The US has a big problem that can not be solved by more education and training of its citizens - although that wont hurt. Ireland has one of the highest educated populations in the world per capita and yet, does not have the type of environment one would expect merely because everyone has a PhD. I noticed an ominous sign of the US giving away it low level technilogical infrastructure - this was an ad for entry level US consultants who would be flown for 4 months to Bangalore India to be trained in "cutting edge" technologoes and then they would be assigned to US consulting gigs under the auspices of the Indian consulting firm at relatively low US wages. It is time for US companies and citizens to wake up and kick some *ss. For example, if we really wanted to we could automate away the foreign companies and possibly provide new jobs for a many of our own citizens. Targeting this and using capital to fund it is not being done because its is in US companies best (short term) interests to often eliminate the jobs of their own citizens. Later when theese same companies have to pay the piper for giving away their companies to foreign based operations the executives will be long gone .....
if you are the highest cost nation you had better be the best educated in science but that is not what is happening with our youth. Referring to New York Times columnist Bill Friedman, Martin said that in writing about Chinaâs rise to power, Friedman said that when Bill Gates goes to China, people line up for hours and hang from the rafters to hear him speak. "In China Bill Gates is Britney Spears and in North America, Britney Spears is Britney Spears." one of the biggest debates in american education today is if intelligent design (creation)should be taught in school. we cant even get behind our own scientific knowledge. we are still trying to teach kids that some unseen deity just spoke and the world popped up from nothing.
Why do you think companies like IBM lay off tens of thousands college educated employees with 10 years of on the job experience in the US and Europe simultaneously hiring the same number of engineers in India? It's got nothing to do with with eduation - it's pure and simple labor cost arbitrage. No one in this country can be 20 times better educated and more productive to justify labor cost difference. And yes, our youth don't want to spend 4-6 year, pay $100K for their education and end up competing with a $5hr indian engineer for the same position at IBM. They could have a lucrative career in plumbing without all these problems and expenses instead.
and in America the clinton justice department attacks him {Microsoft} during the peak of the tech boom {March 2000} and whacks the stock market down into a bear frenzy --- now how many jobs did that action create?
There is a simple reason - College education costs of about 40K minimum - for just the undergraduate - are borne directly by the individual. Then, with very large debts we expect these same people to work at a 50K per year job and service their debt payments. It has nothing with people being "stupid" and has everything to do with people looking at the costs and making the rational decision that with such a poor risk / reward ratio they might as well be truck drivers rather than pursue a scientific or technology career. All of this is confirmed by the poor job security and long hours required to just keep a job in these endeavors - with ever decreasing opportunity and pay. Of course, some people will still prosper in these areas - as always. But you wont convince students to bet their futures on something when all signs point to it being a poor decision. Now there are simple ways to fix all this: problem is business and government leaders are just too stupid, greedy, and lazy to get off their butts and fix it. Believe me this is all going to change......
In countries like India & China, top of the line college education is either free or almost free. How can the US compete if parents are expected to mortgage their houses to send their kids to college?
Gee.. I went to a state school for undergraduate. I had to work my way through school and finance it: I came out with large debts (by my standards and relative to what I could make in a job with an undergraduate degree). No way its "almost free". Its more like "almost indentured servitude" when you graduate and need to pay off your student loans and just pay living expenses. In grad school I basically lived in utter poverty. Now employers love this system - no costs in training and they get a captive workforce that can not afford not to work for their companies at low wages. People are not dumb: The days of this game working in the United States are coming to an end as people realize that they can stop it by simply changing a few key laws and policies.