USA to Pass Science Crown to China 1247
instantgames writes "According to a working paper of the National Bureau of Economic Research, rapid development of a science and technology base by populous Asian countries soon may threaten the economic position of the United States. Not only is the U.S. losing ground in high technology exports, but its very capacity to develop new technologies is declining rapidly with respect to the rest of the world. According to Richard Freeman, the paper's author, the sheer population of Asian countries may allow them to train more scientists and engineers than the U.S. while devoting a smaller share of their economy to science and technology." From the article: "The phenomenal growth of China's industrial base has been widely publicized, but Freeman focuses on what is perhaps the more important long-term indicator of a nation's prosperity - its re-investment in science and technology education.
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More people doesn't mean more smarts. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Bill Gates on US Education (Score:5, Interesting)
We as a nation have been able to attract great minds with promises of "vast tracks of land", but that is about it.
I think this is great (Score:2, Interesting)
I for one care about science and the advancement of human knowledge far more than any sort of jingoism, and I'm very glad to see people in China getting the opportunities to use their talents better.
Re:What do you expect? (Score:2, Interesting)
Not to sound like a troll, have you considred sending your kid(s) to private school? After seeing public schools though my own experiance, I wish I got sent to a private school one with teachers who actually give a damn. (Yes there are some dedicated hard working teachers out there but majority of them are not)
Two years ago.. (Score:2, Interesting)
My brother's company in California sent him to China for some work. When he came back after the two week trip, he immediately started learning Mandrin because the speed at which the chip production industry has been picking up scared him enough - that in case they fired him in America, he might be able to find work in China.
As long as American institutions have the research dollers to invest into the universities - I don't think America will lose its research crown.
I think China's simply playing catch up for now. But if my brother's experience is any indicator, then if we dont smarten up and invest even more into our research industry - then we'll be learning Mandrin too..
R&D is one of the reasons why Americans have been ahead of everyone else - even after the manufacturing went to China. If that goes, then it'll truly be a nation of Walmart workers.
Crown? (Score:4, Interesting)
It is also good to hear that developing Asian countries are on a way to contribute to progress rather than dig their heels in and do everything in a futile attempt to stop it (as seems to be popular in some Middle East contries now a day).
Re:The warning signs have been around (Score:2, Interesting)
As the share of world research resources invested in pharmaceuticals keeps increasing, it might be interesting to see trends in advanced education in the field. From my stint at a pharma college focused on research, I can tell you that the most advanced and groundbreaking research was being done by Chinese professors. And the field of doctoral candidates was dominated by Chinese and Indian nationals.
From what I understand, most of that research is still being done in the US, but the brain drain has started.
How long are we willing to wait until the most valuable research is being done elsewhere?
Of note, corporate-sponsored researchers are motivated to produce more *profitable* treatments; government-sponsored research is not limited (as much?) by this, and so could produce treatments more beneficial to mankind... maybe even cures instead of treatments.
Re:The Real Chinese Growth (Score:2, Interesting)
china's phenomenal growth was and is fueled by foreign (western) investors. i'm not denying ip theft, but that seems like a domestic issue (and maybe some complicated trade issues).
my point is if china's growth is really caused by ip theft than why are the foreign companies setting up shop in china? it seems like a set up for failure. It seems more likely they go to china cause they can get cheaper R&D. And thats the cause of economic growth.
Re:That should go along nicely... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, sometimes (most of the time?) passionate self-righteousness precludes any rational thought. I work on the campus of a liberal arts college, and see a lot of PCU-style protesters. A few years ago, NC was looking to build a waste-disposal site for low-level nuclear waste (generally stuff like rubber gloves used in medical procedures involving radiation or x-ray). I was approached by a protest group that wanted me to sign a petition decrying this horrendous environmental affront. I asked them what they proposed should be done with this waste, they said "Stop producing it." I pointed out that a) chemotherapy patients, dental patients, etc. would object to this "solution", and b) this "solution" would do absolutely nothing for the already existing waste.
