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Education Math IT Science

The Science Education Myth 494

xzvf writes "BusinessWeek says that you should not listen to the conventional wisdom. According to a new report, US schools are turning out more capable science and engineering grads than the job market can support. 'The authors of the report, the Urban Institute's Hal Salzman and Georgetown University professor Lindsay Lowell, show that math, science, and reading test scores at the primary and secondary level have increased over the past two decades, and U.S. students are now close to the top of international rankings. Perhaps just as surprising, the report finds that our education system actually produces more science and engineering graduates than the market demands.'"
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The Science Education Myth

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  • Supply and Demand. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SatanicPuppy ( 611928 ) * <Satanicpuppy&gmail,com> on Friday October 26, 2007 @10:57AM (#21128675) Journal
    Hey, supply and demand. I'm kinda a freak because I went to school and just studied what interested me without regard to how I was going to apply it to getting a job, but most people I know checked salaries, and went for things where they thought they could make money.

    Additonally, once you get out in the field, you start getting a sense of what people make, and what you can do and would like to make, and if you figure you could make more money as an engineer, you go back to school and pick up the degree...None of this stuff is set in stone in high school, or even undergrad level college.

    I'm sure I'm not the only one here who remembers the glut of 30-somethings going back to school to get their CS degree in the 90's. If there is demand, people will try to fill that demand, because doing so will profit them personally. Conversely, people who try and fill a non-existent demand will be punished by the market, shuffled into a crappy job.

    And for the inevitable people who're going to say, "All the US demand for engineers is being filled by H1-B types" I say good! More engineers in this country means more engineering work has to come to this country, because that's where the engineers are, and that's where the work will be done best. More work for engineers means more demand for engineers, and more engineers with jobs HERE means countless other jobs will be created by the money they'll be spending. Would you rather they stayed where they are already, and brought the work to their country? We can afford to do that for running shoes, but if we start exporting tech industries, that's a bad thing.

    Using government funding to force produce a glut of science-types is silly. Better to use the money to kick off industries that require them, and let the rest take care of itself.
    • by Analog Squirrel ( 547794 ) on Friday October 26, 2007 @11:01AM (#21128743) Homepage
      As far an engineering and tech types, I think I agree with you. However, I think that there is a certain segment of the science industry that really ought to be government sponsored (fundamental and long-range research that may not be carried out in private industry due to no apparent profit to motivate).

      On another note, I wish I'd been more like you as an undergrad. I managed a BS in physics, and have barely even cracked a physics book since then. Hell, I'm still trying to figure out what to do with myself in terms of a "career".
      • by SatanicPuppy ( 611928 ) * <Satanicpuppy&gmail,com> on Friday October 26, 2007 @11:09AM (#21128841) Journal
        See, I agree with that. It goes in line with the last line of my post...Let the government pour money into pure science, and release the results to us under an open license. I've got no problem with that; it's exactly the sort of thing the free market isn't good at funding, but which often turns out to have profit potential anyway. And it creates high end jobs, which is a win-win. Better to use tax money for something like that than fricking corn subsidies.
        • This is pretty much how it works right now with the Govt paying for NSF, NIH, DARPA, DoA and DoE grants, etc.
          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            It's chicken feed. They could put a lot more into it, and really kick off some interesting stuff in this country. Additionally, a lot of it goes to big established companies, and that stuff always makes me leery, both in terms of efficiency, and in terms of possible kickbacks. Use it to fund research centers at schools; they're relatively cheap, and the research then spreads from there, rather than being locked up in patents.

            We need to kick off some sexy new stuff; especially the DoE ought to have a bunch o
            • Anything developed, discovered, improved, or otherwise realized under programs funded by the government end up being patented or copyrighted and pulled out off the general public domain. Even schools doing things like this with government are protecting whatever is discovered and using it as an asset.

              Long story short, I think we are already spending too much money on the sciences that only enrich some company, school, or whatever. If the stuff went into an open domain that anyone could use, I would feel dif
              • by davester666 ( 731373 ) on Friday October 26, 2007 @03:45PM (#21133227) Journal
                The article says the US produces too many science and engineering grads than the market demands. What they forgot to include was "...that will work for less than $40K". Those MF'ers actually expect to get paid once they get their degrees.

                The only thing saving the US is the H1B program!
        • by jollyreaper ( 513215 ) on Friday October 26, 2007 @11:41AM (#21129491)

          See, I agree with that. It goes in line with the last line of my post...Let the government pour money into pure science, and release the results to us under an open license. I've got no problem with that; it's exactly the sort of thing the free market isn't good at funding, but which often turns out to have profit potential anyway. And it creates high end jobs, which is a win-win. Better to use tax money for something like that than fricking corn subsidies.
          I'm with you on that one. Either the government can give it all away freely (as in beer and linux) or they could do a short patent and cycle that money back into directly funding the labs, thus lowering the direct funding cost required from the general budget. Let private enterprise license the technology and bring it to market, let the public at large benefit.

