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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."
Incentives? You mean like paying graduates more when you're saying that the market is saturated with them already? How does that make sense?
I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't give a rusty fuck what some study says people should or should not go into. I work in the fields I love, and I'd recommend it to everyone else. If you want to do science, do science. If you don't then don't. Who really cares what some frigtarded academic thinks anyway? Final thought - how often is it that we look back on these studies five or ten years later to find out they were somewhere around, oh, dead wrong. if these guys are such friggin' geniuses at predicting the future they should go make $Billions in the stock market.
If all you care about is money than go into politics or join the mob (it's ethically about the same).
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
But a new paper by sociologists
Ernest Rutherford once said The only possible conclusion the social sciences can draw is: some do, some don't
So while its nice that they've tried to have a firm opinion they really haven't, what they've said is that as the salaries in science and engineering fall behind the likes of banking and other world destruction careers the top people aren't going into science and engineering as much.
The phrase "Well Duh!" comes to mind. I'm mean seriously is this research or just some people sitting around a table in a bar after 10 pints drunkly going "you know what, I think that if there is less money in an area that less top people will want to work in it". Now what they spectacularly fail to note of course is that some of the very, very brightest have become the very, very richest people on the planet as a result of science and engineering (and maths).
Good god its hard to believe that people not only get degrees in subjects so vague and obvious but also get to do "research" that would leave Homer Simposon feeling that it wasn't stretching him.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
When you keep downward pressure on wages of scientific positions; When you don't offer people compensation for the utter destruction of their social lives required to seriously pursue science, they gravitate toward management. (for comparison, at least medicine and law provide salaries commensurate with the effort required for the education)
You never see those massive bonuses going to the mathematical wizards, engineers, or design teams who are actually responsible for the profits. It goes to some otherwise average person who sat in his office and barked orders.
Don't be surprised when the truly intelligent notice where the money is going and choose to expand their social lives in the process!
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
I had hoped that the best scientist and engineers would be motivated by something more than just money.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
From the article:
The supply [of science students] has actually remained steady over the past 30 years, the researchers conclude from an analysis of six longitudinal surveys conducted by the U.S. government from 1972 to 2005. However, 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 incentives that would make science and technology careers attractive.
From the Associated Press:
Average tuition at four-year public colleges in the U.S. climbed 6.5 percent, or $429, to $7,020 this fall as schools apologetically passed on much of their own financial problems, according to an annual report from the College Board, released Tuesday. At private colleges, tuition rose 4.4 percent, or $1,096, to $26,273.
So we have the costs of already outstanding tuition fees rising in a faltering and near collapsed economy. Many top positions in fields of science require Masters or Doctoral level education. A Master or Doctoral level of education also demands a Master or Doctoral level of tuition. In an uncertain environment for employment, the risk of entering the field of science, can be high.
Instead of going into science or mathematics you see the smarted minds who are more money minded going into the financial fields. They are intelligent but because of the upbringing in a capitalist society desire money more than anything. So they become investors, stockbrokers, and deal with money all day and night.
What we need is to recruit the best of the best, have private industries, and government, pay for the tuition of these individuals or offer them guaranteed job positions. Does a promising young high school student enter undergraduate school looking for a degree in bio-medicine? Have a major cancer research outfit pay for his tuition. Or have a medical technology firm cover his tuition. Or have him pay for his own tuition but make it known publicly that anyone with a degree in 'science' who applies to 'x job' will have his college tuition fees and loans paid for in full by the company if he works x number of years.
Maybe we need to lower the tuition for higher science. If you want a degree in particle physics, wave physics, astro-biology, or whatever, then you tuition is significantly lower than your peers. My graduate work was in television broadcasting, if my peers studying medicine and high level math had lower tuition fees than myself, I would not have batted an eyelash.
If you cover the tuition fees of our smartest students, and they go on to become the people who provide us with life changing nanotechnology, or cure HIV-AIDS, that money will pay off 100 if not 1,000,000,000 times more down the road.
We need to invest in our future by investing in our brightest minds and steering them towards occupations where they can make a lasting difference in the world.
I want my salary to go up
Heck, I just want a job!
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
So, by this rationale, in order to get more top talent in science, we need to let more talent choose other fields, leaving a scarcity of science grads, which will drive up salaries, and lead more top talent back into science? That's kind of like the argument that cold water boils faster than hot water. Of course, lots of people think that's true, too.