I'm not sure which was louder, the howls of rage, or the giant sucking sound as my points were hurled into the intellectual vacuum.
Not Population. (Score:5, Interesting)
The US's open-door policy for researchers from around the globe to study and research in the US had more to do with getting the "crown." The metling-pot mindset, especially popular with educators and institutions, allowed the best and the brightest to come to the US to do their work.
That, and the US is, like, you know, a first world country? Once China and India and Indonesia can get phone and power service to the medievil huts the majority of its population lives in, then I'd worry about the massive population difference.
New Zealand and Finland are good examples of miniscule countries in terms of population that are doing very, very, very well for themselves on the science and technology front. New Zealand is isolated by location, and Finland by language. They still have engineering firms and physicists that are world class.
SoupIsGood Food
Re:They will catch up to 2005 in 2015? (Score:2, Interesting)
Public education (Score:3, Interesting)
A lot of the problem is cultural, in my opinion. It's not cool to be smart these days in the US. The President talks like a dumb fucker, and he and his fundamentalist buddies spend a lot of time, energy, and money bashing science. Funding for research is being cut left and right, so its no surprise that the center of science and technology is moving elsewhere. If you want to get your bad heart replaced with a cloned replacement, you're going to find yourself in Chiba, not Chicago.
Re:Bill Gates on US Education (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Emulation, not innovation (Score:3, Interesting)
Innovation depends a lot on culture. If you have a culture that discourages innovation then it won't happen. The reason we won the cold war against the Soviet Union was that the Soviets were actively discouraged from innovating. Totalitarian countries are bad at innovating. As long as the Chinese keep on discouraging democracy, free speech and the free flow of information, we can expect that they will be poor innovators.
Unfortunately, the US of A is going down the same path as the Chinese. Things like the Patriot Act and the DMCA are real innovation killers. Paranoia about security could kill the economy more effectively than competition from China. There was an article in one of the papers this morning that said the cost of a car made in North America was increased $800 by paranoia induced red tape.
Re:What do you expect? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Bill Gates on US Education (Score:5, Interesting)
America has a tradition of innovation, a stable population, a low population density, huge amounts of capital, a steady influx of immigrants, and a devise society. We also have an insane prison population, high levels of drug use, a week SS program ECT. I don't think we will still have 2x the economy of biggest competitors in 50 years but I think we are in good long-term shape.
PS: Canada and Australia will also become more significant players on the world stage, but I don't see them having the levels of economic growth to catch up with the US in the next 50 years.
Re:What, us worry? (Score:3, Interesting)
Now this is one issue that probably is worth picking on. There is much effort in modern education not to damage the self esteem of young people. The problem is the belief that self esteem is actually important for achievement is actually rather poorly founded. There was a very good article in Scientific American [sciam.com] at the beginning of the year that did some analysis of how self esteem actually correlates with the things low self esteem is claimed to case - the results were that the correlation was relatively poor, and certainly other factors were much more highly correlated. The study is, of course, far from comprehensive, and the results don't suggest that self esteem is meaningless. They do, however, suggest it is time to consider how seriously we take self esteem. Exactly how damaging is it to young children that they never learn what it is to fail? IS that oughweighed by the benefits of increased self esteem? The answers have been taken for granted, but perhaps we should consier this a little more carefully.
Jedidiah.
Re:Emulation, not innovation (Score:1, Interesting)
You mean like Microsoft?
Re:Bill Gates on US Education (Score:4, Interesting)
Evolutionary theory is a highly successful scientific theory, and has had no meaningful scientific competitor since the Modern Synthesis brought it and genetics together in the 1930s. There are debates within evolutionary research over particular mechanisms (ie. natural selection vs. genetic drif), but there is no debate over whether evolution happened or not.
