of the proposals handed to them. hopefully they are picking the cream of the crop. we don't lack the manpower. there are LOTS of capable people to do the work. it's funding. there is VERY little funding for research unless someone stands to make a great deal of money from it. the problem is, most of the important things we need to figure out are not going to make anyone a pile of money. they may, down the line. but it isn't that likely.
call me a socialist, but the government needs to get the act together and push their funding toward basic research, and let industry pay for R&D.
Study the competition (or, in more base terms, know your enemy...).
Hell, the US is GOOD at out-sourcing, even outsourcing education. Sure, foreign students from abroad attend some of the ivy league (lower-casing intentional) schools here, but many attend in Europe, too. Some even attend here, then SPEND their time in Europe after having had enough of the US, but are still in school and have too many friends here.
Plus, there are cultural reasons (corruption, leadership by cronies and elders who might not see the logic in empowering their local populations), or other reasons in regions where there's just not enough money and will to outright build new, world-class, competitive, lasting and door-knocking throngs of students. So, they ship them out or allow them to be recruited by US colleges needing cash infusion.
Do you KNOW how many Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Indian students HERE in the US come from families that put them up in $1,000/month apartments, send them to renowned as well as dubious schools or "academies" that cost $80,000 to $200,000 for maybe 3 or 4 years? LOTS. It's a churning industry, and they keep getting fuller and fuller. Recruiting or otherwise attracting well-off kids whose parents want the brightest futures for their kids. Not saying ALL Asian families are that way, though.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
I have a patent on 1+1= 2, please use the other method of 1+1 = 10, thank you.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I'm sorry... Is this a troll? American freedoms "vastly outclass the rest of the world"? Centralized education is a mighty fist of the state? Have you been reading a bunch of captain america comics or something? Exactly how ass backwards do you think the rest of the world is? "Freedom" doesn't generate research, money does and America is a large portion of the world economy. That's about all there is to it. China is a rapidly growing competitor in research, are new "freedoms" there responsible for this? The USSR had a massive research infrastructure, was that due to freedom of any kind beyond the government having the idea that technological advancement is a good thing?
As for your second statement, centralization isn't the issue with education, the fact that a huge number of highschool students are coming out of american schools largely uneducated is. I should think the last thing we would want is to continue churning out increasingly economically uncompetitive students, whether that's done through centralized means or other (what do you even mean by "centralized"?) seems secondary.
Science is not anti-religion. We don't waste our time trying to prove religion is false.
Religion is anti-science. The religous do pick fights with existing scientific explanations, but in a non-testable "god did it" kind of way.
I don't hate the religious, I pity the ignorant. I see ignorance and lack of education as a more serious threat to this country than any foreign terrorist organization.
It's not a paradox. Look, do we imagine that everybody is capable of being a first class brilliant scientist or engineer? Clearly not. Therefore, if you have a system where the difference between the best and the worst (in any field) is small, then you have a system which fails to promote the best. You have a system where everyone is at the "average" level, and the people who ought to stand out, don't, for whatever reason.
On the other hand, if you have a system where the difference between the best and the average is high, what does that tell you? It tells you the system works well to promote the best and give them the tools they need to produce. Fact is, there is a natural heirarchy of ability among human beings in any field. Most are at some ordinary level, and only a few are very good. If you don't see the natural ability heirarchy reflected in the accomplishment heirarchy, then something is wrong. Since it's impossible to bring ordinary folk up to the extraordinary level, what must be happening is that the extraordinary folks are being held down (which is fairly easy to do).
Compare to sports. The difference between your average high-school athlete and Olympic or world-class athletes has never been greater, and the very few at the very top are amazing. Do we look at this pyramid of accomplishment and say, gee, there must be something wrong with how we promote and train people in sports, because there are so few at the top? Because the average 35-year-old pick-up basketball player, measured on the same scale that includes the championship Los Angeles Lakers, sucks? Not if we have any brains, we don't. We realize that the better a system is at sifting and placing people according to their abilities and motivation, the more pronounced the heirarchy, the greater the difference between the best and all the rest. Only in some doofus Lake Wobegon mode of (non)thinking do we imagine that a successful system would look non-heirarchical, with everyone above average.