          Conservatives will always say "Man, nothing stimulates the economy like a war." I'll amend that to be "Like a war that doesn't occur on your own soil." But there is a truth to that, massive government spending on goods, services and R&D will stimulate the hell out of an economy. But what if we didn't put it towards war? What if we said we're putting a WWII level of effort into developing a new green economy and fixing our infrastructure? That's a task easily the equal of WWII or the following Marshall Plan. That's investing in the future. What are we getting for pissing away $2.8 trillion in Iraq? Might as well gone to Vegas and had the mother of all parties, you'll have as much good to show for it.
          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Hoi Polloi ( 522990 )
            Bush just asked for another $46 billion you'll never see again. Imagine if that was invested here in basic research.
        • Corn subsidies, along with a lot of the other produce based agricultural subsidies, aren't there for profit margins. They are there for security. By supporting agriculture in the US, the government is ensuring that in case of a complete economic crash, there is still an existing agriculture production market that is still capable of producing enough food to feed the country. It's like long term disability insurance. You pay for it every month, but you hope to hell you never have to use it.

          Ethanol subsidies
      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by MSTCrow5429 ( 642744 )
        "However, I think that there is a certain segment of the science industry that really ought to be government sponsored (fundamental and long-range research that may not be carried out in private industry due to no apparent profit to motivate)."

        Because central planning really really works. And because PARC didn't discover anything of use, and all those Intel and Microsoft research labs popping up like mushrooms after a heavy rain don't exist, and the numerous research universities throughout the nation, w

        • by king-manic ( 409855 ) on Friday October 26, 2007 @11:20AM (#21129003)
          Because central planning really really works. And because PARC didn't discover anything of use, and all those Intel and Microsoft research labs popping up like mushrooms after a heavy rain don't exist, and the numerous research universities throughout the nation, with millions and billions of dollars in endowments, are really just studying not even string theory, but silly string.

          A private company creating some interesting things does not invalidate the argument that academia researches things that aren't profitable. It's a complete tangential straw man. To summarize all academic research into a bland sentence about a particular area of physics is deceitful. Industry is good at bridging the last gap between an idea and a product. usually things that are within 5 years of being useful. Academia is better at doing basic research, research with no immediate profitability, and research that industry simply doesn't have a desire to fund. Laser's, the computer, algorithms, genetics etc... were all at one time just random academic ideas with no profit in sight. Once it hit a certain point industry took up that research and made products out of them. Basics research is high risk, you get results but the results are rarely usable in a product. Thus governments usually fund it as Industry is often extremely risk adverse.
        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by MontyApollo ( 849862 )
          The endowments pay for buildings and pay TA salaries, but the research is done thru government grants most of the time I believe.

          What private company is going to be investing in string theory research?

          Fundamental science research is important, whereas it is stupid for a company to invest in this research unless they think there will be profitable applications. Science is much more than just finding useful or profitable applications.
      • if you mean, sponsored as in, assign an amount of money to competeing private organizations (corporate or otherwise) with the full understanding everyone benefits then yes. However if you mean just government funded grants to orgranizations run by the government - then no.

        Government only innovates when it HAS too. In other words, if there is no deadline (emphasis on the dead part) these types of things go on forver and evolve into useless side items that burn up tax dollars and never complete the original
        • by DudeTheMath ( 522264 ) on Friday October 26, 2007 @01:02PM (#21130815) Homepage

          [T]hese types of things go on for[e]ver and evolve into useless side items that burn up tax dollars and never complete the original goal. [emphasis added]

          True basic research doesn't have a goal. It has a question. If you already know your goal, you're not doing basic research.

          No, take the money and offer it as a prize. First two companies to do X get Y. ... The last thing we need is even more government involvement. It already stifles innovation.

          So (a) the government is setting the goal and (b) it's providing (some) funding on the back end rather than the front end. This is not research.

          Research is when a scientist has an interesting question, hypothesizes an answer, and then goes about trying to (frequently dis-)prove it. A typical grant proposal has to lay out those three items, with the last part (the experimental method) in some detail, including materials and timelines ("deadlines"). Most grants I know of are for specific time periods, and you're not going to get any kind of renewal without showing progress (one way or another).

          Often, one project will spawn many new questions ("uesless side items"), which should be the only "goal" of pure research. Each would, of course, require approval of a new grant application.

    • freak? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I'm kinda a freak because I went to school and just studied what interested me without regard to how I was going to apply it to getting a job

      A lot of people do that. It is actually quite common.

      I am inclined to think that this observation about having too many educated people suggests a couple of things:

      1) The oft-repeated corporate line that outsourcing is needed because American talent is unavailable is pure bunk (though we all knew this already).

      2) The government could use this as justification for a re
    • I'm kinda a freak because I went to school and just studied what interested me without regard to how I was going to apply it to getting a job, but most people I know checked salaries, and went for things where they thought they could make money.


      For some of us it was the same thing...

      BSME. 06.
  • The highly paid market, or the cheap overseas market?
    And does this study have a political agenda? after all elections are coming, and someone is certianly going to want to tout there education program that is failing.
    • Re:WHich market (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Metaphorically ( 841874 ) on Friday October 26, 2007 @11:03AM (#21128759) Homepage
      I think it's about the cheap market here. Relentlessly trumpeting that "we can't hire enough skilled talent" encourages more people to get a degree or enter that job market which increases the supply and drops the cost of acquiring talent. A more honest statement would be: "we can't hire enough skilled talent for the wages we want to pay."

