<p>mercymom, I know what we are talking about. But a nation with good k-12 education and a poor university system is not going to lead anyone anywhere. It will send its best and brightest overseas for their university education and only advance if those people come back. The education question is two fold – primary&secondary/higher – but the quality and availability of higher education must factor in that equation.</p>
<p>“It will send its best and brightest overseas for their university education and only advance if those people come back.”</p>
<p>I agree. But there is some evidence that that is in fact beginning to happen. Plus the US very much does have a problem right now with gross inadequacies in the output of the K-12 system. It affects our ability to put more qualified people into college, and into math/science majors in college. We are woefully inadequate in putting our own students into math/science graduate schools. And we are woefully inadequate in just producing a high school educated workforce that is “job ready”. The other countries are most definitely beating us in the “job ready” dept. Our college level problems won’t get solved until the K-12 problems are solved. And maybe they won’t get solved until the home life problems of preschoolers are solved.</p>
<p>But right now the other countries are solving their K-12 problems, educating a much larger % of their populations than they used to, and are therefore producing a job ready workforce that allows the kids they sent to the US for college and grad school to go home to work. If this wasn’t happening they wouldn’t be writing magazine articles about it.</p>
<p>On the job ready question. Here where I live I have read more than once in the business section of our paper about all the jobs in our metro area and in our state that go unfilled, jobs where no college degree is required, due to the poor math and reading skills of high school graduates. One large employer said his company had gone so far as to implement a “training program” which basically taught people the math they should have learned in high school. And then he said it wasn’t stuff like algebra, it was the basic 4 functions plus fractions! This guy said his job applicants couldn’t do addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and fractions well enough to be hired. The economy suffers in such a situation, and eventually if it goes on long enough and you can find a country that can easily provide you with this kind of skilled worker you don’t have to teach math to, AND they work for less money…Can you blame the HQ for moving the plant?</p>
<p>You’re right, mercymom, many foreigners educated here are increasingly returning home, especially since the US economy, and the dollar are so weak now. </p>
<p>But I’d argue about your comment that we’re woefully inadequate in putting our students into math/science grad school. In America, we don’t “put” students in certain fields (unlike in many other countries including China) – they choose them. And many American students don’t choose math & science not because they can’t hack it, but because those professions don’t pay as well as, say, business or law.</p>
<p>Perhaps “put” was the wrong word. But then it all goes back to what I said early on, the other countries aren’t democracies when it comes their education systems. It is both a blessing and a curse that we have so much freedom. And a lot of times people don’t choose to do what you’d like them to. It’s the price we pay for freedom.</p>
<p>otoh, I can tell you from first hand experience that neither business nor law is necessarily lucrative. And there are plenty of math/science jobs that pay just as well if not better than business/law. Even w/o college, in the oil business there are jobs called process technology jobs that require only a 2 year community college degree and pay $50k to $60k, well above the average salary. A two paycheck couple with process technology jobs can make a six figure income with benefits, not bad at all. Both my Ds are pursuing science/math fields and are looking at $65k to $85k starting salaries. If you look at national average figures for attorneys (ie, everyone, not just big law) it’s about the same amount. The national average salary for an attorney is much smaller than you would think. By far and away in our local want ads the overwhelming majority of openings are in either engineering, computers or medical fields. My H was on a plane with a nurse anesthetist recently and she told him she makes $160k in Tampa. I wouldn’t think people are not choosing jobs like that cause they don’t pay well. </p>
<p>Honestly, I think a lot of kids don’t choose math/science careers cause they think math and science are too hard and they don’t like either subject. But feel free to disagree. You had a lot of insight into the educational issues earlier in the thread and I respect your opinion.</p>
<p>So it’s mutual, because I 100% agree with your first paragraph. Freedoms can lead to messy societies, but I say, let’s hear it for the mess.</p>
<p>^^so I take it you two are not for IQ-based tracking starting at kindergarten and financial incentives for sterilization? ;)</p>
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We are extremely good at importing talent. Now keeping that talent and converting them to US citizens, we’re not as good at that as we used to be.</p>
<p>Korea & Japan, have higher patent production per capita than the US, despite us utterly crushing them in University academics. That doesn’t even mention that fact that much of our patent producing population is imported & their’s is virtually all native born.</p>
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Running a few numbers would make it astoundingly clear that this is not a high cost issue. We could pay for this program simply by eliminating all agricultural subsidies. (Leave defense, social security, government sponsored health care untouched.)</p>
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With the upcoming shortage of engineers and absolute <em>glut</em> of business & law degrees that situation is going to reverse itself very soon.</p>
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For a “national problem” one looks to national government. It could easily be framed as a state/county/city problem if you wanted. Then a state/county/city response would be easily done. Considering that funding for schools comes primarily from this level it’s probably more easy to implement here.</p>
<p>Under your definition there are virtually no conservatives in this country then. (E.g. Department of Defense.)</p>
<p>Here’s an interesting piece on the results of PISA, the Programme for International Student Assessment:</p>
<p>[Learning</a> from PISA](<a href=“http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1084070]Learning”>http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1084070)</p>
<p>“With the upcoming shortage of engineers and absolute <em>glut</em> of business & law degrees that situation is going to reverse itself very soon.”</p>
<p>I don’t know that this matters that much. People should go into engineering because it’s what they like or will like. The work itself can be tough and grinding and requires a lot of perseverance. Doing it just for money can result in one miserable person. Sure, some engineers do hit it really big. But most don’t - most have jobs that pay fairly well on average and hopefully the engineer gets the greatest rewards from what the do while their salary allows them to not have to worry about life’s needs that much.</p>
<p>Here’s an interesting twist on this discussion: our immigration policy as “intellectual suicide”. This quote is from an article about John Malone, a legendary pioneer of cable/satellite TV & related fields. </p>
<p>“The thing that scares me the most is our technological capabilities relative to the rest of the world. I think Steve Ballmer (Microsoft CEO) said 80 percent of all the scientists and engineers in the world will be in Asia by 2025. We still have some of the best graduate schools in the world. But 70 percent (of the science and engineering students) are foreign nationals. They can’t get a green card. Not only do we pay to educate them, we kick them out of the country. And in 10 to 20 years they’re going to be founders of the firms that will be competing against the Apples and Intels and the Microsofts here. So we’re almost deliberately committing intellectual property suicide in science and technology with our immigration policy.”</p>
<p>[Liberty</a> Media’s Malone: ‘We are a nation of whiners’ : Updates : The Rocky Mountain News](<a href=“http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/aug/01/liberty-medias-john-malone-has-lot-his-mind/]Liberty”>http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/aug/01/liberty-medias-john-malone-has-lot-his-mind/)</p>