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Study Says US Needs Fewer Science Students
cremeglace writes "It's an article of faith: the United States needs more native-born students in science and other technical fields. But a new paper by sociologists at the Urban Institute and Rutgers University contradicts the notion of a shrinking supply of native-born talent in the United States. In fact, the supply has actually remained steady over the past 30 years, the researchers conclude, while the highest-performing students in the pipeline are opting out of science and engineering in greater numbers than in the past, suggesting that the threat to American economic competitiveness comes not from inadequate science training in school and college but from a lack of incentives that would make science and technology careers attractive. Cranking out even more science graduates, according to the researchers, does not give corporations any incentive to boost wages for science/tech jobs, which would be one way to retain the highest-performing students."
"Who in their right mind chooses a job [field] based on "loving" to do it?"
*raises hand*
And I'm happy too. CTFO. Who in their right mind does something they hate so they can earn money? There's two ends to this spectrum, bud.
If you're doing a PhD in the physical sciences, then you're almost certainly not paying tuition directly (let alone a level of tuition proportional to your degree as you seem to claim). Otherwise, absolutely zero people would be doing it. MD, JD, and MBA programs can charge a lot because you'll make a lot of money once you've got the degree. The same cannot be said for a science PhD.
The *EOs are appointed by the board, who are their good buddies who they golf with every weekend. And only the largest shareholders have any effect on the board's makeup. The whole thing is a big good-old-boy system, which is why CEOs get giant pay packages even when they drive the company into the ground. If they were paid on merit, they would get paid according to their performance, and not get squat if they don't do a good job, but that's obviously not the case.
Sounds OK to me, at least as long as it only applies to publicly-traded companies and not totally private ones. However, the imbeciles like Carly are politically connected, so getting this kind of legislation passed would be difficult to say the least.
It does pay good money in India and China
Scientists and engineers are needed when a country makes things but when it buys things it needs only managers and salesmen
Not trying to contradict what you're saying (because I fully agree), just thought I'd be anal and point out that your theorem only holds true for x > 4. ;)
X = 4. X-1 is prime (3). X+1 is prime (5).
X is not divisible by 6.
OP is wrong.
QED.
..the Fed (by printing money and giving it to them at zero percent even if it destroys the dollar)
The Federal Reserve does not print money. Maybe you were speaking metaphorically, but you're still wrong. The Federal Reserve can influence interest rates, and it can change the size of the the money supply by issuing and recalling treasury bills and by adjusting the reserve requirement.. Those functions allow the Fed to alter the price of money, but that's not equivalent to printing more money.
I was reading earlier this week the U.S. now has the greatest income inequality in the world except for Singapore and Hong Kong which are tiny city states
Well you read wrong. Equality of income distribution is quantified by the Gini coefficient. Wealth is less evenly distributed in the US than many places (ie Europe), but there's more than 40 countries ahead of us. China and Mexico for instance. See this map for more detail.
For anyone whose interested, the Planet Money blog and podcast is a great place to start. Their reporting and research is done by actual economists rather than ideologues and talking heads, and they explain why things are the way they are and how they got there. Like I said, our current financial situation is kinda FUBAR, but approaching it with a level head and trying to understand what's really going on is better than getting angry and playing the blame game.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. -Aldous Huxley
And while [flat for] "about a decade" is an exaggeration
Bet your ass it's an exaggaration. From the link you gave me:
1998: 11.49 billion
2008: 23.84 billion
That's DOUBLE by any reasonable standard, not "essentially flat."
The year-over-year increases barely kept pace with inflation in most cases, and sometimes fell behind. I don't know about NSF and other non-DoD scientific funding agencies, but I'm guessing they suffered the same fate.
Actually, everything went up faster than inflation. Not even talking about Bush being the
first president to fund stem cell research, or push through actual tests of student/teacher performance.
The only problem I see with Bush's science policy was that he actually gave TOO MUCH to all the Lysenko wannabes over at DoD.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
Oil crash.
Besides those stats were good in the 50s and 60s, when taxes were even *higher*.
And under the system we've got, they have a better chance of yanking themselves up than under any other system.
I'm sorry but I have to disagree. It might be a good system(I'm assuming you meant the british system based on your .uk address) but hardly the best in the world in this respect. The amount of people living below the poverty line in the U.K. is 14%, whereas the amount in the scandinavian countries are much lower (~4%).
And let's not even go to the Electrical Engineering degree I originally considered. Unless you're doing it for sheer love, it's a waste of time.
WTF are you talking about? I make $180K designing hardware as an EE, and I'm on track to retire at age 50. I know plenty of others doing as well. Most places I know are hurting for good hardware designers because all the last generation went into CS. I'm working an R&D project now to replace computing clusters with FPGA grids.
Here's the essay that Aasimov quote comes from. It's excellent:
http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
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