      It's really no different from the claims in the hospitality and service industry that seek to keep employees there cheap.
      • Someone please mod this insightful. It's about as dead on target as it can be.

        We do now have an equilibrium between engineers and engineering jobs. It's one of the few fields where there are actually enough jobs available for the (skilled) workers available. And that's something the industry does not like. It does not want enough workforce, it wants a surplus of workforce, so supply and demand decrease the price of it.

        We're far from the incredible shortage everyone in the industry claims. We do have a short
      • by samkass ( 174571 )
        A more honest statement would be: "we can't hire enough skilled talent for the wages we want to pay."

        And what determines those wages? A combination of "prevailing wages" and what customers are willing to pay the company for the employees' output. If you have employees that you pay more for than you can bill for, you're going to go out of business. And I think in some areas of the tech industry it's reached that point. So wages change slowly, while the tech industry changes fast. And "bubbles" of unusua
        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          But that doesn't change the fact that the second part of the statement (companies want people to work for cheaper) is left out in the press releases and news pieces done on the subject. The situation is portrayed as a dire shortage while old tech workers are fired and new grads are hired on for cheaper. Yes, this is what a market is but the people going into it as workers are not informed about that second half of the statement.

      • It's really no different from the claims in the hospitality and service industry that seek to keep employees there cheap.


        Cheap for the employer but some of the hospitality industry make pretty good money. I have a friend who makes less money now as a bank manager then she did as a cocktail waitress at a casino. I had another friend who worked for 5 years as a waitress and part time model (like the suns page 3 model but with cloths on) and save up $100,000 to start her own business. If your smart, attractiv
      • Sanjay from Bombay will work for a slave's wage. Americans won't.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 26, 2007 @10:59AM (#21128719)
    The math was done by US educated researchers using excel 2007.
  • 85% of all educational statistics are made up on the spot.
  • by ztransform ( 929641 ) on Friday October 26, 2007 @11:01AM (#21128745)
    We have a problem. Management theory of late has tossed aside conventional wisdom of taking on graduates, training them within the organisation. Instead companies either contract out work, or seek only experienced "useful" staff. Trouble is those of us with experience are doing very well as the supply of other experienced individuals slows.

    Those doing MBAs.. please consider the benefits of graduate staff. Yes they cannot do anything useful the day they get out into the real world. But in the long run technology companies will need experience or end up paying dearly for it.

    A country cannot do badly by having too many educated people.
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by art03 ( 1029872 )
      I'll another layer to this. I'm a foreigner and the thing that strikes me most about the States is experience is more valued than a degree (to some degree). So if you want any job, while you are at school, look for internships or co-op opportunity to get a foot in the door. I've been telling every student that ask me about career advice to do that.
    • Graduates have many benefits compared to experienced workers. First of all, they're cheaper, obviously. But more importantly, they can still be "formed". They're not yet set in their ways, you can mold them into what your company needs.
    • Anecdotal (Score:4, Interesting)

      by dreamchaser ( 49529 ) on Friday October 26, 2007 @11:37AM (#21129393) Homepage Journal
      My wife is the Undergraduate Administrator for the EE department at a major University. Almost every one of her students gets job offers when they graduate. Some get the offers months BEFORE they graduate.

      This post is anecdotal of course, but so is yours. A lot of it depends on what field you are talking about. Enginners tend to get hired right out of school though.

      As a hiring manager in the IT field I've hired quite a few 'kids' right out of school. Did they need 're-education'? You betcha. Did they rapidly develop into valuable employees? Most of them, in time. Not all schools of management theory agree with your broad brush strokes.
  • by Heir Of The Mess ( 939658 ) on Friday October 26, 2007 @11:01AM (#21128747)

    When I was at university I was talking to an old engineering lecturer and he was complaining that they had to lessen the difficulty levels of the courses even more because students were getting dumber.

    It's not that scores are getting better, it's that the tests are getting easier. Also there is still a very high demand for genuinely smart people, but not so great science grads are being churned out at a higher rate than what is required.

    • How do you even remotely make the connection between one single old professor complaining about his students and a general trend across the entire population?
      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by sunwukong ( 412560 )
        It was a question on his exam.
        • That's completely beside the point. You can't make gross generalizations about a larger population based on a single point of data.
      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by presarioD ( 771260 )
        How do you even remotely make the connection between one single old professor complaining about his students and a general trend across the entire population?

        I concur the parent-post statement. I was about to make a comment on exactly that point. As a physics graduate student I had to teach loads and loads of students and their math/physics/analytical skills were a depressing sight to see. So at least as far as highschool level is concerned I definitely think that they are getting worse and worse and thei
        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by qkslvrwolf ( 821489 )
          Question: Was it any more difficult for the foreign students to make it to an American university in the first place? By which I mean, might some of the weeding been done ahead of time for the foreign students?
        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          As a physics graduate student I had to teach loads and loads of students and their math/physics/analytical skills were a depressing sight to see.

