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US Losing R&D Dominance To Asia?
bednarz writes "U.S. companies are locating more of their R&D operations overseas, and Asian countries are rapidly increasing investments in their own science and technology economies, the National Science Board said in a report released this week. The number of overseas researchers employed by U.S. multinationals nearly doubled from 138,000 in 2004 to 267,000 in 2009, for example. On the education front, the U.S. accounts for just 4% of undergraduate engineering degrees awarded globally, compared to China (34%), Japan (5%), and India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand (17% collectively). 'The low U.S. share of global engineering degrees in recent years is striking; well above half of all such degrees are awarded in Asia,' NSB said in its report."
And most of that 4% in the US is Asian anyways. Just hope we can keep them here in the US after graduation instead of shipping them back to China because our fucked up immigration policy.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
This is simply the race to the bottom that corporate America is pursuing writ large. When we traded our democracy for a corporatocracy, this was the inevitable result.
Gee, I wonder if that has anything to do with Asia having well above half of the world's population.
Of course this has nothing to do with the anti science movement that took over when W was in office and is still a matter of fact for half the population.
Half the american public are against "intellectuals", against evolution, deny climate change and think that investing in science is against God or is far to great a burden on the economy and you're surprised at this?
The low U.S. share of global engineering degrees in recent years is striking
Americans don't want to learn science and engineering, because it's hard. It takes years of extremely hard work.
I went through university with a business major. I saw the kind of work he did because he was asking me for tutoring help; the "hard" things he was learning were unbelievably trivial. I'd estimate his degree was a factor of 50 easier than mine; I could have taken all his classes, not studied for shit, and come out with straight A's, all with less effort than I was spending on a single difficult engineering class.
Of course, he now makes more than I do. So why on earth would anyone want to go through what I did, when you could go through the far, far easier thing HE did, and be more financially rewarded for it?
In the end American's lack of interest in science, technology, math, and engineering will sink the ship. You cannot compete in today's global world unless you (as a people) understand how that modern world works, and Americans don't wish to understand, because it's hard work. You reap what you sow. I've been saying this for the last 30 years, and now here we are, going down in flames to better educated countries. Surprise surprise. I used to give a shit, but then I learned there was nothing I could do to make people care, so I just gave up. No point in getting upset over it. I'm resigned to my country falling out of its former place as the world powerhouse of science and engineering. In the 50's, 60's, it was very much the USA, and everyone else a distant second. Now, that's reversing. So be it.
"Enemy"?
I happen to believe that there is no sense in paying the Chinese to build products that we are going to buy. Especially when we're just supporting the mistreatment of their workers.
On the other hand, there's every reason to have Chinese and Indians and Iranians and Nigerians, etc come to this country to learn. Because they raise the average.
My daughter coasted through high school, even though both of her parents are professional academics. She had little ambition and little direction. Her interaction with foreign students who actually place a very high value on their education has had a great effect on her. When she got to college, she saw how hard some people work as opposed to some of the kids she hung around with in high school. She saw students helping each other with study groups, tutoring, even sharing books. It took her a while but now she studies with a group of kids that includes Chinese and Korean and Eastern European students, and in Mathematics, when you hook up with smart people, it's a big help, as opposed to many American students who come in as big swinging dicks and think they've got an A coming as a birthright.
National borders are artificial. Cultural borders are not. There may not be a reason to see research and development as some grand competition, or the moral equivalent of war, but there is every reason to start spending a lot more money, public money, on R&D. Not because we have to "beat" the Chinese, but because we have to beat a whole lot of problems right here at home, and over-come the increasing anti-intellectualism of many Americans. Of course, I don't think that's going to be an applause line at the South Carolina Republican debate tonight.
You are welcome on my lawn.
In my recent (and extensive) experience with interviewing people who are recent graduates, I am finding a very large percentage of people with bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science who can't write even the most simple scripts in any language... people with "expert in TCP/IP networking" in their qualifications, or who have three years testing routers and switches listed as experience who don't know what NAT means or what a MAC address is... people who don't know how to list running processes on any platform. These are people who are graduates. They have their degree. And those degrees are worthless. We've had half a dozen positions open where I work for a long while, the bar just isn't set that high, but we're not finding qualified applicants.
It doesn't matter what nationality the school or the "graduate" is. Poorly-prepared graduates are a world-wide phenomenon. Sure, Asia is producing a large number of graduates, but the majority of them aren't going to be very useful. The U.S. is producing fewer engineering graduates, but they're just as useless.
Yes, the universities are to blame. I don't know what they're teaching but it has little to do with reality and doesn't prepare the students to be employable. But the students are also to blame. Surveys show that between 75 and 98% of students admit to cheating, and don't feel particularly bad about it; the universities also don't seem to think that cheating is anything to get worked up over either. No wonder nobody is learning anything.
All of this is why I don't think that it's a big deal that the US produces only 4% of engineering degrees; 4% of "nothing useful" is no worse than "35% of nothing useful". If those degrees actually meant something, or correlated in any meaningful way to success (both for the individual and for the employer), I'd be more concerned. My real worry is that Westerners aren't even interested in engineering any more; they all want to be in sales and marketing and other nontechnical fields (or "soft" majors like political science or humanities, followed by whining about how nobody will pay six figure salaries for their chosen field). I'm not sure why this is,,, given how little tech work someone with a tech degree seems to actually be required to do, it can't be because of academic workload. Mind you, the profound anti-intellectualism that is still the rule in Western society may have something to do with it.
-sigh- Kids these days.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
In a weird twist, I'm working for a company in China as an engineer. They couldn't find the talent there. Chinese engineers are missing a critical talent: the ability to fail.
It works like this: in China, you are taught there is a correct answer for each problem. If A then B. If C then D. If E then F. Always deterministic. You never fail because there is always a tried and true path.
Works great for copying, but not in improving or creating products. That takes going down unexplored paths. And failing. And recovering. And failing. And recovering.
When starting a new project with my team, I was asked "What is the method for creating a new product?" They fully expected me to give them a recipe. Something deterministic.
I'm underwhelmed by their engineering skills too. They jump on the first method/equation/model they find and refuse to budge even when I present them with physical evidence that their model is flat out wrong.
Sorry for venting. I shouldn't complain. I'm getting very well paid to do something an entire department of 50 other engineers can't do: go out on a limb.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
There's literally tons of American expats living and working in China these days.
Well, yeah, but since they're Americans, that's only about a dozen people.