While I agree that the world is changing in some remarkable ways from
the world I grew up in, I have reservations about the supposed
indicators of slowdown or imminent doom in articles of this Left
Behind genre.
On 11/18/05, Udhay Shankar N <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Consider the following data points, from a report
> issued last month by the National Academies
> Committee on Science, Engineering and Public Policy.
>
> • More than 600,000 engineers graduated from
> colleges and universities in China last year. For
> India, the number was 350,000. In the United States, it was a whopping 70,000.
China and India have been producing more engineering graduates for
quite a while now. How come this was not an issue in the 90's? I posit
that the issue is not the number of engineering graduates produced by
these countries but the productive carees awaiting them. A decade ago
engineering graduates, especially ones from disciplines like
Mechanical Engineering, Civil Engineering, etc. found it very
difficult to find jobs on graduation. Third-year (Junior-year)
students in these disciplines get recruited through campus interviews
these days.
> • In a test of 21 countries for general knowledge
> in math and sciences, 12th graders in this
> country performed below the international average.
Let us face it. This "we are bad in Math and Science" scare goes back
to the 50's and 60's. In fact, the US dramatically reduced its then
racist immigration restrictions in the 60's after JFK announced his
goal to put a(n American) man on the moon. Highly qualified Indian and
Chinese scientists and engineers were allowed to immigrate to the US
for the first time. Even after these immigrants started sending their
spelling-bee and nat-geo-bee children to school, the US has lagged
behind in international school-level competitions.
Thaths
--
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even
remotely true!" -- Homer J. Simpson