          Hello. I was a teaching assistant also, and I disagree with your assessment. I've found some very well prepared students as I've TA'd. The requirements for doing well in physics and chemistry are a strong background in high school algebra, trigonometry, two years of calculus, and maybe linear algebra. Most of your students were better at these topics than you

    • by john83 ( 923470 )
      That's a common complaint. However, the summary does deal with this in that it mentioned that US students are doing very well in international rankings, so unless standards are falling meteorically (I always wondered why that image is used for a rise) all across the world, that's not entirely true, or at least there's some contradictory data. Of course, the actual report doesn't seem to be linked, so we're commenting on an article which probably misrepresents it. Ah, who am I kidding? This is /. - we're com
    • by Coryoth ( 254751 )

      When I was at university I was talking to an old engineering lecturer and he was complaining that they had to lessen the difficulty levels of the courses even more because students were getting dumber.

      I gather this is indeed the case, at least as far as certain states go (Each state having its own standards etc. makes it all somewhat variable). This video [youtube.com] has a nice example with falling test scores, followed by a new exam which had test scores going back up (see about 2 minutes in).

    • by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Friday October 26, 2007 @11:27AM (#21129173)
      No kidding. When I look how classes change in my field (CS) since the 60s, you have to wonder. Of course, a lot has changed since then and the focus moved away from hardware and keeping some huge machine alive to algorithm optimization, but one has to wonder.

      We now get CS masters who cannot tell a PE header from an ELF header, know next to nothing about assembler, and couldn't even build a simple board to power and run some programmable IC like an Atmel or PIC because they know jack about electronic engineering.

      We have some sort of watered down colleges here now that churn out "IT masters" in a 4 years fast breeder way. You will pass, somehow. I recently had the "joy" of sitting in an interview with a candidate who was the perfect example of what's wrong with those fast breeder tech schools. When I talk to someone with a masters in CS, I do expect him to know what happens when I do a

      pop ebx
      inc ebx
      push ebx
      retn

      I do at the very least expect him to start pondering. He just stared blankly at me, he has never even seen any assembler. Hello? How's this guy supposed to write a compiler? How is he going to debug assembly? PE header? What's a PE header?

      We're talking someone here who has a masters degree in CS. Not acc or bacc, where I could somehow at least excuse it. I'd question it, but it's excusable.

      That's why our grades get better. Not because people get smarter, we just dumb and water down the tests until the results are what we want. I'm fairly sure we'll soon see college who can't read hexadecimal. We already arrived where they can't add them anymore.
      • by motek ( 179836 )
        Someone mod this dude up as 'funny'. Yessir, these days even nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
    • I'm from an European country.

      I remember about 18 years ago, during high-school, when a colleague of mine went to the US for a year in a student exchange program.

      This guys wasn't exactly an above average student (in the previous year he graduated with a score of 11 out of 20). A year later he comes back from the US and he's bragging about how there he was an all As student. A year after that and he's still getting the same low scores at the end of the high-school year in his home country.

      Honestly, you guys (
    • by morgan_greywolf ( 835522 ) on Friday October 26, 2007 @11:32AM (#21129283) Homepage Journal
      Yup. When I was in college, they were doing this even in the programming classes. For IT majors, they used to teach programming classes in C. After a some complaints that C was 'too hard' they decided to switch to (bleck!) Visual Basic. I understand that IT majors don't need programming at the same level as CS majors, but for cryin' out loud, programming in C is not that difficult for someone who's career choice is IT!

    • When I was at university I was talking to an old engineering lecturer and he was complaining that they had to lessen the difficulty levels of the courses even more because students were getting dumber.


      That's an interesting comment. But there are of course several explanations for the lecturer's observation:

      1. Students ARE getting dumber everywhere.
      2. Students are only getting dumber at this university, perhaps because of a general decline of this university or the engineering program a this university.
      3. T
    • I haven't read TFA yet - this is /. after all.

      I have heard parent's point repeatedly - that we're making tests easier.

      I can attest that in recent years it has become administratively inappropriate to give negative comments to or flunk students, so we continually pass students who haven't really learned along to be with their peers. That they didn't really learn isn't THEIR fault, but until someone can figure out a way to teach them, moving them up to the next set of material isn't helping them at all.

      However, when I think about the impact of the trends I see, it isn't "there's no one left to do research" it's how big and poorly trained everybody else is.

      I'm consistently amazed by how they let anyone who ISN'T in a hard science/math program get away without really ever understanding anything about science or math. A huge number of people don't have enough backing in the scientific method to have a basic sense of what is or isn't a fact - even in simple real world cases they can physically deal with. (Like how to fix household items, how to tell if a circuit is blown, how to debug RCA connections to their TV, etc.) And don't have enough backing in math to convert measurement units or tell if they got the right change.

      The entire idea that anything could possibly have or not have empirical verification is lost on a very, very large number of people...

      And to be clear, while I think higher education ought to take some responsibility for ensuring that the graduates have at least a small degree of well roundedness, I think the main problem in US education is much, much earlier.