Along the same lines, I'd like to hear the author's explanation of why employees in finance continue to get paid more and more, even as more talent floods into that profession.
Not every price is set solely by supply and demand. In this case, I think culture has a lot to do with it, as do negotiating skills (which geeks don't generally have in abundance). Science and math types are still considered dorks, and the leeches who work on Wall St. or Madison Ave are the cool kids. Fewer science students isn't going to change that.
You've got yourselves a brain drain. Growing up in Australia as a geek I had the sole intention of getting out of the country, going to university in Europe and finding a decent, well paid job there. In Australia there was no funding or development, no highly paid jobs, little basic research at all, and as a student cash was the big draw to get out. The brain drain was almost epidemic. The USA wasn't an option due to your ridiculous Green Card Lottery. Very glad I did too as I simply had more, and better opportunities. There are some truly excellent innovations that still come out of Australia built literally on a shoestring. Realtime over-the-horizon radar that can image a supercarrier off the coast of Japan is one example, and it is constructed from thousands of hand wound wire, wrapped around cotton reels. So it is possible to have success (albeit non-financial) in the midst of a brain drain.
Reducing the Green Card quotas further, and kicking foreigners out of Science will certainly reduce the number of graduates, and the intelligence of the nation. Weren't most of the USA's scientists working on the big name projects of the last 50 years foreign born anyway?
Sociologists were assigned. Sociology is to science what Jeffery Archer is to literature.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
I have yet to read the actual article, what I am replying to is the slashdot clipping. I'll read the article later just for arguing points and completion.
This is moronic. I don't know *how* they are calculating that 'the supply has actually remained steady over the past 30 years,' but if that is true, that demonstrates
a growing need for science and technology students, not that it's fine. The US was the world leader in science, technology and manufacturing coming out of WW II, and our
society has revolved around progressive upgrading and retooling of our industrial output.
The total population growth of the US from 1979 to 2008 according to the US Census Bureau was approximately 80 million people. You have to consider retiring, and emigrating persons in your picture when you are trying to estimate how many science sector persons we have produced, and kept in the last whole generation. So, if our number of graduating science, engineering and manufacturing sector students has remained the *same* for the *past 30 years*, we are ALL in a LOT of trouble.
I'd say that their conclusions, contrary to what they speculate as 'needing fewer Science students' shows data explaining how the scientific, industrial and manufacturing sectors of our country have been decaying for the past 30 years.
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.
Or they could pay solid wages to the highest-performing students, and lesser wages to the less performing students. You know, the way the market is supposed to work.
Seriously, did they get grant money for this crap?
Dislike the Electoral College? Lobby your state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
I'm an assistant professor and I can see this type of thing going on first hand. I get paid okay but expectations of the promotion and tenure committee in terms of papers, research funding and teaching requires 50-60 hours a week of work minimum most week. My record is 110 hours over 7 days, what a nightmare. The reason for this situation is that science funding by the federal government has been more or less flat for about a decade but the number of professors has increased and the expectations of the universities from professors have gone up.
My students take one look at me and immediately make a career decision in another job besides academics or even science in general. I don't blame them either, even I hate my job sometimes and I couldn't ever imagine myself of being anything but a scientist -- but at this point, I have one more year to go for tenure but taking that dream position at the coffee shop in western Colorado and skiing all winter is starting to sound really good.
Maybe we should bailout the science and technology companies.
Maybe money isn't the sole motivator. Did it ever occur to you that maybe there are students that really want to go into science, but because of the job prospects (or perceived lack thereof), don't think they can *afford* to go into science?
I mean, if you think you are going to give up 6 years of your life/potential income [well, you can still work while in school, perhaps, but probably not make as much income as you could if you were working full-time + overtime at a job for those years], and spend $60,000 (plus interest, so probably closer to $100,000), say, to get a Masters in Science, and then you think you will only make 40,000-60,000/yr, you might not think you can afford that. I have a cousin, only has a high school education, works for a road construction/repair company. On the one hand, he has to work a lot of overtime, but on the other hand, I think he's making in that same $40,000-60,000/yr range [maybe more]. He's been doing that basically since he graduated from high school, and never had to take out any student loans. So, the way I see it, someone in his position potentially comes up about $300,000 ahead (on graduation day) of the guy who went to school for 6 years and took out those loans.
