State of US Science Report Shows Disturbing Trends 574
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."
Sooo... (Score:2, Insightful)
Patenting? (Score:5, Funny)
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Why are people surprised noone wants to go into engineering in the US: stagnant wages, offshoring, age discrimination, long hours. It's a shitty way to waste $100k on an education.
Re:Sooo... (Score:4, Insightful)
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This sort of shows the idea of the decreasing payout.
Re:Sooo... It's called... (Score:5, Informative)
Hell, the US is GOOD at out-sourcing, even outsourcing education. Sure, foreign students from abroad attend some of the ivy league (lower-casing intentional) schools here, but many attend in Europe, too. Some even attend here, then SPEND their time in Europe after having had enough of the US, but are still in school and have too many friends here.
Plus, there are cultural reasons (corruption, leadership by cronies and elders who might not see the logic in empowering their local populations), or other reasons in regions where there's just not enough money and will to outright build new, world-class, competitive, lasting and door-knocking throngs of students. So, they ship them out or allow them to be recruited by US colleges needing cash infusion.
Do you KNOW how many Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Indian students HERE in the US come from families that put them up in $1,000/month apartments, send them to renowned as well as dubious schools or "academies" that cost $80,000 to $200,000 for maybe 3 or 4 years? LOTS. It's a churning industry, and they keep getting fuller and fuller. Recruiting or otherwise attracting well-off kids whose parents want the brightest futures for their kids. Not saying ALL Asian families are that way, though.
Re:Sooo... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sooo... (Score:5, Insightful)
Flip through any professional scientific or engineering journal, and look at the names of the authors of the papers. You may see U.S. institutional affiliations, but the names will be from all over: Europe, China, India, etc. The U.S. benefits greatly from this influx of talent and brainpower, so let's not keep screwing it up by needlessly harrassing foreign scientists at the border just because we can. The de facto War on Science and Reason being waged by certain political elements in this country doesn't help much, either.
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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 c
Re:Sooo... (Score:5, Informative)
Everyone is talking about college graduates. If these belly-achers stopped and read the actual article, they would find their complaining was ill-founded except for the natural bitterness that comes with old age. None of the key indicators suggested that the abilities of college graduates have declined. The indicators suggest that the numbers of such graduates are not keeping pace with the rest of the world.
This knee-jerk bashing of new college graduates and the irresponsible moderators who give these idiots a voice need to be stopped. Such attitudes and bias are likely part of the force that drives the US's decline in science. Get over your old age! I have.
Re:Sooo... (Score:4, Informative)
Hardly. This is what's known as "economic freedom". The US is currently ranked #5, right behind Hong Kong, Singapore, Ireland, and Australia. Now, number five in the world isn't bad, but it's clearly not number one either.
Re:Sooo... (Score:4, Insightful)
If parents worked lived within or slightly below their means, they could do as my folks did, and SAVE money for my college, so that I didn't have to take out loans and finish school with debt. If parents saved, and the kids saved (I was working soon as I was 16), and if you make good grades, between grants and scholastic awards and savings from all parties, you can go without a loan. You may not hit Harvard, but, I'd say most state public Universities will give you a great education too!
Re:Sooo... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hardly, as many of the world's brightest researchers end up in the US.
A more interesting question is how much all that patent business is increasing the costs of R&D in the US and the West in general. Because one of the unlucky consequences of patents is that once a wheel is patented, it has to be reinvented 20 times, carefully treading around the patent each time.
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Nothing drives costs like lawyers.
Re:Sooo... (Score:5, Insightful)
The engineering job meme hurts (Score:3, Interesting)
Atheists are in demand? (Score:5, Funny)
There's a demand for atheists? I knew there had to be jobs for philosophy majors somewhere.
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The point is Philosophy != Atheism.
Patenting Processes (Score:2)
Re:Patenting Processes (Score:4, Funny)
Patent Devlopment? (Score:5, Insightful)
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To bad with the schools thought, I got the impression somewhere that us schools didn't learned as much "basics" but more advanced stuff because it seemed more beneficial or something? But I guess math and science should be among those more advanced things so it doesn't make that much sense. I can agree that history and religion and such crap ar
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Re:Patent Devlopment? (Score:4, Insightful)
Over the past few decades, most US firms have found it beneficial to decouple development from manufacturing. Consequently, intellectual property rights must be respected and protected, in order to prevent the manufacturing firms from raping the R&D guys.
In the current US economy, we do have a legitimate need for a good patent system given these circumstances. It also does have various other beneficial effects, as it makes it considerably easier for small/new companies to develop and market products that would otherwise require considerable infrastructure to manufacture.
Whether or not the current patent system is good or not is another debate entirely, although I'm personally of the opinion that it needs to be seriously reformed to better balance the needs of the patent holders with consumers, cut down on the number of junk patents being filed, prevent exorbitant licensing fees, etc....
free market needs competition (Score:5, Insightful)
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scientific elites (Score:2, Informative)
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
Mod US science +1!
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Mod US science -2
Hypocrisy (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Hypocrisy (Score:4, Insightful)
True, but those very same republicans are big business friendly, and few systems that fail are able to detect or admit that failure themselves, it usually takes an outside observer to say something first, which they either deny and fail, or accept and change.
As for not believing in evolution, well thats a political stance designed to keep them in with the religious bods who provide a lot of funding. I seriously doubt an Atheist would get selected for high office. For a country where religion and state are seperate, there sure is a lot of religious posturing among your leaders.
I don't get it... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:I don't get it... (Score:4, Insightful)
But I guess confronting real problems isn't as much fun as kicking religious people, is it?
Re:I don't get it... (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right, parents and strong communities are critical - but it's distortion of truth by said people that is the REAL problem.
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[Citation needed]
This is particularly pronounced in minority communities. The very occasional teaching of ID in public classrooms is probably not even a factor. But I guess confronting real problems isn't as much fun as kicking religious people, is it?
You mean the way the religious people confront the real problems such as who gets to marry who, eroding the separation of Church and state, and trying enfor
Re:I don't get it... (Score:5, Insightful)
He didn't say anything about divorce or morality (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Religious organizations benefit when everybody is dropping by on their pre-determined day and putting money in the collection plate. Their monetary power increases. Their social power increases too because maybe, just maybe some of those who attend will listen and follow the precepts and guidelines of that religion and support policies and causes that the church wants. One of the tools that these religious organizations use is the spiritual myth of marriage and the talking point that only sanctioned (who performs the weddings?) and married people are socially, spiritually, and monetarily qualified to have children. Hence the myth that two-parent households are better.
Social organizations benefit from strong communities as well, but not in the same way as religious organizations. Social organizations, led by people who have a personal agenda, want members. Members are votes to them, and dues are more money in the coffers to fight for what the head of the organization wants. The more people they have listening to them, the more money they have coming in, and the more votes they can drum up to support their leader's personal agenda. These organization benefit from a strong, tightly knit community who all belong one or several of these organizations. It makes their power grab easier to pull off. Hence the myth that strong communities are better.
Both of these systems are wide open to manipulation and are tools to control you. Education is to free you. These organizations are the opposite of that freedom. Their impact on education is the opposite of what you claim - they stifle personal freedom and destroy the environment of learning and education that they claim to promote.
The real problems are lack of parental involvement in education and a culture controlled by religious and social organizations. Parental involvement is important, but the elimination of the influence of social organizations and mass media is just as important. Systems that cannot be thrown off as of yet because of the lack of intelligence and the complete indoctrination of these organizations values and norms into children as a result of public education.
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If you're just going to assert that without evidence, I can assert the opposite - 99% of the potential scientists for most of history got derailed by religion. Who knows how fast science could have developed if people had been taught to question, rather than obey, authority. If people hadn't been told that disease was caused by demons and God's cur
No wonder.. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why we are still using countless seperate devices for our various everyday communication/information needs that can't communicate with each other, and why the concept of "integration" of the technological extensions of ourselves is largely overlooked. Oh, it's also why we pay $50+mo for, frankly, the most basic of cell phone and internet connectivity, for example. Companies that have the funds to do amazing R&D and amazing advances in the "human" aspects of technology aren't bothering, because they're rich as hell one way or another - they can crawl along at a comfortable pace with no problem (especially because "everyone else is doing it too").
Yeah, a bit of a tangent there, but I've been thinking about this stuff a lot lately. You know, we 100% have the means for technology to be so much more, but it's as though no one cares.
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Re:No wonder.. (Score:4, Insightful)
To start a company means starting off on a basis that puts the system in place. You're dead before you started.
We Need to Break the System.
whoever has the money attracts the brains (Score:4, Interesting)
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The first big sign of the downfall of the USA is when OPEC switches Oil from Dollars to Euros to make more money.
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Leading in patent development? (Score:2, Insightful)
anti-intellectualism (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider:
Re:anti-intellectualism (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:anti-intellectualism (Score:5, Insightful)
It's uncool to be smart.
Black kids getting good grades are assaulted and told they are "acting white"
Schools cut science programs but fund additional athletic programs.
Society rewards and promotes the stupid jock and vilifies and puts down the smart geek.
Media further promotes the above stereotypes and problems.
THERE's the start of your problem. Kids are not smart because you are a dork for being smart. fix that and you fix almost everything else.
BTW: this problem started in the 60's.
Re:anti-intellectualism (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:anti-intellectualism (Score:5, Insightful)
I've always wondered why our (American) heroes are steroidal, semi-moronic, sports people, or idiotic pretty Hollywood people. I was reading a book on 20th century French philosophy, and Foucault was treated like a rockstar, and Sartre had a parade for his funeral. Sure, these aren't scientific (per se) figures, but they are intellectuals. Ask the average American to identify ONE thinker?
Looking at our universities, 80% of the people are entering them as a trade school, getting their fast-track MBA or such, and completely ignoring the fields irrelevant to making money (science, the humanities, history). They want money, they want a career, curiosity come second to that. Greed over knowledge. They want application, and not the ability to think of new things, a ready made body of knowledge is safe, all you need to do is follow the steps.
The problem, in part, is greed. The odds of you getting rich as a public scientist (the most valuable and productive, in my eyes) is pretty slim.
We want the status quo and wealth, not innovation. Hell science doesn't even fall into the other American value, ambition. Sure you can be determined to find x, but really, you might not. It's up to nature to decide, not you. Science is too humble for our tastes. As we can see by the rise of scientism preachers (Dawkins and co.), science needs to be sexier.
We also are a country that venerates morons. Not to enter the realm of flamebait, but look what got Bush elected. Not his wit, or astute knowledge of foreign affairs, but his "folksy" ways of expression.
Re:anti-intellectualism (Score:5, Insightful)
"It's so hard!" (Score:5, Insightful)
Then if you get a prof who expects excellent performance for an A, average for a C, and F if you never did work enough to catch on, and then their world turns absolutely upside-down.
Should students study harder? Absolutely. And _13 years_ of public education ought to provide adequate training in how to study. If not, we'll get more of these "disturbing" trends.
Re:"It's so hard!" (Score:5, Interesting)
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]
Recently??? (Score:2)
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http://www.nysun.com/article/66711?page_no=1 [nysun.com]
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That's what I hear from my freshman-sophomore math majors nearly every day.
[old man voice]Back in MAH day, we knuckled down! We didn't take anything for granted, we worked our asses off!
Eh. I think every generation laments the work ethic of the next generation, and don't remember that their generation was just as whiny.
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If you expect to get into a good college, you have to have a pristine GPA. In order to get that, you have to cut back on courses that are hard. If you take hard course you will learn more, but you may not score as well. So doing hard things loses out.
I had a crappy GPA in high school. I took the hardest courses I could find. I learned a lot, but it made getting into a good college next to impossible.
The system is rigged against those who
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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 t
The US is not immune... (Score:3, Informative)
imho most analysis misses the point (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:imho most analysis misses the point (Score:5, Insightful)
Comparisons with the rest of the world (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
I wonder... (Score:2)
Think I could get some of that R&D Money thru licensing of my patents?
