U.S. dominance in science and engineering at risk
We've been hammering away on this topic for a few years now. The United States, through a combination of bad policy and a lack of strategic planning, is losing its enormous advantage in the key driver for technological innovation: Graduate Students in Engineering and Sciences.
A new study by the National Bureau of Economic Research warned that changes in the global science and engineering job market may require a long period of adjustment for U.S. workers:
"The United States has had a substantial lead in science and technology since World War Two. With just 5 percent of the world's population, it employs almost a third of science and engineering researchers, accounts for 40 percent of research and development spending and publishes 35 percent of science and engineering research papers.
Many of the world's top high-tech firms are American, and government spending on defense-related technology ensures the U.S. military's technological dominance on battlefields. But the roots of this lead may be eroding, Freeman said.
Numbers of science and engineering graduates from European and Asian universities are soaring while new degrees in the United States have stagnated -- cutting its overall share.
In 2000, the paper said, 17 percent of university bachelor degrees in the U.S. were in science and engineering compared with a world average of 27 percent and 52 percent in China.
The picture among doctorates -- key to advanced scientific research -- was more striking. In 2001, universities in the European Union granted 40 percent more science and engineering doctorates than the United States, with that figure expected to reach nearly 100 percent by about 2010, the study showed."
Not a good thing . . .
>
Source:
Does Globalization of the Scientific/Engineering Workforce Threaten U.S. Economic Leadership?
Richard B. Freeman
NBER Working Paper No. 11457, July 2005
http://www.nber.org/papers/w11457
U.S. losing lead in science and engineering-study
Reuters/MSNBC.com
Updated: 3:50 p.m. ET July 8, 2005
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8513553/
Saturday, July 23, 2005 | 06:54 AM | Permalink
| Comments (5)
| TrackBack (0)
add to de.li.cious | 
digg this! | 
add to technorati | 
email this post
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
https://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8341c52a953ef00d8344e931553ef
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference U.S. dominance in science and engineering at risk:
Comments
A major issue but it is not the result of the lack of strategic planning or bad policy ... if you really think it is you may want to state why you feel that way ... the real issue is that Americans do not value or want to be scientists .. . short of forced action the government does not have much leverage ... Americans may be more clever than you think ... engineering and science jobs appear to be those leaving our shores most rapidly as brilliant US business executives outsource R&D ... the real problem in my opinion is that US business executives are generally ignorant of science ... we are managed by finance types that have run every majory manufactruing organization into the ground and then handed them over for Asian dominance ... Interestingly they are mainly engineering and science types ... another problem is that boards and US firms value EQ way over IQ ...
Posted by: simon | Jul 23, 2005 11:09:47 AM
The comments to this entry are closed.
