NSF Reports No Geek Shortage 233
Baldrson writes "The NSF's report titled 'Graduate Enrollment in Science and Engineering Programs Up in 2003, But Declines for First-Time Foreign Students' (a pdf of the report released for the first time last month) is now available online. In an analysis of the report, Edwin S. Rubenstein of ESR Research states of these latest figures: '4.2 percent of science and engineering PhDs work outside their field of training, chiefly for financial reasons. This further weakens corporate America's claim of a shortage of high-tech workers.'" Interesting to see how things have changed since then.
(correction) (Score:2, Informative)
I meant fresh graduates, just out of college. (And I think the grammer is messed up in that sentence, but I am too lazy to fix it.)
Re:Not a shortage of high-tech workers... (Score:4, Informative)
On a side note, affirmative action is a bunch of BS and the way the powers that be train future H1-B labor. The truth is that in many schools, The over representation is actually from foreign students, particularly from Asia, strong H1-B candidates.
I was looking at some data for U of Washington, the place where they had the infamous "affirmative action bake sale." To make class populations representative of the population of the state, they would need to increase black students from 2.7% to 3.5%, hispanics by something similar, increase white students from 50% to 70%, and drop Asians (huge numbers from outside the US) from 30% to something like 6%.
Extremely Biased Site? (Score:3, Informative)
For one thing, this tells alot about the poster of article.
Re:If Industry needs us it should pay us (Score:2, Informative)
Finally, the truth (Score:4, Informative)
I hate to seem pessimistic, but this article is long overdue, and at the same time, disturbing. We are flooding the market with ambitious bright individuals with promises of great prestige and fortune.
I really think they need to make a "Sims:The rise to professor" game depicting the rather long and gruesome journey to professorship. It would have to be realistic, so on average, you should only be winning, say, 5% of the time. Most people don't realize how different the actual and perceived opinion of prospective graduate students is from the actual reality of academia. I'm actually quite surprised that only 4-5% of Ph.D's are working outside their field (mind you, this figure doesn't include people that wanted to be in academia but couldn't get a position and ended up in industry). Sadly, I know a few that are working in simple jobs as security guards.
(And before someone jumps down my throat saying that I am bitter because I had a bad experience--I actually haven't. However, I know many more that have, and while I can't empathize (as much) with them, I certainly sympathize).
Garbage anylsis (Score:3, Informative)
Furthermore, the only calls for "high tech workers" I've seen is for computer programmers. And hey, what do you know
The poster also neglected to consider that a "shortage" merely means that there are fewer people available than positions are open -- ie: they failed to compare enrollement to changes in the number of available conditions. If enrollment had increased by 10%, but open positions increased by 30%, then there would still be a shortage.
Additionally, the pool of available workers IN the United States INCLUDES "foreign students." They've already got green cards, and don't count against the H1B quota cap.
Finally, the fact that we've got fewer foreign students reflects somewhat on the quality of education available here relative to wherever it is they're coming from -- meaning that workers here are losing some of their competative advantage relative to people educated in foreign countries.
The only thing this document does is counter the point the original poster is trying to make.
Re:Not a shortage of high-tech workers... (Score:3, Informative)
Errors with your points (my wife works in admin for school district):
1 - at least one PHB (or PhD) - First, not different every year. Only when change dictated by state. One PHB? You do realize that the principals almost always PhD's in education, not MBA's?
2 - endless mandatory meetings - No. Mandatory meetings are usually one per quarter, and they get the day and are paid travel. Every day is a blatent lie, plus it's not held in the county seat.
3 - PHBs telling
4 - Time at the job is valued more - That's called tenure. It's the largest problem with ridding the system of bad teachers. When was the last time you knew a tech with tenure?
5 - can't move up to another position - A great display of your ignorance about the school systems. The organization is thus: Principal and staff followed immediately by a flat level of all the teachers (not University system). No team leaders, no senior programmers, no analysts; none of the hierarchy you see in many businesses.
Re:Not a shortage of high-tech workers... (Score:5, Informative)
And isn't that the truth. I was a programmer and did DBA work for three years, until I switched to teaching. Because when IBM cuts 500 mainly tech jobs in your state, and you get laid off, and all your friends with more certs and coursework in programming than you get laid off, teaching starts to look damn good.
Once I get my lvl 2 teaching certification, it's pretty much as good as tenure. I have to majorly screw up to get fired. Like abuse a kid, or repeatedly come in under the influence. Compare that with my last tech job, when I got laid off RANDOMLY as part of a 5% reduction in salary/benefits costs. That's right - no performance based review, no cost/benefit analysis, a random (less managers and friends of the president) layoff. I had been there almost 3 years, but they laid off another worker who had been there LESS THAN TWO WEEKS.
As we say at school, this would be the best job in the world if it wasn't for the kids and the administration. Regardless of my bitching about school, I sure as hell don't miss my time in IT. And I have summers off to program and screw around back in IT land, while getting paid the whole time.
Teachers (Score:3, Informative)
1 - The principals are usually either lowly teachers (at most Masters-level graduates) or other random people that the school board happens to like. These people generally have no management skills or experience. Some of them don't know how to deal with the politics that can be avoided by lowly teachers. Some of them let the promotion go to their head and micromanage everything (after all they are the principal so they must know how things work better than those that didn't). For the type of job principals do, MBA's would probably be better able to deal with the administrative and political aspects and would be less likely to micromanage.
2 - The mandatory meetings (around here) are usually weekly to biweekly affairs that can last 3 or 4 hours. The non-hierarchal structure of school organization means that everything that needs to be discussed will be discussed during these meetings, whether its relevant to all members or not. This means that most of this meeting is completely irrelevant to the individuals present.
3 - The principal as more experience at what? Teaching 3rd graders math? 7th Grader's Spanish? Blind children colors? The fact is the principal is not all-knowing and probably only knows a bit about the specific subjects and grades that they taught. That they generally wave this around as generic years that are applicable from Algebra to Special Education only makes it worse.
4 - Tenure is meant to save good teachers from the whims of the current principal and school board. It accomplishes this job pretty well, but those untenured few who happen to come up for tenure at the wrong time are more likely to get fired than tenured (more likely than not for political reasons). And of course it also may keep bad teachers around too, but that was just a side effect...
5 - Sometimes there are team leaders. In primary schools, where every subject is generally taught by a single teacher, teachers are divided into grades and a leader is chosen. In schools where teachers only teach one subject, they are divided into departments and a leader is chosen. Of course being a team leader doesn't mean you get paid more, it only means you carry more responsibilities. Of course even though they're divided into teams, they all have to go to mandatory meetings to discuss everything...