That's the reality of education. In order to justify the expense, you need to make good money after graduation - such people should probably be starting at $70,000-$90,000 yr almost straight out of school, with raises every year which outpaces inflation, just to allow them to recover that "lost" $300,000 over the course of say the first 10 years of their employement, and then continue to make that kind of money after that so they come out *ahead* of the people who didn't go to school.
But, it sounds like, from the article, that's not happening, so while students might be attracted to science, they may just feel that they can't sacrifice their financial future in order to benefit corporations who aren't willing to give them reasonable compensation for their education.
The kicker is in the last paragraph:
"Susan Traiman of the Business Roundtable criticizes the new study, saying that it gives an illusion of a robust supply because it bundles all STEM fields together. There may be an oversupply in the life sciences and social sciences, she argues, but there is no question that there are shortages in engineering and the physical science."
Of course there are too many social "sciences" students. Is that really a STEM field? There still aren't enough engineers.
I would make the fairly obvious argument that the number of scientists is largely irrelevant compared to the amount of work they produce. A single Einstein is worth an infinite number of mediocre physicists who never end up producing any work in their careers. This is important, because (at least in my experience in academia), 95% of academic scientists and maybe 80% of engineers produce nothing useful in their lifetimes.
While there may be a glut of scientists, there is no glut of *good* scientists; we always need those. Let's not kid ourselves - the number of possible problems scientists and engineers can solve has not gone down over time. If anything, it has gone way up.
There's something to be said about doing what you love and saying "to hell with chasing the almighty dollar". But then you get paid $12,894 per academic year, and you wonder if a little dollar chasing might not be a bad thing. There are other things in life that are desireable (like a family), and they take money.
A science career means spending ~5-6 years working hard and being paid crap in grad school, and then another couple of years working hard and being paid a bit more as a postdoc, and then maybe you can get a decent paying job doing science, but there aren't all thay many science jobs (at least in physics), in academia or industry (bye bye bell labs -- moreover, just because you like science in academia donesn't mean you'll like science in industry), relative to the number of PhDs so there's a decent chance you'll end up in a non science job.
I'm just saying that it's not as simple as "people don't do science because all they care about is money."
Geez, I can't imagine the pressure of trying to get tenure. Your whole career building up to a single massive review of all of your work..
The whole system seems kind of messed up. You ruin yourself pushing yourself to work as much as possible through the best years of your life and then, if you pass the review, you get to -yay- not lose your job and gain the privilege of working for the rest of your life!
I guess it's the price of progress, but the drive for constant excellence seems obsessive rather than healthy..
Don't confuse science and engineering; they're two radically different disciplines with totally different goals.
Yes, most academic scientists probably don't produce much of value, but that's just like how a paleontologist, for instance, only has a certain chance of finding some great fossil that significantly adds to our knowledge of dinosaurs. This isn't that much because of the paleontologist's skill, but more because of chance: will he find that fossil, or not? Scientists don't create truth, they search for it. If they find something really useful, then they're remembered for generations. If they don't succeed in their search, they're forgotten.
Engineers don't search for anything. They create things. Even the most mediocre engineer can create useful things. So I really doubt your claim about 80% of engineers creating nothing useful. If they're employed as engineers, they must be producing something useful, or else they wouldn't receive a paycheck. Now, how useful that product is to society is debatable, of course. The engineers who created the Ford Pinto, for instance, didn't exactly create something wonderful, and considering how that car killed people, it probably had negative utility. However, they did the work that their employers asked of them, and as management was in control and refused to allow engineers to improve the design, it was they who were responsible for any deaths. Less spectacularly, many engineers work on things which are ultimately trashed before seeing production. I've seen my share of that in my own work. But again, just because management decides to trash something doesn't mean it isn't "useful", it just wasn't profitable enough for them.
As for how many scientists are needed, that depends on how much science a society wants to do. If you want to do a lot, then you need more people working on the problem. If you don't care much about learning new things, then you don't need many scientists. I'd say that our society doesn't really need that many scientists, because it really isn't that interesting in finding out new things and doesn't want to invest the money needed to do so, because it doesn't return a profit quickly enough.
On the other hand, the 'meaningless' work done by those 'mediocre' scientists could very well be setting the foundation for the next Einstein to do something truly marvelous. Science is not a series of disconnected "Eureka!" moments; it's a steady accumulation of small but meaningful hypotheses that allow those superstars to formulate workable theories.