A race that is "backward" here isn't so elsewhere. (Score:2, Interesting)
Ever been to Britain? Indians and Pakistanis occupy the social status that African Americans occupy in the US. They dwell mostly in inner cities. They are poor. They do most of the shit-work. They are derogatorily referred to as "Pakis" by the white mainstream. They form street gangs. The liberals and conservatives debate ad-infinitum about the causes of their backwardness. Of course, the few that break the mould to become professionals/businessmen are considered to be the exceptions that break the rule.
Go to the US. What a difference! Most of the Indians and Pakistanis are well-educated. They are affluent and live in posh suburbs. They may not be accepted by the mainstream, but nobody really considers them inferior in any way. The tech companies are full of them.
If that is not an argument for environment over heredity, I don't know what is.
Magnus.
Re:What do you expect? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Bill Gates on US Education (Score:2, Interesting)
You are right, in that it is mostly a political debate, not a scientific debate. He adverted the political side by making us decide for ourselves. Questions rose in my mind on how the complexity of modern life could have possibly happened 'by accident' or evolved to the level it has today. This is the point i'm trying to get at
(if anyone wishes to debate on why I think we are here because of evolution alone, think of all the physiological intricacies of the human body. the counter-current systems in the lungs, and of the nephrons in the kidneys. the remarkable ability to maintain homeostasis, and how meiosis magically mixes up dna to increase genetic diversity. Try to convince me that all of that -- and a ton more -- arived by accident from a bubbling pile of organic ooze (that somehow managed to arrange a plasma membrane, that's another discussion))
Re:Zero Sum Game and Education (Score:5, Interesting)
America is not hated because you have more GDP or freedom than the rest of the world. You are hated because you attack and destroy countries and sovereign governments when your economic interest dictates that, in the name of "liberating" the population (well, the part which you do not kill) while you do not give a hoot about hundreds of thousand dying when there is no money for you in it.
You are hated because you toot around against WMDs whlie you are the largest developers of named WMDs and, in fact, the only one who used nuclear weapons against civilian targets.
You are hated because you refuse to care about the environment because it would hurt your bottom line and the rest of the world suffers from your ignorance. You are hated because you define what "freedom" must mean to the rest of the world: the American Way of Life. Everyone who thinks differently is an enemy of Freedom and Liberty and the enemy of the US of A.
You are hated because you set up dictators when it suits you then try to depose them, with all your military might, when they do not toe the party line any more. Never mind how many people die in both turn and never mind what gets destroyed, as long as weapons sale profits are high enough.
You are not hated but looked down for touting freedom when you had seggregation just 30 years ago, for warning parents that the Origin of Species contains dangerous theories that are not in the Bible, for having a patent system that allows you to patent a way of combing your hair to cover a bald spot, for cranking out movie after movie with no plot but more blood and explosion than a slaghterhouse hit by a Pershing and you call it "culture" but in the same time you have no problem destroying many thousand year old remnants of human history - all in all, that was not American, thus it must have been worthless. You are looked down for being the largest porn manufacturing industry but with an unbelievable hypocricy make nudity a deadly sin. You talk about freedom but ban gay marriages. You talk about women's rights but ban abortus even to an underage rape victim.
The idea that the world envies you is false. It comes from the idea that the US is, by definition, the best. Therefore obviously the world wants to be like the US just evil forces want to stop development and in order to liberate the world in their quest to finally living "our way of life", as your great leader puts it in every speech, you should attack them by economic, political and military needs. The fallacy in the whole ideology is that the rest of the world does not want to live like you. Europe appreciates her own decadent ways you know, with all that culture rubbish and lack of rights to have machine guns but with some rights of not being killed by your fellow citizens. Asia has a culture that is a lot more ancient than even Europe's and they seem to be doing reasonably OK with it, thank you very much. Africa is just too poor to have its priorities around freedom and ideology, they think about the food and water and medication more than their liberty.
Noone would have a problem with the US wanting to lead the world.