    • by Stradivarius ( 7490 ) on Friday October 26, 2007 @12:38PM (#21130367)
      Did the students get dumber, or did his expectations go up over time?

      It's possible the lecturer has been in the field so long he doesn't remember how much a new engineer simply hasn't had the opportunity to learn.

      We sometimes see this phenomenon in industry when interviewing new college grads ... your interviewers are often engineers who have spent years in the field, and it's easy to forget just how much you didn't know when you were fresh out of college. So we tell them to try to look for someone who has solid fundamentals and is smart... if they're smart, they can learn the rest of what they need to know quickly. If they're not... you probably don't want them even if they do know a particularly technology X, Y, or Z.

      (Somewhere else in the thread someone was complaining about CS grads not knowing x86 assembly. Is that really a surprise? If they've done assembly for any architecture, and are reasonably intelligent as more CS grads probably are, they'll pick up x86 just fine. But to expect that they've been exposed to x86 assembly specifically seems a little unrealistic, especially given that most CS grads will never use any assembly language after graduation)
  • Hmmm (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ObiWanStevobi ( 1030352 ) on Friday October 26, 2007 @11:04AM (#21128777) Journal
    More than the market demands? Maybe it's just local, but I know we have trouble filling engineering positions. I have many friends that are engineers and none of them had trouble finding work after college. That would tell me there isn't exactly a glut of supply in the job market.
    • Well, what were you looking for?

      You get a fair lot of engineers that can somehow hack together some code. What you don't get, and I give you that, is good engineers who can do more than jus hack together some code. Because our schools don't produce them anymore.

      Tests are becoming so easy that everyone can pass. I've recently had the joy of looking at math for high schools. We did that kind of thing in junior high, but those were for kids who are about to finish. I really wonder what they do in jun now. Lear
  • really??? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Friday October 26, 2007 @11:04AM (#21128787) Homepage
    Why is it then that almost every recent college grad we get at the office tends to not understand high level math?

    Also their English is atrocious. It's like they teach in communication classes to talk like a street person. you do not submit a proposal to a customer with the words "plug up" when regarding their networking equipment...

    and I quote... " We will plug up your networking gear for performance." WTF??? this is a college grad!
    • by Fred_A ( 10934 ) <fred.fredshome@org> on Friday October 26, 2007 @11:13AM (#21128921) Homepage

      and I quote... " We will plug up your networking gear for performance." WTF??? this is a college grad!
      As long as they write it politely, as in "Yo, we will plug up your networking gear for performance, man", I suppose it's acceptable.

      • by sammy baby ( 14909 ) on Friday October 26, 2007 @11:28AM (#21129187) Journal

        As long as they write it politely, as in "Yo, we will plug up your networking gear for performance, man", I suppose it's acceptable.


        I believe the correct usage in that case would be, "We will pimp out your networking gear," etc.

        Alternatively, one could use "trick out," "style," or "smack that bitch up."

        Werd.
      • by bucky0 ( 229117 )
        I got a job with Wu Tang Financial Services talking like that, so ymmv
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You've hit the nail on the head. There is a big difference between passing a test and being able to think independently. Our school system is designed to produce people that are good at regurgitation. What we need are people that are trained to ask questions and think for themselves.

      I'll bet that if you handed the employee a template for all proposals, he could have filled them out properly. But if he ever encountered anything that he didn't have explicit instructions for, he would most likely randomly
    • Re:really??? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Bamafan77 ( 565893 ) * on Friday October 26, 2007 @11:28AM (#21129189)

      "Why is it then that almost every recent college grad we get at the office tends to not understand high level math?

      Also their English is atrocious."

      Here's an experiment you should try - increase the offered salary by 50%. You'll still get people who don't understand "high level math" and don't speak good English, but if you can sift through those, you'll find good people. Perhaps your offered salary is too low for what you want. I want a 2007 BMW 5 Series, but nobody wants to sell me one for $15k. There must be a shortage! :)
      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by Tablizer ( 95088 )
        [not understand high level math...their English is atrocious] Here's an experiment you should try - increase the offered salary by 50%.

        Pay more? That's like soooo 70's
                 
    • Re:really??? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Friday October 26, 2007 @11:51AM (#21129637)
      On the danger of being mod redundant (I've been rambling about it before), blame the schools and that "no child left behind" bullshit. When kids get to pass despite being far from passing, but they would ruin the average and the school is threatened to get their money taken away because of it, what will the school do? Close down due to a lack of funding or letting the moron get his degree despite better knowledge?

      You can't even say "only do it until X". Until when? Junior high? Then we'll have a lot of people with a junior degree, which is worthless because even their dog could get one. High school? Then you have worthless high school diploma. College? Then we get college ones worthy of being toilet paper.

      You can't hand out degrees like candy and then expect them to be recognized by the economy. If everything you have to do to get your college degree is to sit there and keep the chair from flying away, it becomes worthless.