And what about all those potential superstars being lost, because they can't get the work experience they need to develop their potential? How many of those next Einsteins have gone off to work in something totally unrelated because of financial concerns? Sometimes it takes a lifetime for someone to produce that truly meaningful work. By narrowing our focus to people doing 'useful' work, we kill a lot of long-term potential that could arise from the research being done for the sake of research.
You should probably consider a nice career in banking and move to Wall Street then. Its not exactly a secret that the big Wall Street banks have pretty much devoured the U.S. economy and they run the government, insuring that their success will be guaranteed by the Congress, the President and his Wall Street friendly administration(same for Dems and Republicans), the Fed (by printing money and giving it to them at zero percent even if it destroys the dollar) and in times of the trouble the U.S. taxpayer. They are a huge percentage of the U.S. economy now and their compensation dwarves pretty much every other career.
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. Last time we had income inequality at this level was in the 1920's right before the Great Depression. Lord Brian Griffiths of Fforestfach, vice chairman at Goldman Sachs Intl., a life peer under England's nobility scheme, and Christian theorist of "biblically based wealth creation." recently said: "We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all." The dirty little secret is Goldman Sach's keeps all the prosperity and opportunity for themselves and their rich friends, and the rest of us will never see it unless we manage to join their exclusive little club. We've pretty much returned to aristocracy and are certainly in a plutocracy with a tinge of kleptocracy since when Wall Street screwed up they smoothed it over by outright legalized theft from the rest of us.
The article doesn't spell it out but all of America's best and brightest are going to Wall Street and big business, not science. Unless they are idealists or altruists they go there because that's where the easy money is. Its mostly money being produced via elaborate legalized Ponzi schemes but that doesn't change the fact if you make it on Wall Steet you get money for nothing and chicks for free. Whose going to enter the exciting world of Physics when they can have that, at least while the party lasts, and it appears after a brief glitch its back bigger and better than ever.
@de_machina
Let's make it even simpler. Let's say the government caps science and technology degree enrollment as a result of this study. I think capping science and technology degree enrollment probably would result in marginally higher salaries for current graduates in these fields.
And this illustrates the broader reason why their recommendation is so wrong-headed.
The objective shouldn't be to sell our future down the river just to raise salaries in select vocations in the near term.
The objective should be to create a rising tide that lifts all boats in the long term. That rising tide is productivity, and it requires incentive, and a commitment to public education and research in the hard sciences.
I am am optimist. I believe society will be better in 100 years with 100 scientists and technologists trying and failing, than with 100 sociologists telling us we shouldn't try.
One of these brought us from an agricultural society of constant pain and sorrow, to a world of ease, full of wonders our ancestors couldn't have dreamt of. That's the train I want to be on. Here's a hint: it wasn't the sociologists.
Because in 36 short months, thanks to Goldman Sachs and their ball-suckers at the Carlyle Group, etc., the United States is going to resemble AFGHANISTAN more than it does DENMARK.
Who needs a science education to scavenge rats for supper?
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
What's science done for us lately? The high-energy physics people aren't any closer to a clear theory of how physics works down at the bottom than they were thirty years ago. They're just confused in a different way. There hasn't been a major breakthrough in nuclear power since the first nuclear plant came on line over half a century ago. The rocket scientists are doing worse than they did in the '50s and '60s. Aircraft are about the same size as 30 years ago, and a little slower. On the medical side, life expectancy hasn't gone up by much in fifty years, although more of the problems of old people can be patched for a while now. Materials are a little better; plastics are slightly better than in the 1950s, and we have carbon fiber golf clubs now. Big deal. Yes, computers and phones are much better. Semiconductors are far better.
Business has recognized this, and doesn't put money into basic R&D any more. The big wins aren't there. Maybe science, like oil, has peaked. We've made the easy discoveries.
So why put more money into science?
Would you care to look at the economic statistics from the late 70s, prior to Reagen and Thatcher? They weren't good.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
Actually you gain the privilege of becoming an administrator for the rest of your career. The only professors I knew who spent a decent amount of time doing real research were retired. The rest spent their time teaching, chasing grant money, and attending meetings. You really have to be a little crazy to go for an academic career these days.
