State of US Science Report Shows Disturbing Trends

coondoggie writes to mention that the National Science Board is concerned about certain indicators in the science and engineering fields for the United States. "For example, US schools continue to lag behind internationally in science and math education. On the other hand, the US is the largest, single, R&D-performing nation in the world pumping some $340 billion into future-related technologies. The US also leads the world in patent development."

The engineering job meme hurts

[Besna]

When did we all conspire to repeat the meme that the engineering job market sucks? It goes beyond the usual issue--outsourcing(linked almost every time to India). There's the annoyance with people who haven't been putting together and programming computers since age 5. There's the frightening realization in the programming world that anyone can learn it anywhere. You don't grow your industry by discouraging newcomers. People who work with computers will expand the market. As we get more people into atheism and computing, the demand for those same people grows. Check out monster.com's tech board. Pessimists abounds there.

whoever has the money attracts the brains

[circletimessquare]

today, the usa is where you go when you want to turn your ideas into personal financial rewards. however, the usa can't rely upon this fact for long, as china will become the top dog soon in the $$$ department. and so the usa must indeed focus on nurturing it's own brainpower ...and watch them move to shanghai

Comparisons with the rest of the world

[pubjames]

I think it is time to stop comparisons like "the US is the largest, single, R&D-performing nation in the world pumping some $340 billion into future-related technologies", because they give a distorted view of reality. The main reason the USA comes out on top so often with this kind of statistic is simply because it is sound a large populous county.

For example, the USA wins the most gold medals at the Olympics. But does that mean the USA is the best at sports? No. If we look at gold medals per capita, then Australia easily beats the USA. If we add countries together so we have equivalent populations, then we get another picture - Europe would often beat the USA if it entered as a single country, for instance.

If you looked at R&D per capita, or R&D as a % of GDP, or any other more reasonable metric that just comparing countries of different sizes, I expect you would get a very different picture than the summary suggests.

Of course, half the graduate students are foreign

[gelfling]

Half the graduate students in hard sciences in the US are foreign. They're the ones who shine. I don't mean second generation I mean foreign students on academic visas. If they stay in the US, yaay for us. If not? Oh well, the US is indigenously now a nation of retards.

Cut education funding

[jav1231]

My position has always been cutting funding to education. The problem is we have continually increased spending and gotten less in return. I recall a couple of years back when a high school senior in a tiny West Virginia town blew the national curve. I imagine his school district placed higher priority on learning and less on social engineering curriculums. Teachers need to make more, administrative services at school need to be cut. And these social education programs need to be shit canned. Spending can be cut, moneys prioritized (read, teachers!) and we can finally focus on what matters!

Re:"It's so hard!"

[futuresheep]

It is dumbed down. I highly recommend that everyone takes a hard look at the math curriculum in your areas schools. Too many now are using programs like TERC and Everyday Mathematics that stress self discovery, group work, calculator usage, and a spiraling learning path instead of mastering a topic and moving forward. They deemphasize standard algorithms, multiplication table memorization, and long division. Thank god there are states like Texas and California that have recently found these programs to be deficient, and are no longer using them in their schools.

Links to information and curriculum reviews:

http://www.wheresthemath.com/ [wheresthemath.com]
http://www.wheresthemath.com/blog/curriculum-reviews/ [wheresthemath.com]
http://www.nychold.com/ [nychold.com]
http://www.weaponsofmathdestruction.com/ [weaponsofm...uction.com]
http://128.208.34.90/ramgen/archive/weekday/conv20070313.rm [128.208.34.90]

Re:anti-intellectualism

[nerdonamotorcycle]

Yup, those are all good examples of the sort of anti-intellectualism I'm talking about. It goes way back, too. America's cultural heroes, at least as far as practical invention goes, are people like Henry Ford and Thomas Edison who lacked formal education and who succeeded by doing things contrary to the conventional and accepted wisdom of people who had formal education.