The problem is that you do not want to lead, you want to rule.
Re:Bill Gates on US Education (Score:5, Interesting)
You are right, in that it is mostly a political debate, not a scientific debate. He adverted the political side by making us decide for ourselves. Questions rose in my mind on how the complexity of modern life could have possibly been created 'by intelligence' or appeared at the level it's at today. This is the point i'm trying to get at.
(if anyone wishes to debate on why I think we are here because of evolution alone, think of all the physiological idiocies of the human body. the crossover between the windpipe and the oesophagus, and the apparently useless appendix. the remarkable tendency to get back pains due to our badly-designed spinal curvature, and how genetic diversity is comparatively minimal - everything we see around us seems to at least belong to the same family tree. Try to convince me that all of that -- and a ton more -- was produced by a supposedly intelligent Creator (who somehow sprung fully-formed and with high IQ from nowhere, that's another discussion))
Re:Bill Gates on US Education (Score:2, Interesting)
If you're going to post an article about educational adequacies, please try spelling correctly. The disclaimer at the end does not exempt you from using the spell checking abilities of your computer.
As it is, I do believe the U.S. educational system is adequate, (excepting the rather poorly informed persons advocating creationist, a.k.a. "intelligent design," agendas) in most areas, not including fields such as science, math, history, art, physical education, and analytical thought... which leaves welding, underwater basket-weaving, and recess. (end sarcasm)
I am not a believer in many of the home-schooling programs, but I am an intense advocate of helping children learn instead of just passing them on to the next grade because they can play football.
I know there's a lot more to the whole education controversy, but the end results are the same. They're OUR children. They need OUR help, as well as the help of professional educators.
It's a terrible truth of our current society in the U.S. that the children who tend to do well have the serious guidance and involvement of their parents, whereas poorer-performing children tend to lack the same parental involvement.
It's not ALL the parents' fault, but I believe the changes we need to make in society are much more involved than providing arbitrary and unnecessary testing. We need to somehow advocate more parental involvement in their own child's development and not advocate that everyone must work slavishly just to survive (or to purchase that nice boat).
I don't know if this is the best answer, but I do think that the parents are the key. Our society here in the U.S. seems to hamper and peck away at the parental responsibilities rather than provide positive and meaningful support for what we would like to teach and see in successive generations.
I find it very disturbing that we can spend more money on buying Johnny a PS2 and games for Christmas than we do taking him to the museum or purchasing books or buying him the latest fad clothing. Don't get me wrong, I realize there's social development value in some of these things, but we seem to emphasize those things over whether they learn to read (and SPELL) nowadays.
Now, bring on the flames...
P.S. - I seem to have forgotten this is slashdot... obligatory incendiary comment: "Kill all the lawyers!"
Re:What do you expect? (Score:2, Interesting)
Look on the bright side. America is outsourcing all that science and technology stuff to places where it can be done at substantially lower cost. In return, Americans enjoy lower prices for the things they use and everyone is better off for it. What's not to like about that?
As another poster below says, the Market Has Spoken, and clearly the market doesn't place a very high value on Americans with an education in science and math. The market is never wrong about such things, you know--it's the most efficient allocator of scarce resources known to man.
Oh, I know I know. America isn't a libertarian anarcho-capitalist utopia yet, so how can you say the free market wants shitty schools when we don't have a free market in schools in America? Oh but we do. We do. There are plenty of private schools and there are no laws expressly forbidding them, so private entrepreneurs are free to open up competing schools anywhere and any time they think there's money to be made doing it. So why are the shitty public schools complemented by a host of expensive and shitty private schools and a tiny percentage of completely unaffordable and exclusive private schools that actually work? Answer: most Americans don't want to spend money on schools, whether they're public or private, and that's apparent when you look at the market.
They do seem to like bitching and moaning about the quality of the schools they'd rather someone else were paying to operate.