I think promoting the pursuit of scientific knowledge in the US will chip away at the ignorance quotient. Screw the economy, I'm tired of dealing with the dumb. And I don't care that some people get Phds and are still idiots. Questioning attitude + scientific method is a good thing.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
Lord Brian Griffiths of Fforestfach, vice chairman at Goldman Sachs Intl., a life peer under England's nobility scheme, and Christian theorist of "biblically based wealth creation." recently said: "We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all."
Barf.
Oh yes, I'm sure it's such burden for him to "tolerate" this inequality. But, it's for the benefit of us all, so he carries on, carries on...
The enemies of Democracy are
does not give corporations any incentive to boost wages for science/tech jobs, which would be one way to retain the highest-performing students.
Indeed, which is why our banking system has been working so well lately.
... like my electronics engineer father before me, I got into it because it's something I love to do. That was thirty years ago, and I still love what I do for a living. If those at the outset of their careers are not choosing the technical option, it's probably because schools are utterly failing to inspire them.
... that was cool. There was this enormous conveyor belt that was full of freshly-baked potato chips, and at the end of that belt was a waterfall of the things, dropping down to the floor below for packaging. We all ooohed! and ahhhed! The tour guide dipped a big bowl into the flow of falling chips and filled it up and passed it around. They were incredibly tasty: fresh from the ovens (which we also got to see, way cool.)
Seriously, salary is definitely important, but that's not the only reason that students take up engineering and scientific careers. I didn't get into software engineering for the money
It wasn't always that way. When I was a kid (back in the mid-sixties) the public schools went out of their way to interest young people in science and technology. I went on many field trips with my fellow schoolkids to very interesting places, visits that I know heavily influenced my career choice. I've spent the past three decades of my life developing industrial control and monitoring systems, and I remember clearly the school outings that pushed me in that direction. We got to see the inside of a hot dog manufacturing plant (the machines and electromechanical automation systems were awesome, but I couldn't eat a hot dog for years after that), a Frito Lay plant
I have to wonder how many schools spend a penny trying to interest young people in technology any more. I mean, there's a whole world of applied science out there beyond what you see on your flat panel, yet schools seem to thing that as long as their students meet some arbitrary standard of "computer literacy", that that is sufficient. It's not.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I think it's kind of interesting how the economics of this work. The supply of scientists and engineers is steady, but it seems like there are fewer who are good in the market. What this means is that if you are good and in the field, you are in extremely high demand and thus salaries can be lucrative for you. So, the field may only attract those who have a genuine interest and more likely to innovate.
Then again, money is a strong factor and may siphon away people. I work in the embedded software field, and I get paid fairly well for someone only a couple of years out of college. However, I often think how nice it would be nice to be making well into 7 figures and have a nice home and possibly a Lamborghini (I love cars) after going into lawschool instead of "just" 6 figures and trying to cobble together a 20% down payment for a decent home in Northern California.
What it actually means is, if you are a good scientist or engineer.. then count on being outsourced in 10 years or so, when you pay lets you live comfortably. Because at that point the HIGHLY paid executives will decide that they are not paid well enough and to improve the bottom line your job will be sent to a BRIC country .. same work at one-tenth the cost...
Which is the main reason that more students are opting out of science and engineering as life long employment no longer exists, and 10 years at a single company is almost unheard of these days.
The trick is to get tenure, then do a bad job doing the administrative duties thrown your way. That way you don't get asked again. Voila - lots of time for research; and guaranteed job security.
Posted anonymously for obvious reasons.
Anyone know a good way to get in and join the GS club??
Frankly, I'd just rather be rich....I'm willing to do just about whatever it takes to get there...
Life is short, I'd rather live comfortably the rest of my years, rather than be poor, scraping for a living an idealistic...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
That was my original reaction seeing this.
Sociologists: There are too many science majors.
Me: That's precisely the kind of garbage you get when you consult a sociology major.
Too many people- no value to society- 1% of people having stuff- 99% of people not having stuff. Historically that doesn't go well.
Solved with easy access to distractions and cheap entertainment.
NASCAR on TV = No French Revolution
Our whole system is set up for the express purpose of helping the top 1% take from the remaining 99%. The system won't ever fail.
Go to Wharton or get an MBA from Harvard, Yale or a lesser Ivy League university. WASP or Jewish is probably best. Get in the right fraternity/sorority. Probably helps to be attractive so plastic surgery as required. Skills in Golf and Tennis are mandatory. If you have morals or ethics you need not apply. You need to be willing to lie, cheat, steal or screw your mother for a beloved buck. Watch Oliver Stone's Wall Street, it has apparently turned in to a recruiting tool and career guide to a life of crime on Wall Street, though Stone intended the opposite when he made it.