The fact that heirarchies of accomplishment are more evident in the United States than elsewhere is no proof that the mass of people are being held down. It may well be evidence that in the United States the best are better able to rise to the top, to find their natural level of achievement, whereas in other places considerations of social class, restrictive groupthink education, or cultural barriers to personal ambition and radical innovation tend to keep the best from ever showing their stuff and emerging above the sea of average folk.
There's a demand for atheists? I knew there had to be jobs for philosophy majors somewhere.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Flip through any professional scientific or engineering journal, and look at the names of the authors of the papers. You may see U.S. institutional affiliations, but the names will be from all over: Europe, China, India, etc. The U.S. benefits greatly from this influx of talent and brainpower, so let's not keep screwing it up by needlessly harrassing foreign scientists at the border just because we can. The de facto War on Science and Reason being waged by certain political elements in this country doesn't help much, either.
Everyone is talking about college graduates. If these belly-achers stopped and read the actual article, they would find their complaining was ill-founded except for the natural bitterness that comes with old age. None of the key indicators suggested that the abilities of college graduates have declined. The indicators suggest that the numbers of such graduates are not keeping pace with the rest of the world.
This knee-jerk bashing of new college graduates and the irresponsible moderators who give these idiots a voice need to be stopped. Such attitudes and bias are likely part of the force that drives the US's decline in science. Get over your old age! I have.
Just callin' it like I see it.
I hardly think it is fair to look at the average student's comprehension of math and science and think it has any relationship to the best and brightest among us. There are plenty of home grown Americans in the top tiers of research and development, and they are just as smart as their foreign grown counterparts. I believe that the real trouble with the decline in general knowledge of math and science, is that it has led a large segment of society to lose sight of the value of research. There is a growing trend towards rejecting the recommendations of our top researchers, and instead trusting our gut feelings on things. This is a disturbing trend indeed, as placing our faith in feelings over facts is wrongheaded and dangerous. It doesn't matter how good we are at research if the majority of people choose to ignore the research.
I don't need to bash the US, because the US is still it's own biggest critic. This is the sign of a free country. The critics haven't been totally marginalized yet.
Having said that, as an European I can't help wonder why American culture is so obsessed with "freedom" and "liberty". I've yet to see what you've got we don't. Where is this obsession coming from? Perhaps you can help me here.
But since you asked, I do have more freedoms, more rights and more privacy. Let me name certain areas. My employer cannot read my email or monitor my Internet usage. I'm free to join my family after 8 hours of work, and cannot be penalized if I refuse to do overtime. Meanwhile Americans have corporations employing spies and using underhanded tactics to monitor their employees. Sure many Americans are "free" to walk out after 8 hours but they'd get fired for it.
Please write me off now for being a jealous penniless pinko weeny with an inferiority complex.
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
If parents worked lived within or slightly below their means, they could do as my folks did, and SAVE money for my college, so that I didn't have to take out loans and finish school with debt. If parents saved, and the kids saved (I was working soon as I was 16), and if you make good grades, between grants and scholastic awards and savings from all parties, you can go without a loan. You may not hit Harvard, but, I'd say most state public Universities will give you a great education too!
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
"it is still easier for a smart individual to get ahead in the United States than it is in many other parts of the world. "
Hardly. This is what's known as "economic freedom". The US is currently ranked #5, right behind Hong Kong, Singapore, Ireland, and Australia. Now, number five in the world isn't bad, but it's clearly not number one either.
It single family parents where the parent sits on the couch watching TV and slurping Brawndo all day, vs Finland, where the parent (and maybe even the gov't) is much more involved in the community.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
However, I assure you I am not.
I honestly believe that the US would not be lagging so far behind in sciences if we finished converting fully to the metric system.
An acquaintance of mine is taking his first college-level physics class, and the professor stated on the first day that since this was an exact science, there would be no use of US customary measure, only SI units. More than half of the class was simply unaware of what these non-customary units were, and as a result, they spent a week's worth of courses going over grams, litres, metres/kilometres, etc., all the while the students bemoaned having to learn a "foreign" unit of measure. I can even recall something similar happening in my high school physics classes. What a waste!
If we're going to teach our kids to be proficient in math & science, the least we can do is give them a Base-10 system of measure with no fractions and simple conversions.
Nice try but no cigar. ;) I happen to come from a country with one of the world's highest gun ownership ratios. We get hand guns. We get silencers. A 15 year old can get a gun with parental permission. You can try guess which country.
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone