Free Tuition for Math, Science, and Engineering? 766
Gibbs-Duhem writes "Montana Democratic Senator Max Baucus wants free college tuition for US math, science, and engineering majors conditional upon working or teaching in the field for at least four years. From the article: 'The goal, he said in an interview last week, is to better prepare children for school and get more of them into college to make the United States more globally competitive, particularly with countries like China and India. "I think the challenge is fierce, and I think we have a real obligation to go the extra mile and redo things a bit differently, so we leave this place in better shape than we found it," Baucus said.' Do you think this would help with the US's lackluster performance in these fields?"
Can it be retroactive? (Score:4, Insightful)
But seriously, forgiving the debt of recent graduates who are now working in engineering fields will pump a shit-load of money into the economy.
This won't happen. (Score:5, Insightful)
Because anything that makes the least bit of sense never does, in America.
Cynicism aside, this is a much needed proposal for the future of America. We are being left behind in so many markets due to increased global competition, but we are also lagging far behind in quality accessible education (meanwhile, tuition rates continue to rise).
I wish Senator Baucus the best of luck with this. He deserves our support.
Free (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Yes, it would work. (Score:5, Insightful)
Aside from that, don't forget that giving free college education to foreigners is great, considering that you get to choose how long you keep them, and where you let them work.
You save twelve years of fundamental education, and with just four, you get an engineer who will work where you want him to work, and for as long as you wish.
The same thing is done by European countries, they import graduates for example from Latin America, give them a free or a cheap Phd, and they get a cheap doctor in whetever they need, for 3 o 4 years of education. Of course, that money comes back in patent royalties, and expensive technology exports even to the same countries that provided the people.
Increasing the amount of graduates.. (Score:3, Insightful)
So what you'll end up with is a bunch of people with math, science and engineering degrees asking "Do you want fries with that?", which actually isn't bad. At least they're educated.
Re:I think it's good (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Can it be retroactive? (Score:4, Insightful)
So don't raise taxes. Cut other programs (like the war in Iraq) that are sucking money to no good end.
Re:I think it's good (Score:5, Insightful)
As such, I'm a little skeptical of the scheme, but without knowing more of the implementation details I'm afraid I can't critique it in depth...
Re:Free (Score:3, Insightful)
Helping eachother is the human superpower. Having big teeth and claws is the tiger superpower. You don't see many tigers around these days, do you?
No free lunches (Score:3, Insightful)
And the 'Free money!' (of course TANSTAAFL) mentality would totally distort the education establishment even more than the transition of Athletics from a sideline into a major cash cow did.
Consequences of Unemployment (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think so (Score:5, Insightful)
So either the scholarships need to be available to anyone who meets the simple criteria of graduating and working in the field, or they probably won't have the intended effect of increasing the quantity and maintaining or improving the quality of engineering graduates. They'll just end up being a hand-out to the people who don't need handouts.
Honestly, I think the USA's best bet is brain-drain. We need to tear-down a lot of the post 9/11 every-foreign-student-is-a-potential-terrorist rules, and kill H1B, replacing it with a fast-track to citizen-ship visa (I say go so far as to make citizen-ship a requirement after 3 years on this theoretical visa) so that we attract and then keep all the smart people from the rest of the world.
Re:Yes, it would work. (Score:2, Insightful)
An Indian or Chinese will often fulfill their obligation, while sending money back to their home country. When completed, they will usually leave on their own, as their US Salary is a King's Fortune there. An American, likely will not be emigrating to India to enjoy the money they've made here. Since you're rather pedantic, let me point out that I said "usually" and "likely" meaning "The number of Indians/Chinese who take their money and run greatly exceeds the number of US students who get free educations here and move to India or China." and not "It will never happen, ever, so a single instance or a small minority percentage is a valid counter-argument."
~Rebecca
Re:Who pays? (Score:2, Insightful)
This is the typical attitude in this friggin' country. First comes me, me, me, and me again. Everybody for himself. It's all about who pays what and how much does what cost.
Widen your horizon. Open your eyes. Free or at least affordable quality education is a good long-term investment for everybody. It is an important part of the common good. But as long as you just worry about your own pocket book it will never happen.