Re:Bill Gates on US Education (Score:3, Interesting)
U.S. universities attract very smart people from all over the world even today. It is true that many of the greatest inventions credited to the U.S. were made by immigrants, but the U.S. is a country of immigrants. That is kind of the whole point. We attracted those great minds to our country with our more laissez-faire economic policies among other things. They chose to live here. Most of those great minds lived in our cities. So I'm not sure what they did with those vast tracts of land.
The U.K., Germany, and the U.S. are the three countries in the world most responsible for the modern technologies that the rest of the world benefits from today. It seems at the very least disingenuous to ignore that fact. I don't deny that there are a lot of stupid and lazy and brutish people in the U.S., but that is also true of the rest of the world. Only a small percentage of the human race is responsible for technological advancements.
And anyway, I don't think our educational system (per se) lags behind that of other countries. To the extent that there is a problem I think it is cultural. We have become lazy. It is not so much that the teachers in other countries are so much better. It's that the students tend to be more disciplined. You can't learn if you don't study. And the fact that our children so often grow up in front of the mind-numbing television cannot be helping matters.
Breeding? (Score:3, Interesting)
1) In the west we have a "natural" selection of people where less successful people tend to breed more and sooner (they have more kids earlier in life). If there is any genetic component to success, we are effectively breeding it out.
2) In China, they have an artificial selection where parents can only have 1 child. Those that have 2 are fined for the second, so effectively people with money (sometimes equivalent to success) can breed more. Therefore, China is encouraging the breeding of more successful people.
I admit this is a simplification of the matter. However, I think that several generations down the road, this will turn into an advantage for the Chinese nation.
Re:That should go along nicely... (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, indians aren't the best counterarguement (Score:2, Interesting)
One might argue that the differences in british vs. american immigrant indians might come from different ratios of caste immigration. I am completely unaware of any data on this, but it does question the strength of your environment over heredity arguement.
Re:Bill Gates on US Education (Score:3, Interesting)
The real problem is, how are we going to deal with that painful transition period where the US economy is in the shitter, the Fundies are running the show, and they have all the worlds nukes and a zealots belief in their "manifest destiny"?
Now THAT scares the shit out of me.
Re:Bill Gates on US Education (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder at what point we'll stop having them manufacture our barbie dolls and salad shooters. South America is right at our doorstep and offering to build factories and hand them jobs would do wonders. As there is an issue with South American sweat shops (there seems to be no issue with Chinese sweat shops?) that doesn't seem likely.
Re:Cultural difference (Score:5, Interesting)
What really annoyed in during high school and middle school was the prevalent idea that logic/reason is contrary to creativity. Anyone lacking skills in reasoning/math can compensate to themselves by claiming that they were creative. That's just dandy because there's no good way to measure creativity so they just hide behind that. Random ideas != creativity. From my experience, creativity requires at least a small measure of reasoning. In fact, some of the most creative people I know are very skilled at mathematics and computer science. The two are not exclusive but rather go hand-in-hand.
Re:Cultural difference (Score:1, Interesting)
I entered an advanced math and physics program in university. Unfortunately, the university math courses were taught by ex-physicists who had decided to turn their backs on the real world. They had no use for any practical application of mathematics. They knew nothing about teaching. They had no interest in students. 'Teaching' was something they had to do earn money to keep eating. So we learned math on our own and in physics class. But the pace of other things in university (studying ant, for example) led to me falling behind. And the text books were worse than the professors (who often had written them).
So, the negative influence can be anywhere.
Re:Bill Gates on US Education (Score:3, Interesting)
If you're telling me that Sachin Tendulkar is not worshipped as practically a god, then I'm not sure where you're getting your ideas.
sports has not until recently been as commercialized as in the US. i.e., sports heroes typically didn't make a ton of dough in a career over there unlike here.