      And that in turn is dangerous for the workforce and the economy. It means essentially that companies are better off hiring from abroad where there are schools whose degree actually means something, that foreign engineers are on average better (because out of 100 engineers, you have 100 people who actually know their stuff instead of 50, and 50 who just have a degree meaning jack), and that thus foreign technology and products are better.

      This will in the long run hurt the US economy.
    • 1) As a member of the higher education system, I can tell you the MOST common thing I hear from older faculty is that the whole system is degrading and not just at our university. Personally, I've only seen a slight decrease in student work ethic and ability to actually think but that may be because I'm looking for this trend everybody speaks of; and as time passes I get more removed from my experience as a student so it alters my perspective as well.

      2) The source is a Think Tank created by and for politici
  • by Shotgun ( 30919 ) on Friday October 26, 2007 @11:06AM (#21128801)
    that our schools are graduating enough competent scientists. The problem is that we're not graduating enough extraordinary scientists with an extensive patent portfolio willing to work for subsistence wages.

    Sheesh! I thought everybody knew that.
  • by MSTCrow5429 ( 642744 ) on Friday October 26, 2007 @11:07AM (#21128811)
    "Perhaps just as surprising, the report finds that our education system actually produces more science and engineering graduates than the market demands."

    Foreshadowing a critical shortage of French Lit. majors.

  • The premise is that the there is a maximum number of engineers and scientists dictated by the marketplace. However, we really live in a technological society and everyone should know some degree of engineering.

  • the report finds that our education system actually produces more science and engineering graduates than the market demands

    The good ones will create things with economic value, thus ensuring their place in the world. People who just want "middle class jobs" due to their credentials get what they deserve.

    The only professions truly susceptible to market forces are the parasitic ones, such as stock market speculators and realtors.

  • Almighty Market (Score:3, Insightful)

    by synonymous ( 707504 ) on Friday October 26, 2007 @11:11AM (#21128875)
    Me almighty market no want more science, reading or math. Me almighty market no like servants knowing me wheels and function. Ummmmmmm, almighty market want more gum for fresh breath, for speaking more. Yes, bring almighty market chewing gum. Make it spearmint, sugarless. Clap Clap
  • Where's the report? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by djmurdoch ( 306849 ) on Friday October 26, 2007 @11:11AM (#21128883)
    The article describes it as "a new report by the Urban Institute" with authors are listed as "Hal Salzman" and "Lindsay Lowell", but there's no link, and nothing on the Urban Institute's web page.
  • seems to be that all the graduates from US universities will look for work in the US. That will never be the case. Students may come to the US for specialized education and then take that education back home. One of the questions that should have been looked at was how many plan to stay in the US after their studies.
  • by joshv ( 13017 )
    I've been saying this for years. The problem is not the supply, it's demand. I galls me when I see large companies, which have cut back their R&D budgets dramatically in the past decades, running TV ads about their math and science scholarship programs - wow, mad props to you, Mega-corp, for simultaneously working to both decrease demand and increase supply.

    The problem is on the demand side. If you create the jobs, kids will fall over themselves to enter the field.
  • by penguin_dance ( 536599 ) on Friday October 26, 2007 @11:13AM (#21128913)

    I think that MOST of slashdotters working in tech have known this. It's all about the MONEY. Studies have shown time and time again that the reason businesses are bringing H1-Bs over here by the boatload is not about lack of qualified US graduates--it's about $$$. Only a couple of month's back the Programmer's Guild [programmersguild.org] exposed a video [youtube.com] that advertised a class on how to weed out qualified Americans so your company can employ cheaper H1-B workers.

    Unfortunately, as long as US workers don't see it happening in THEIR field (or are blissfully unaware), they do nothing. I'm afraid when Americans DO stand up, it will be too late.

  • by gurps_npc ( 621217 ) on Friday October 26, 2007 @11:14AM (#21128931) Homepage
    Particularly, it's discussion on the flaws of various studies.

    Often people boil things down to a single number, and then misinterprete what it means.

    The 'education' studies usually do things like compare US % of High School graduates going on to get a College degree with another country. Sounds like we are doing pretty bad, until you do a little bit more reasearch and find out that 85% of US citizens graduate high school, while only 30% of the other countries citizens get that far. Big surprise, there. They picked their richest and smartest 30% of the population and compared it to our "everyone except the worst 15%".

    Then there are studies that show things like "US has worst prenatal care records in the world". But they leave out the obviously imporant fact that it is almost entirely caused by teenage mothers. If you ignore teenage mothers, the US has one of the best prenatal care records in the world. Our problem is entirely in the fact that we treat pregnant teenagers like scum instead of doing our best to help them.

    You need to look beyond a single number, they are not helpfull.

  • They myth came about in part from corporate lobbyists who need to paint a picture of a country falling behind the technology curve in order to justify visa workers and offshoring. Since it is difficult and expensive to disprove such claims, they mostly get away with it.
  • All in the spin... (Score:3, Informative)

    by MobyDisk ( 75490 ) on Friday October 26, 2007 @11:17AM (#21128967) Homepage

    The report finds that our education system actually produces more science and engineering graduates than the market demands.
    That just means that the market demands have shifted to account for the low number of science and engineering graduates.