Re:I think it's good (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I think it's good (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I think it's good (Score:3, Insightful)
>>Advances in science and engineering both create jobs. A couple of coots putting together a transistor in Bell Labs apparently spawned off the international industry that pays CmdrTaco's salary.
A bunch of science majors flipping burgers doesn't lead to any advances in science and engineering.
Nothing will change (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Increasing the amount of graduates.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I think it's good (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I think it's good (Score:4, Insightful)
I know it sounds harsh, but the kids already in school are pretty much a lost cause. This country needs to focus on getting parents to perform the roles they are supposed to - socialize and prepare their children to be productive members of society.
Sitting them in front of the TV to watch the same DVDs over and over again, or to play Grand Theft Auto and shoot the homies doesn't count. That produces the misfits that are coming out of the schools in droves.
If this country wants educated people, we need to approach this problem differently than just offering free degrees in math and science. They are crap degrees now anyway. Kids get passed up the ladder from grade to grade because the teachers don't want to get dinged for flunking a bunch of illiterates and the classes have been marginalized to the lowest common denominator.
The problem right now is with parents. They are too interested in their own little universes to properly care for their kids. They need to know and act like kids are the responsibility they really are. They need to show interest in their kids. Not just plop them in front of anything that will keep them occupied while they watch American Idol or some Monday night footbal game.
Re:And how is he going to ENFORCE it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Right. "National service". Make a GOSPLAN [wikipedia.org] while we are at it...
How one stupid Democratic idea can bring others in tow...
Re:$1000 for Graduating HS on Time (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yes, it would work. (Score:2, Insightful)
Where in the article does it state that foreign students will be receiving a free education? In fact, it states that there will be incentives in place for high school graduates - implying that these are people who, at minimum, have a green card. Secondly, tax incentives? What? Are you talking about outsourcing? Or immigration policy enforcement?
Your vitriol is completely obscuring your point, to the point where I have to ask, what bridge do you live under?
Re:Yes, it would work. (Score:3, Insightful)
Unclear... critics of nativists like to claim that it is opposition to non-white immigrants... but I think that it is an oversimplification. I think that the anger is directed at "Mexicans" and "Indians" but I don't think its racism... I think that it's more about the lack of cultural assimilation. There is anger at growing Spanish language television stations and newspapers, which they see as evidence of them not learning English. I think that the percentage of 1st generation immigrants that never really acclimate is about the same as ever, but with two-three already established wealthy Hispanic immigrants, they noticed the opportunity to market them.
:) The same is true in Texas, California, and the South west.
When my friends complain that people in Miami aren't learning English, I try to politely remind them that Spanish was spoken in La Florida long before English was.
Might as well steal the best and brightest from the rest of the world. There are only 300 million or so Americas. There are 1.2 billion Indians and 1.6 billion Chinese? If you assume that the "brainpower" that powers "intellectual property" driven industries comes from the top 0.1% of people, there are 300,000 Americans, 1.2 million Indians, and 1.6 million Chinese? If we can steal 10% of India and China's "top talent," you're talking another 120,000 Indians and 160,000 Chinese, so another 280,000 to your home grown 300,000?
:) Lumberyards need trees. Intellectual Property industries need brains. Since brains seem to be pretty randomly distributed amongst the 6 or 7 billion people on this planet, I figure we might as well bring them in from elsewhere... I don't work that "foreign oil" is taking "refining space" away from domestic oil. The modern economy is an impressive beast, and it needs all sorts of inputs or it will stall out.
Basically, if you look at demographic charts, distribution of children by education, and assume that education is a rough correlation to brainpower (it's not perfect, but there is probably a decent 60%-75% correlation, and it's the best we have), we're artificially getting lower brain power locally, might as well steal it.
If you need oil, you have to buy it from the Middle East or Venezuela, you can't just complain that American educatators aren't creating oil.