When you graduate they will probably be waiting to recruit you. Once they hire you, you need to be extremely adept at knowing which asses to kiss and which ones to screw.
@de_machina
"The Federal Reserve does not print money."
Read up on quantitative easing. It is what the Fed's been doing massively since the crisis. It is printing money though its done electronically. From Wikipedia:
"Quantitative easing is another way to influence monetary policy, only recently begun to be used in the United States. Other countries, such as Japan, have provided a template for some Fed actions. Essentially, quantitative easing provides a method for the central bank to provide funds at lower than zero interest rates, in order to increase the monetary supply and combat deflationary forces. This is accomplished by the Fed purchasing U.S. government debt with newly printed U.S. currency. In essence, the Fed is monetizing the debt. In the current (late 2007 to today) macro-economic environment, the slowing velocity of money has induced U.S. central bankers to pursue a variety of new, and to some radical, policies to produce economic stimulus."
They also allowed Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to acquire bank charters so they have access to this free money to fuel their commodity, stocks and bond gambling. It is helping to fuel the current bubble in stocks, bonds and commodities.
It is inappropriate for investment banks to have access to the discount window. Paul Volcker has been lobbying hard to get the Obama to stop it, but Geitner and Summers being stooges of Wall Street are ignoring him. Discount window access should only be allowed to conservative commercial banks who don't gamble on the stock market. Ever since the repeal of Glass Steagel and they let Citigroup access it, and certainly since they let Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and what's left of Merrill access it they've created massive potential for abuse and for bubble creation.
@de_machina
No, you really don't. People who want to like sausage should avoid finding out how it gets made.
Precisely --- Australian academic here. The pay is good for anyone not trying to get rich, it's quite comfortable. Some of the conditions are great: good people, interesting material.
But the amount of work is absurd, and the risks you list are not worth the benefits.
Actually, it seems pretty damned reasonable to me. Rawls, and the Veil of Ignorance, and all that. The rich don't matter, the poor do. And under the system we've got, they have a better chance of yanking themselves up than under any other system. Why do you think people from third world countries will abandon everything to come and live here?
[FUCK BETA]
And while [flat for] "about a decade" is an exaggeration
Nice job of twisting my words; your insertion of "[flat for]" and then citing the change between 1998 and 2008 is a classic straw man maneuver. The reality is that while "about a decade" is an exaggeration, "nearly flat" isn't, if you talk about the last eight years rather than the last ten. I made the distinction very clear; you deliberately blurred it. Have you considered applying for a job with Fox News?
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
1. A strong nation needs scientists and mathematicians more than anything else.
I'm willing to grant that for the sake of argument, although it does expose your personal bias
2. The idea of not increasing native-born scientists on the basis that "employers ain't gonna pay more if there is an over-supply of scientists" is totally bullshit.
Not even a little. It's supply and demand. If you've got 35 qualified applicants for a job, you can afford to be choosier in who you get and what you pay them, than if you've only got 2 qualified applicants. The author of the study may overstate how much of an influence this plays on overall salary and retention, but that doesn't make it "Total bullshit" as you put it.
3. Most of the scientists in America are foreign born. And those foreign-born scientists have no difficulties in going back to their homeland if they can live better back home.
I attend Purdue, which is always in the top 5 for international students as a percent of the student body, and is usually number 1 or 2 for international students in the Graduate Programs nationally. However, international graduate students (or undergrads for that matter) don't make up anywhere near 50% of the student body within either demographic. You could claim that international students are not evenly distributed across departments (I don't know that to be the case), but I'm in the sciences and they don't even make up 20% of my departments graduate students. I've seen no evidence that they make up more than 30% in any given department. It's all circumstancial, but leads me to believe that you are completely wrong.
There may be a field out there, possibly your field, that is made up predominantly of foreign born scientists, but that does not appear to be representative of All science and mathematics nation wide.
4. Imagine the scenario of foreign born scientists leaving America while there are not enough native-born scientists to fill the posts, what type of future America gonna have?
