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Although I disagree with some of the author’s presumptions he does make
good notes here about globalization’s interactive features and raises again the
question of value of work rather than compensation. KwC It's
Not a Science Gap (Yet) By Robert J. Samuelson,
Washington Post, Wednesday, August 10, 2005; A17 As late as 1975, the
United States graduated more engineering and scientific PhDs than Europe and
more than three times as many as all of Asia, reports Harvard University
economist Richard Freeman in a recent paper. No more. The European Union now
graduates about 50 percent more, and Asia is slightly ahead of us. By Freeman's
estimates, China has reached almost half the U.S. total and will easily
overtake us by 2010. Among engineers with bachelor's degrees, the gaps are
already huge. In 2001 China graduated 220,000 engineers, against about 60,000
for the United States, the National Science Foundation reports. Freeman also documents
a second worrisome reality: U.S. scientists and engineers aren't well paid,
considering their skills and -- especially for PhDs -- the required time for a
degree. This means, Freeman says, that "the job market . . . is too weak
to attract increasing numbers of U.S. students." Consider some pay
comparisons. From 1990 to 2000, average incomes for engineering PhDs increased
from $65,000 to $91,000, up 41 percent; PhDs in natural sciences (physics,
chemistry) rose from $56,000 to $73,000, up 30 percent. Meanwhile, average
doctors' incomes increased from $99,000 to $156,000, up 58 percent; and lawyers
went from $77,000 to $115,000, up 49 percent. The true situation may
be worse. Next to other elites, scientific and engineering PhDs fare poorly.
Look at the 891 MBA recipients of the Harvard Business School's class of 2005.
At an average age of 27, they command a median starting salary of $100,000.
It's true that the two-year cost of a Harvard MBA is steep ($120,000 and up),
and four-fifths of the students are left with debts averaging $81,000. But
these new Harvard MBAs also got huge one-time bonuses; the median was $43,000.
As for scientific and engineering PhDs, they typically require seven to eight
years to finish their degrees, notes Freeman. All in all, the
outlook seems bleak. There's already a whiff of media hysteria. After examining
these and other trends, Fortune magazine recently headlined a cover story:
"AMERICA: THE 97-LB WEAKLING? . . . We're Losing Our Competitive
Edge." Not so fast. The grim prognosis wrongly presumes that
another country's gain must be our loss. Hardly. If a Swedish or Japanese company cured cancer or
invented a super-efficient car, Americans would benefit quickly -- just as
Swedes and Japanese have benefited from technologies first developed in the
United States. If Microsoft's research center in Beijing (to take one oft-cited
example) develops stunning new software, the advances will soon be incorporated
in Microsoft products worldwide. It's also forgotten
that the United
States still dominates global research and development. In 1981 American companies and
laboratories accounted for 45 percent of research and development among the
members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which are
generally the world's richest nations. In 2000 the U.S. share was still 44
percent -- despite the increase in other countries' scientists and engineers
and a decline in U.S. defense research and development. We must be doing
something right. Our decentralized research and development system (corporate,
government and university laboratories, venture capitalists, and freelance
inventors) excels at moving ideas to market and constantly reinvents itself.
Here's an example: In 1980 Congress passed the Bayh-Dole Act to encourage
universities to license discoveries to companies. It worked. In 2002
universities earned $915 million from licensing fees, almost four times the
1993 level, according to economists Richard Jensen and Celestine Chukumba of
Notre Dame. Not every new Chinese
or Indian engineer and scientist threatens an American, through outsourcing or
some other channel. Actually, most don't. As countries become richer, they need
more scientists and engineers simply to make their societies work: to design
bridges and buildings, to maintain communications systems, and to test
products. This is a natural process. The U.S. share of the world's technology
workforce has declined for decades and will continue to do so. By itself, this
is not dangerous. The dangers arise when
other countries use new technologies to erode America's advantage in weaponry;
that obviously is an issue with China. We are also threatened if other
countries skew their economic policies to attract an unnatural share of
strategic industries -- electronics, biotechnology and aerospace, among others.
That is an issue with China, some other Asian countries and Europe (Airbus). What's crucial is
sustaining our technological vitality. Despite the pay, America seems to have
ample scientists and engineers. But half or more of new scientific and
engineering PhDs are immigrants; we need to remain open to foreign-born talent.
We need to maintain spectacular rewards for companies that succeed in
commercializing new products and technologies. The prospect of a big payoff
compensates for mediocre pay and fuels ambition. Finally, we must scour the
world for good ideas. No country ever had a monopoly on new knowledge, and none
ever will. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/09/AR2005080901164.html |
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