Also, American "science types" tend to excel more in creativity, Asian "science types" more in grinding out and implementing. This has nothing to do with genetic differences, and probably very little to do with culture... In America, we judge people on their economic successes, which tends to reward creativity and risk taking here, so people that take risks tend to do better in America. Most other academic cultures punish failure more than rewarding success. The test-happy European and Asian school systems with series of weed-outs, testing = admissions, and degree=economic success has caused the degree to correlate with risk adverse study-aholics, so that's what you get.
Want to get engineers that will work cheap and grind out the process without much creative thought? You'll find that China and India CRANK them out by the hundreds o
Re:Yes, it would work. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No, it won't help (Score:1, Insightful)
However, your nerds bias against sports really shows. As the social chair of my research group (all foreign students except for me) I can say that we get in to some pretty serious sports activities and interesting discussions over cricket
Re:I think it's good (Score:5, Insightful)
If it increases the pool of qualified science teachers, it is -- and right now, there is a real shortage of math/sci teachers who know science and math, even leaving aside the issue of their teaching skills.
Sorry- bad idea (Score:2, Insightful)
First off, the engineering JOBS are going to China, India, etc. because the engineers there do a competitive job at a lower price. This won't change just because we graduate more Engineers (although it will drive the price for domestic Engineers down due to increase in supply). While there will always be a requirement for some local manufacturing and research, most of it will re-locate where it can be done most efficiently. In the near future this probably means China, India, Vietnam and the Philippines.
The government strongly subsidizes the teaching profession, and look what happened; we got lots of under-qualified teachers who are little more than prison wardens. (Parents should sue the Public School System for fraud.) http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/ [johntaylorgatto.com]
In Soviet Russia the government tells you what to learn.
Re:Where's the motivation? (Score:4, Insightful)
Passion, sir. Passion.
Quality of Teachers (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I think it's good (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I think it's good (Score:3, Insightful)
Right now, if you have a decent degree in maths or a hard science and you cannot get a good job, then either you are being lazy or you have some kind of major personality problem.
Re:I think it's good (Score:3, Insightful)
To me, this is a somewhat self-serving drive by business executives who are tired of paying engineers salaries which are almost as much as half their own.
Re:I think it's good (Score:4, Insightful)
_That_ scares politicians.
Re:No, it won't help (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not true - because it presupposed a mythical golden era where American kids didn't prefer other [era and socioeconomic level appropriate] activities and fields of study to math, science, and engineering.
There never was such a golden age.
Any companies driven by passion? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I think it's good (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't know where you're from, but my family pays roughly $4500 a year just for school taxes alone.
Re: I think it's unconstitutional (Score:3, Insightful)
"What gives you the idea the job market has 'no need' for those people?"
What gives me that idea are the hundreds of thousands of bright, well-educated science and tech workers who are under-employed and unemployed.
It would be far better to implement tax breaks to employers who invest in bringing in US citizens for interviews, in relocating US citizens, and in education and training US citizens... and to adjust such tax breaks that already exist in line with the inflation in costs of travel, education and training in the last 20 years.
They're doing far too little in the way of background investigations of visa applicants. Instead of these stupid instant data-base look-ups, they should be interviewing every applicant, their employers, co-workers, teachers, professors, family members, landlords, class-mates, etc. In a time when it can take a US citizen with ancestors going back to the 1700s 4 years to get a passport, all this whining from visa applicants because the current rubber-stamp process takes a few months is outrageous.
Re:But have they considered (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I think it's good (Score:5, Insightful)
You ever thought that the job the Physics PhD wants is a teaching job?
--Mike
Re:I think it's good (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I think it's good (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not really sure if your post is implying that a PhD might teach poorly, but I had a PhD in physics as my high school physics teacher. I had never had another person with a PhD as a teacher before, and he was by *far* the best teacher I ever had. Pretty much exclusively due to his existence, I am now a fairly well published researcher getting my PhD in Materials Engineering from MIT. Granted, he's special in a lot of ways because he was willing to work as a teacher in an inner city high school despite being somewhat overqualified by our typical standards. However, I suspect that anyone who is able to get a PhD understands and is excited enough about their field so much that if they try at all they'll be able to generate many future PhDs who would never have thought about doing something more difficult than IT. Being Weird to an employer definitely does not imply that you are a bad physicist!