Re:Possible paradox explaination QWZX

[upside]

I don't need to bash the US, because the US is still it's own biggest critic. This is the sign of a free country. The critics haven't been totally marginalized yet.

Having said that, as an European I can't help wonder why American culture is so obsessed with "freedom" and "liberty". I've yet to see what you've got we don't. Where is this obsession coming from? Perhaps you can help me here.

But since you asked, I do have more freedoms, more rights and more privacy. Let me name certain areas. My employer cannot read my email or monitor my Internet usage. I'm free to join my family after 8 hours of work, and cannot be penalized if I refuse to do overtime. Meanwhile Americans have corporations employing spies [npr.org] and using underhanded tactics to monitor their employees. Sure many Americans are "free" to walk out after 8 hours but they'd get fired for it.

Please write me off now for being a jealous penniless pinko weeny with an inferiority complex.

Re:"It's so hard!"

[Omestes]

Actually never underestimate dropping out, getting a GED, and hitting up 2 years of community college instead. I actually found myself giving this advice to kids lately. Smart kids are bored by our schools, therefore we medicate them, right now the only solution is to escape, and go find your own level.

A GED wipes your high school GPA from the books. Sure you might not be able to hit Harvard or MIT, but most schools really don't care. And really our community colleges are a godsend, they don't deserve the bad rep they get. Some of the best professors I've ever had we are comm. college, they just got sick of the university milieu and politics as they got older, but still loved teaching. Granted, one should never really go for an AA if one wants to actually go to a University, its a waste of credits.

Leaving high school (junior year) my GPA was... It was low. Leaving comm. college, I had a 4.0. Had no prob finding a non-prestige university to accept me.

If you want a prestige university, you have ulterior motives, and not just academic advancement.

Re:Atheists are in demand?

[Omestes]

More than half the people in my Philosophy department were Catholics getting the Phi degree because it looks good when doing Seminary. There was a nice little war between us "free thinkers", and them.

The point is Philosophy != Atheism.

Re:it's only a paradox if you're an idiot

[enjo13]

Spot on.

At the end of the day the United States is a tremendous meritocracy. On Slashdot (and it seems everywhere these days), self-deprecation is the order of the day. Yet, the very free-wheeling aspect of American culture that tends to suppress 'academic achievement' is the same force that keeps us at the fore of innovation.

I've made a very nice career for myself, without a college degree. I've been judged more or less solely on my merits, and in that light I've been able to advance throughout my career. In a more structured society, that's not always the case. For example, my wife is an academic (PhD). She is judged not so much on her merits.. but rather on where she went to school, who she studied with, and a whole host of other factors that have very little to do with her proficiency in her chosen path of study. To the point that someone who went to a certain 'tier' of school has no hope of being published in the top journals, no matter how profound their research.

I've been fortunate to live and do business in several other countries. My experience is that many of those places look much more like my wifes Academic world, than the merit-based world that I've been in. They all have been wonderful places, and in many aspects better places than in the U.S. But the reward systems have always fallen short of what I have experienced here in the U.S. Some places values age above all else, some value paper-achievement (test scores, degrees, etc..), but very few places value results the way we do. For better or worse, that leads to the highly innovative and resilient economy we have.

Re:Sooo...

[damburger]

Taxation and economic policy is only a small part of it. A bigger part is that the U.S. still has the best research infrastructure in the world, and if you want to do state-of-the-art science, it is still where it's at. If you're in a scientific career, that's far more important to you than how much you'll pay in taxes.

Three words for you:

Large.

Hadron.

Collider.

Europe's latest and greatest particle accelerator will produce collisions with 14 times as much energy as the largest one in the US when it comes online in May. The US abandoned its plans to create a new collider, presumably when the government discovered you can't fry developing nations with that kind of particle beam. So, no, the US is not at the cutting edge in physics.

Nothing kills a society faster than broken error correction mechanisms. If you continue to believe you are superior to the rest of the world in science, you will continue to slip behind in science.