Most of the foreign born scientists I know are trying their best to stay in the US. The problem is that companies need to be willing to sponser their Visa's and at least in my field they seem very unwilling. I know several former students who are doing Post-Doc work at the university in order to stay in the US long enough to find a sponsor. The number of applicants for permanent US residency far out strips the number that the US is willing/able to approve each year. As a result, when no longer able to find a Post-Doc most of those foreign MS and PhD students I know have had to return home to China, Ireland, India, Nigeria, etc, so the situation you describe has already happening without the sky falling in on anyone.
4. Does that anti-science sociologist want America to become another Zimbabwe?
The US has been training and exporting educated foreign born scientists for decades and we've retained our competetiveness. There is no reason to believe that it will change if we educate a handful fewer scientists every year.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
"Adjusted for IQ, quantitative skills, and working hours, jobs in science are the lowest paid in the United States." [greenspun.com]
Which is why you find so few women in the sciences. Women are far more sensible than men about career choices, not having been filled with idiotic propaganda all their lives about the value of sacrificing their lives (often literally) to "be a provider for their family." That's why when a job is really dangerous, dirty, or underpaid, it is almost certainly done by a man. And if all you know about someone is that they died on the job, you can predict their sex with 98% accuracy.
I'll believe that conditions in science and engineering have improved not when the best men are retained in the field, but when we see a lot more women.
While women in the sciences do face some discrimination--just as women doctors and lawyers used to--that is an effect of their being so few of them, not a cause. The cause is that women aren't idiots, and can see that a career in the sciences is a bad bargain.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
That doesn't make me happy about it. For a grand or two a month for an education, I get rather irate over good instruction being "a nice plus". If they primary focus isn't education, maybe the organizations ought not be calling themselves schools.
The purpose of language is communication, If the idea is clear the grammar ain't important
Because virtual feudalism is one step up from actual feudalism?
In a little over 100 years we have taken a very small step towards bettering the whole of society at the same time, while still hanging onto an aristocracy that provides considerably less benefit to society than it has received from said society.
Despite the fact that the aristocracy is now based entirely on money (where before status could exceed the need for money) and not bloodlines and therefore provides the 'possibility of (a very small number - by definition it has to be a small number or the rich would have to elevate themselves further to still be rich) poor person dragging themselves up' - even the most die-hard capitalist that has raised Adam Smith to the level of Golden Idol would have to realise that the inequality is at unsustainable levels. It's reaching the point where there is very little reason for those on the bottom rung to continue participating in the system - i.e. why should they continue to follow the laws in a system that is set-up to intentionally disadvantage them to benefit their bosses?
The rich don't matter, the poor do.
How do you figure, when it's the rich who control all the money and opportunity and even practically the government?
If the poor are all that matter, why is it okay to shaft them for greater executive compensation?
And under the system we've got, they have a better chance of yanking themselves up than under any other system.
Any system? Including the equally affluent western democracies which don't have such a ridiculous gap between top and bottom salaries? In fact there are plenty of countries where as far as upward mobility and income are concerned, concentration of wealth in the hands of the few at the top is the primary difference.
So why, again, do we need to "tolerate" such a gap when it is demonstrably unnecessary?
Why do you think people from third world countries will abandon everything to come and live here?
Because obviously any western democracy is going to be more of a meritocracy than the countries they are coming from, . But "better than 3rd world hellhole!" is a hell of a lot lower of a claim than "best system ever!"
They're not just going to the countries with ridiculous wealth gaps. So, obviously, that is not the defining characteristic of a country with opportunity for the poor. I think any rational person could see that, given the choice between two democracies, one where concentration of wealth has run amok and one where it hasn't, the one where it hasn't is better for the poor.
Focusing on the fact that both are better than Somalia is really missing the point.
The enemies of Democracy are
Obviously they took a course in economics and sociology, researched the economic and social history of the U.S. and made an education decision based on their understanding of the country and their financial prospects to paddle across the ocean on a goat powered log.
Surely they didn't just huddle around the village black and white television watching U.S. media and start thinking that everyone in the U.S. is rich and that anyone can make it there.
Yes, everyone who left their country for America holds a PhD in some socioeconomic field which that used to decide that if they leave their war-torn, ethnic cleansing, parasite ridden, hell hole and go to the country they see on TV, that they could use their college education to quickly become richer than most of the natives.
Why do you think people from third world countries will abandon everything to come and live here?
Because we've feed them a great line of bullshit about how great this country is, and how the streets are paved with gold, and not really some third world shithole that is really is....