This one is (somewhat) true. Certainly cricketers aren't raking in the sort of cash that, ay, baseballers do in the US - but they certainly aren't short of cash from advertising and endorsement deals. And then there are the recurrign accusations of pay offs from Indian and Pakistani bookmakers for match fixing...
Jedidiah.
Re:What do you expect? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The warning signs have been around (Score:2, Interesting)
1. Companies are short sited because shareholders are short sited.
2. You can't have tons of government oversite and still expect a companies to foot large research bills. You brought up Bell Labs/AT&T. They invented UNIX, C, the transister etc... and then the US government stepped in and broke them up. What have they done since? Whether you like to admit it or not, Microsoft is currently spending a lot of money on research. If 75% of the people here had their way, though, Microsoft would be broken up and fined for being bastards... So you can't have your cake and eat it too.
my own observations (Score:5, Interesting)
We had a meeting recently where the senior members of the department discussed project work and instructions to students. Their concern was that a pattern was emerging along these lines...
Domestic students would or would not do what they were told by the deadline. They may or may not introduce some ideas of their own in doing this.
European students would tend to deliver but had a tendency to deliver what they wanted deliver rather than what was discussed, this would vary a bit as to whether it was a good thing (innovative, neat ideas, rejecting what on balance became bad advice) or a bad thing (willfully ignoring good advice) depending.
Japanese students tend never to say no, but would sometimes reappear at an advanced point in the project and confess they were stuck. Sometimes this would be a bit too late to do much about it. They'd normally get by though, just on the basis that up until that point they'd have had a damn good go at attacking the problem and there was often on close examination some stuff there that could be re-worked or otherwise given prominence to attract the credit it deserved.
Chinese students, basically, would never so no and always deliver exactly what was requested, even if they staggered in looking like death warmed up.
The bulk of the meeting was discussing how we could get our overseas students to loosen up a little and be more proactive. Its a fine balance obviously recognising the needs of individuals but not being discriminatory. But as one Prof quipped, we could probably kill a Chinese student by giving them an insoluable problem to work on whereas a domestic student would probably turn up and call us names (rightly). Be careful with the off-hand suggestions was the message, be clear about what the goals are and what are side issues. This should help all the above in different ways.
Does this translate into anything nationally? Not sure, but it might be relevant if it says something universal about mentality. Chinese engineers certainly have the work ethic, put it that way.
Re:observations (Score:5, Interesting)
I've had more than one conversation run along lines like this:
Person: So what do you do?
Me: I'm a mathematician.
Person: Oh, you're a teacher. What level do you teach?
Me: No, I don't teach at all -
Person: But I thought you said you did math?
Me: Yeah, I do. I'm a research mathematician for a software company.
Person: How do you research math?
At which point it's time to grab the conversation by the scruff of the neck and quickly steer it in another direction because anything more isn't going to be productive.
The exposure to abstract mathematics doesn't reach significance--much less unification--with a BS in math ed.
I agree, and this is an issue. We spend a lot of time teaching people how to do math problems, without actually teaching them any mathematics. In a way it's akin to teaching people about creative writing by nothing but drilling them for years in spelling and formal grammar - yes it's important if you want to be able to do the subject properly, but it fails to really impart the essence of the subject.
That horrible question, when will I ever use this?, becomes a sort of grim reality.
That's an interesting problem, and the answer really is "all the time". We really ought to be teaching philosophy, including some formal logic, and stretching our math ciriculum sideways to meet it. One of the greatest skills that mathematics can impart, even at a very early level (late elementary school) if taught appropriately, is how to think about, deal with, and analyse abstract concepts. It's exercising the mental muscles for logical analysis and critical thinking. If we actually taught mathematics and philosophy from an early age I think we'd be much better off.
I don't think bad teachers are to blame. Boring, maybe, but not resentful.
I think they are, in that they have an attitude that math is both hard, and not of much real practical importance. Whether or not they tell kids that explicitly, it is very much an attitude that kids pick up and learn to imitate.
Jedidiah.