    For example, 20+ years ago, the U.S. was a significant exporter of technology (right? This is what my elders tell me). Now China and Japan design our cell phones and motherboards. So if we the number of scientists and engineers has increased again, then we should start to gain back those engineering and manufacturing facilities.
  • by Bamafan77 ( 565893 ) * on Friday October 26, 2007 @11:19AM (#21128989)
    This BW article, while very informative and well-written, isn't anything new. Philip Greenspun observed [greenspun.com]:

    "Adjusted for IQ, quantitative skills, and working hours, jobs in science are the lowest paid in the United States."

    Absolutely true. One of the beautiful things about the free market economy is you can differentiate between what people *claim* vs what people actually do. People claim that the US is facing massive shortages in the sciences, but all you have to do is look at the salaries. There's only a "shortage" if businesses wish to pay minimum wage.

    It's also interesting how Business Week's research shows the U.S. near the top of lists in science and literacy when others claim we're falling back into the stone age. BW notes the cause of this discrepency:

    "Why the sharp discrepancy? Salzman says that reports citing low U.S. international rankings often misinterpret the data. Review of the international rankings, which he says are all based on one of two tests, the Trends in International Mathematics & Science Study (TIMMS) or the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), show the U.S. is in a second-ranked group, not trailing the leading economies of the world as is commonly reported. In fact, the few countries that place higher than the U.S. are generally small nations, and few of these rank consistently high across all grades, subjects, and years tested. Moreover, he says, serious methodological flaws, such as different test populations, and other limitations preclude drawing any meaningful comparison of school systems between countries."
    *Interpretation* and *validity* of testing data is almost always flawed on some level. That's why my cynicism gene kicks into overdrive when I hear of Brand New Research demonstrating...anything. If someone has an agenda, any data can be *made* to say whatever they want.
  • by Animats ( 122034 ) on Friday October 26, 2007 @11:20AM (#21129007) Homepage

    As the IEEE frequently points out, if there were a shortage of engineers, salaries would be going up.

    • Or the work is going out.
    • Absolutely. On the other hand, with the dollar collapsing as it has, this may blunt an awful lot of the move to offshore this kind of work.
    • The point IEEE makes is valid... but salary is not the right metric. The total amount the company pays you isn't just your salary, it's benefits too. And with double-digit percentage increases in the cost of health care, a lot of money that would have gone to salary increases has gone into providing good benefits.

      That said, I don't know what the trend is in total compensation nationally. I do know that in the DC market, software folks are in high demand, especially if you know some signal processing. An
    • Okay, engineering graduates make about double liberal arts graduates. That has been consistent for several decades, which means that the supply/demand curves for those degrees reflect that. There is a premium paid for engineering degrees, because the skills required to complete one remain in short supply. If there was an oversupply of engineers, salaries would be falling.

      Are salaries rising in computer programming? It depends on your time frame, which people miss. The late 90s was an artificial boom fo
  • Trades (Score:2, Insightful)

    by CaptTofu ( 4109 )
    Big surprise. Tell everyone they need to go to college to become engineers, scientists, lawyers, et al, not enough jobs to support that scheme. Too many Brahmins; maybe you need to balance that out with Sudras, Vaishyas, Kshatriyas as well. The body of society can't just be composed of heads. It needs feet, legs, arms, stomach, back, hands, etc, to function properly.

    Maybe just maybe, having people learn trades isn't such a bad thing after all. Not everyone needs to be, or can be, white collar. Then maybe w
  • by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Friday October 26, 2007 @11:24AM (#21129095) Journal
    It could be true that U.S. educational system is turning out more science and engg grads that what the market wants. But that is probably not because we have suddenly turning out good quality engineers by the bucketfuls. It is just that the market is not demanding that many good quality engg grads now, because of out sourcing. When you get good quality engineers at fraction of the salary in India, Ireland, Israel and other countries, the demand slackens.

    It takes a while for the information feed back to the corporate honchos to percolate through. Engineer salaries alone can't be compared. For example in India, to support one engineer, you probably need 0.1 cook, 0.1 diesel mechanic, 0.05 secretaries, 0.333 peons/errand boys ... Most of what you get from the existing infrastructure in USA, like reliable grid electricity, commuting infrastructure, lunch provides, etc are all provided by the companies themselves. It is possible that at the present levels of productivity and infrastructure cost, it could be profitable to out source. But dollar is falling against euro, rupee etc. The salaries overseas are increasing at a faster rate. The breakeven point is quite close and the trend towards outsourcing is going to reverse. At that point, it is doubtful if we will have enough qualified engg grads.