I plan to teach someday too, but currently I'm enjoying the heck out of myself doing actual research, so it'll probably be a few decades. =)
Re:I think it's good (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I think it's good (Score:5, Insightful)
part of me wonders how effective a PhD would be at teaching high school students. Honestly, if you have a degree in Physics and can't find a job, I'm not sure I want you in front of students as you must be a horribly weird person.
What a small-minded comment. Not everyone is just after the money, you know. Most people who go to the trouble of getting a PhD have a passion for the subject, and often that is accompanied by a passion for sharing the subject through teaching. Have you ever considered that the person wanted to teach high school students, rather than viewing it as some sort of fallback job?
Re:I think it's good (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that before you make that claim, you have to first demonstrate that people who would otherwise pursue higher education are not pursuing it because they cannot obtain financial aid or student loans. I don't believe that is true, considering the ease with which an idiot such as myself managed to obtain piles of student loans.
The worst thing this idea will do is create a surplus of jobs in the market, with the surplus composed of people for whom engineering and science would NOT have been their first choice if it hadn't been for the dangling carrot. These people will be unemployable not because they lack capability, but because they were conned into a career that they do not love.
It's hard enough to find your passions when you're at such a young age. We shouldn't be peddling confusion in the form of financial incentives.
Re:Yes, it would work. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I think it's good (Score:3, Insightful)
I take issue with this claim based on numerous and diverse observations, three of which I'll post today (then proceed to the coffee pot)
- the presentations I've seen in my research group meetings (grad students, and I'll point out that grad students have more education than those with a BS, damaging the notion that more education in science = more ability to teach it)
- the complaints of TA quality, and that complaining about courses taught by new faculty is nearly a pastime amongst undergraduates)
- observing the transitional difficulties of grad students involved in the NSF GK-12 program (where grad students in STEM fields work alongside teachers to increase the teachers content knowledge - and I'll point out that unlike the previous examples, here the grad students have been given some education in how to teach, along with having a teacher working alongside them to swap expertise with)
The first year a teacher works with a curriculum, it's often all they can do to keep up; from experience, thorough knowledge of the subject mitigates this to some degree, but there's still lots of the 'they're not getting this' moments, and lacking experience, the science-BS teacher is still unable to 'monitor and adjust'. In year 2, the teacher typically overcompensates trying to correct their errors from the previous year, and while the course goes more smoothly, it's not what you would define as 'good' yet. In the third and fourth years, the teacher is comfortable with the material, and things start to go well (if you have someone skilled in the act of teaching and knowledgeable in the science content) - BUT, we're now at the end of this science-BS teacher's term. Time to start over again.
I certainly like the idea of a obtaining a debt-free BS and a guaranteed job after college, but without some form of training in the pedagogy of teaching (and a lengthier contract) I seriously doubt we'd see any gain in science learning among the students. It's thinking in the right direction, but the unchallenged assumption that 'if they know science, they can teach it' is toxic in this plan.
What drugs are you taking? (Score:1, Insightful)
Former IT guru, up to 100k/yr within 5 years of graduating. Learned more about mainframes than any of the offshore people, and good enough at design and implementation to lead a group.
Engineers are paid highly right after graduation, and even more if/when they recieve their P.E. license.
You sir, have NO idea what you're talking about. Those are well paid professions which is the reason the people in those fields do not become teachers. What you are obviously attempting to achieve is ludicrous salaries, which, BTW, a large majority of high-level company executives have B.S. in Science and Engineering. You can do ANYTHING with a B.S. in Engineering.
Re:I think it's good (Score:4, Insightful)
Ever look into games theory?
Re:I think it's good (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I think it's good (Score:3, Insightful)
Cuba?
To be fair, I don't know of any free country full of highly educated people that are in poverty.
Re:Any companies driven by passion? (Score:3, Insightful)
Most of the small ones. Go join or start one.
If you insist on remaining at a large company, please follow this handy instructional brochure [drasolt.com]. I think a lot of large companies are negatively productive, so following that plan will help us all.