Read the opinion piece by Robert J. Samuelson in the Washington Post, Wednesday, February 22, 2006.
Samuelson notes that U.S. universities graduate eleven percent of science and engineering undergraduate degrees, and there has been a significant increase in the number of such degrees since 1990. Graduate S&E enrollments have increased 22 percent since their low in 1998. He cites Duke University results suggesting that the numbers of s&E graduates in China and India have been exagerated. He takes comfort in the United States being able to attract S&E personnel from abroad.
He points out, reasonably, that if we want more S&E trained people, we ought to offer them more money. He sees reason to believe that S&E salaries are indeed increasing relative to other professions. (I had a conversation the other day with an engineering executive who pointed out that many high level executives in corporate America are engineering graduates, but their salaries are not included in the calculations because -- although their engineering education was important to their career development -- they are no longer doing engineering work.)
Some excerpts:
"Ever since Sputnik (1957) and the "missile gap" (1960), we've been warned that we're being overtaken technologically. Up to a point, that's inevitable. As countries modernize, they need more scientists and engineers. Technological competence expands."
"But a country's capacity for scientific and commercial innovation does not correlate directly with its number of scientists and engineers. Hard work, imagination and business practices also matter. Here the United States has some significant strengths: widespread ambition; an openness to new ideas, especially from the young; an acceptance of skilled immigrants; strong connections between universities and businesses; and well-funded venture capitalists."
"In some ways the worldwide "knowledge economy" is unthreatening. Good ideas and products spread quickly. Knowledge is stateless. Two Americans invented the computer chip; now it's used everywhere. Still, we need to maintain a world-class science and engineering workforce. We want to keep high-value economic activity here, and we need to ensure superior military technology.
"Only about 4 percent of the U.S. workforce consists of scientists and engineers."
Let me make a modest proposal.
The United States faces a significant demographic shift now that the "baby boom" generation is about to reach retirement age. Unless we do something about it, the demographic shift is going to cause big problems paying pensions and health care costs. We have a huge country, with lots of areas of low population density. So lets encourage immigration! Lets attract lots of S&E trained people, and lots of people with the other skills and with the education needed to run a knowledge economy. Lets create the economic conditions so that these folk can continue to innovate and increase productivity. Lets offer them the fruits of their labor, but let them pay for the costs of public services to our aging population.
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
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5 comments:
That would be great if those immigrants came from countries where there is a surplus of science talent. Where I live in Colombia, the brain drain is particularly difficult. Not only is the best talent pulled for economic reasons, they are often pushed out of here because of violence, instability, the war, etc.
Yes, Glenn, I think that's exactly the problem. Developing countries complain about brain drain, Europe complains about brain drain, states in the mid-west of the US complain about brain drain... I think in the end, there's only a few ínnovative hubs and metropolitan areas that will experience brain gain. Places like California, Massachusetts, Singapore, etc...and London, Paris, New York, etc...
Europe and Australia have similar thoughts about encouraging immigration of highly skilled workers. Short term brain drain & brain circulation can be good things (people can gain important work experience), but the US, EU and Australia should not engage in a race for getting the best brains without thinking about the consequenbces for sending countries.
Glen:
My son was born when we lived in Colombia, and I am attached to the country. The problems it is having are very sad. I think Colombia's problem is one of "brain push" rather than "brain drain". Most people who recognize a choice as to where to live, will choose a place whete they and their families can be safe and live productive, happy lives. Colombia with it violence and drug industry pushes people away.
Eric:
Several of my cousins were part of the immigrant population that Australia attracted. As far as I can tell, they and their families all feel that they made the right choices, and that their lives are better because they became Aussies decades ago.
Anyone who reads this blog should know that I do care what happens to developing nations. I believe that they require the services of exactly the kinds of people who are most employable abroad. I also recognize that people who emigrate (as my parents, my cousins, and many others in my family have done) give up things that they can never recapture. Indeed, I often admire the people who sacrifice themselves and their families to contribute to the development of their countries.
I was only partly serious when I suggested that the United States ought to develop an immigration policy to attract workers to replace our aging workforce. Doing so would open a Pandora's Box of domestic labor problems. But doing so would probably be to our net long term economic advantage. That also goes for other developed nations that will be going through similar demographic transformations.
Poor countries better figure out that rich countries are often going to adopt immigration policies based on their pocket books rather than on their idealism!
Countries that feel they need a strong intelligencia better figure out how to educate, attract and keep those people.
The United States has benefited from being the center of much of science and engineering innovation from 1940-2000. We continue to do so but the relative postition in the world has been declining and seems likely to continue (mainly through other countries doing better). That process will highlight how much of the USA advantage was due to attracting many from around the globe to work in the USA. That will continue, but my guess is in the next 50 years from now there will be many more foreign science and engineers working in Inida, Europe, China... than have in the last 50 years.
I think some are shifting he focus to explain the USA in not really behind (no "gap" between us and the leaders). I think it would be good to get consensus on whether the USA's relative position is declining? And, if so, should the USA take any additional action to slow the decline (or reverse it if people believe that would be a reasonable goal) or not.
It seems to me the USA was clearly the leading science and technology country in 1950-2000. Today I am not sure it is obvious but it seems at least reasonable to argue it is. But it seems that postion is going to be under serious challenge from Europe, China, India and others.
More of my thoughts and .
In response to curiouscat, if you recall, the United States was definitely not a world power in science at the beginning of the 20th century. (The building of the Panama Canal, after the French had failed, suggests the US was pretty good at engineering even then.) In the 1930's, U.S. scientists in many fields still went to Europe for graduate or post-graduate education when looking for the best.
I think the big change came with World War II. The U.S. industrialized science in support for the war effort. After the war, with the European and Japanese economies and infrastructures in tatters, the relatively intact United States was by far the world's predominant economy. Moreover, it was able to import a lot of scientific, engineering, and technological expertise from Europe.
I suspect that the U.S. science, technology and innovation (STI) dominance at mid century was the anomaly, one that was undone in the second half of the 20th century.
In a longer time frame, I suspect that the STI leadership of the West was an anomaly that lasted for centuries, and that balance may be restored in the 21st century with the reemergence of China and India as global economic powers, and indeed further growth for all of Asia. (That leaves Africa which does not seem to be emerging from its STI dark ages, and the Islamic lands which also seem to be lagging the West – subjects for later discussion.)
I was just looking at UNESCO’s 2005 World Science Report, and North America (including, of course, Canada and Mexico) is estimated to have nearly a quarter of the world’s researchers, to spend 37 percent of global expenditures on research and development, and to publish 36 percent of STI papers (down from 44 percent as late as 1991).
With five percent of the World’s population, and populations in other regions growing faster than that of the United States, I am not sure it makes any historical sense for the United States to seek to lead the world in all aspects of STI permanently. Indeed, I would like to imagine a world in which education was universal, and the worst aspects of poverty were completely eliminated. In such a world, I would not expect the United States to carry out so disproportionate a share of R&D, not to publish so disproportionate a share of the scientific output.
As many have pointed out, knowledge is not lost by being shared. As more people join a global knowledge economy, the rate of knowledge generation should be increased globally, and all should benefit.
So curiouscat, I think the issue is whether the United States is doing enough in STI to sustain an acceptable rate of economic progress, to sustain an acceptable rate of social progress (supporting, for example, improvements in health that we seek that don’t show fully in the economic balance), and to contribute our share to the world stock of knowledge.
Unfortunately, it is not clear that we are doing enough to accomplish those purposes.
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