  • So does someone want to explain to me why, at my son's recent graduation from ASU's engineering school, 75% of the BSEE's, 90% of the MSEE and 100% of the PHd's were foreign?
  • by superwiz ( 655733 ) on Friday October 26, 2007 @11:33AM (#21129311) Journal
    All it says is that there is more top tier people being produced. Ok, it matters when it we engage in the h1b arguments. But it doesn't matter when it comes to the general education arguments. As long as an average joe graduating from HS can't do basic math, he can't be expected to adequately maneuver in the modern world. And yet he is. Of course, by "basic" I mean Euclidean Geometry and algebra of at least 2 variables. Here come's the torrent of anecdotal evidence of people doing just fine without it.... but a modern man without those skills is a tourist in his own life.
  • by MeditationSensation ( 1121241 ) on Friday October 26, 2007 @11:33AM (#21129319) Homepage
    ..while we are turning out more science students, all of them believe the Earth is 6,000 years old.
  • by Bobzibub ( 20561 ) on Friday October 26, 2007 @11:39AM (#21129441)
    So if I get N+1 credits that makes me more competent at a subject than N credits? And N credits in some other country?
    I never read the actual study--just the article, but it does not sound compelling to me. A credit in country A is comparable to a credit in country B? And simply because scores in country A increase doesn't mean that suddenly A competence > B competence.

    From the article:
    "As far as our workforce is concerned, the new report showed that from 1985 to 2000 about 435,000 U.S. citizens and permanent residents a year graduated with bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in science and engineering. Over the same period, there were about 150,000 jobs added annually to the science and engineering workforce."

    Now if we assume that the number of people turning 65 (and retiring from a successful career in the IT industry) roughly equals the number of people turning 22 with a BSc,MSc etc.
    Wouldn't 150 000 new jobs added now imply a shortage of 150K? The numbers don't mean much unless you look at the number of people leaving the industry.

  • spin, spin, spin (Score:3, Insightful)

    and i'm not talking about the corporate interests who outsource and want to mollify displaced american workers

    i'm talking about the other slashdot posters below!

    hey, slashdot, here's a newsflash: you just don't need that many engineers and scientists in society. you don't. you need 10 guys to design the trains, 100 guys to build them, and 1,000 guys to run them

    you just don't need that many at the top, at the creation of technology. you need plenty to build and maintain technology

    by saying this, i expect this relevation to go over like a ton of bricks. i expect to be modded down

    some people here apparently believe the point of life is to create some sort of utopia that resembles a college campus: everyone in research. or some sort of scientific monastic life

    no, that's not a human society, and never will be, sorry
  • by ahfoo ( 223186 ) on Friday October 26, 2007 @11:45AM (#21129551) Journal
    The "lack of skills" argument has always been bullshit. If anything, the majority of people are overqualified. Academic inflation is a massive problem. For every full-time Community College position there are literally hundreds, and in many areas thousands or even tens of thousands of applicants waiting in line. A Master's Degree is now about as common as a BA was in the sixties. Meanwhile access to knowledge has exploded even for those who don't pursue degree programs. Just watching 3D simulations on YouTube, you can learn more about biotechnology in a few days than most college students learned from an undergraduate degree a few decades ago. There is skill to go around.

    The lack of education argument is nothing but a smoke screen just as it always has been. It's just way of shifting the blame for poor employment prospects away from major corporations and the government policies they've landed in place through the aid of their Republicrat benefactors and onto the middle class.

    If you go back and watch Milton Friedman's series called "Free to Choose" you can see some choice examples of where this lie cum mantra originates. In episode three you'll see none other than a young Donald Rumsfeld talking about the new service based economy in which the emerging software industry is going to employ fifty percent of the population and he'll tell you how magically only the US will be able to participate in this market because only Americans can comprehend something so technically advanced as this newfangled software thing. Really an amazing performance. The shocking thing is that such a clearly moronic figure eventually made his way so far up the ladder of power.

    But of course the catch to this magical trickle down service economy voodoo was that we're going to need everybody to get re-educated to participate. If you can't do Powerpoint and Visio, how can you expect to reap the rewards of this magic new ago. And hence the argument persists to this day that all the laid off GM workers will get new jobs when they learn how to use Excel and do Word macros etc. Yeah fucking right.

    The problem with the economy is not a lack of education, it is a lack of leadership and a lack of responsibility on the part of the electorate that has bought into the greedy lies that will never benefit the majority of population.
  • by Lord Bitman ( 95493 ) on Friday October 26, 2007 @11:49AM (#21129611)
    I don't remember ever being told that [Engineering/IT/Business Management/Finance] education is only good in the [Engineering/IT/Business Management/Finance] field. Has this changed?
  • by kahei ( 466208 ) on Friday October 26, 2007 @12:25PM (#21130175) Homepage

    There's a shortage of skilled staff. I know because I am endlessly looking for them.

    There's no shortage of CS graduates who can't put together a coherent paragraph and who write as if they were sending txt messages. Heck, some of them, a few, who studied outsied the CS course or are actually interested, might have good technical skills. But if they can't communicate it doesn't matter and the average graduate of a UK university outside the top three can't communicate. They can't put themselves in someone else's shoes. They don't think, "How will this look to the person reading it?" They've been taught to express themselves and that there is no one right way, and as a result they aren't good at being diplomatic and they aren't good at being exact.

    In my experience, Americans are better, but still declining.

    It's better to get staff whose first language is not English but who understand that communication is a two-way thing, not a broadcast.

The means-and-ends moralists, or non-doers, always end up on their ends without any means. -- Saul Alinsky

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