Of course, half the graduate students are foreign (Score:4, Interesting)
Cut education funding (Score:4, Interesting)
Has Something To Do With High Medical Costs Too! (Score:2)
Meaningless aggregation (Score:3, Insightful)
Does it matter that somebody with the median score in high school math isn't particularly good at it, if he's working as a salesman or a mechanic?
Now, I could argue in a liberal arts kind of way that it does matter, because with a better grasp of science these people will be better informed citizens. But from a vocational standpoint, you want to know that if there are N slots for graduates with science skills, the top N science students are very good indeed. And since every job that requires science skills requires strong math skills (but not necessarily vice versa), you want more students to be good at math, but not necessarily every student.
The trend is towards business giving up on American science, engineering, and know-how in general. So why spend four years after high school gaining skills that aren't wanted? Why spend the money to increase student performance when we can enjoy the use of that money today, and it won't make any difference to their lives except maybe in some kind of woolly headed liberal notion of citizenship? If we were really concerned about the future of our students, it'd be like beating the Soviets in the Cold War, no effort to improbable of success to try, no cost to outrageous to bear.
It doesn't pay to be better than the rest of the world but get paid more as well. You've got to be a better value. Therefore by in the name of business efficiency, Americans deserve to see their incomes drop until they're on a par with India and China. When the few Americans who, despite economizing on our schools, have attained some level of scientific or engineering skill look like an incredible bargain, the jobs will come back.
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No, these people are a threat and exactly the type of people the US government are trying to stamp out.
What most governments are working hard at is to turn the whole of society into sheeplike ill-informed taxpayers that fill their days with harmless trivia (paris hilton, religion, consumerism, etc) as they are the easiest to control.
Flawed Study (Score:2)
"Basic" Reasearch (Score:3, Insightful)
but it's the least funded.
i work in basic research in the medical field. the NIH is currently funding between 9 and 10 PERCENT of the proposals handed to them. hopefully they are picking the cream of the crop. we don't lack the manpower. there are LOTS of capable people to do the work. it's funding. there is VERY little funding for research unless someone stands to make a great deal of money from it. the problem is, most of the important things we need to figure out are not going to make anyone a pile of money. they may, down the line. but it isn't that likely.
call me a socialist, but the government needs to get the act together and push their funding toward basic research, and let industry pay for R&D.
Legal Immigration Issues contribute too (Score:2, Insightful)
Slip slidin' away (Score:2)
I wonder when Bodies of Distinguished Scientists are going to make the switch from saying "the U.S. is losing its leadership in Science and Technology" to saying "the U.S. has lost its leadership in Science and Technology." Probably well after the point of no return...
Anyway, if I were a betting man, I'd be inclined to start a pool.
The World is Flat.... (Score:2)
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That's all nice speculation, and no doubt (like much of what Friedman writes) backed by an anecdote or two, but there's little empirical evidence that the US deficiencies in one
U.S. Education as a whole is broken... (Score:3, Insightful)
First of all, to the people who blame this trend on I.D., give it a rest. Our education system has far greater problems to confront, such as:
1. Parents - more an dmore parents don't take an active role in their kids' education, and blame the schools for their kids' failure.
2. Basic literacy - more and more kids cannot even read at grade-level. And we expect them to understand concepts like evolution??
3. Critical thinking - thanks ot NCLB, kids are taught to take a test, not think for themselves.
4. Qualified/dedicated teachers - thanks to unions, teachers have little motivation to actually give a shit about whether or not their students are actually learning anything.
5. No Child Left Behind - the great unfunded mandate that promotes the fantasy that there is no such thing as a dumb, unmotivated kid. One-size-fits-all education only harms good students, and it sure as hell doesn't make the bad ones any better.
I'm sure this will be interpreted as me trolling.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I honestly believe that the US would not be lagging so far behind in sciences if we finished converting fully to the metric system.
An acquaintance of mine is taking his first college-level physics class, and the professor stated on the first day that since this was an exact science, there would be no use of US customary measure, only SI units. More than half of the class was simply unaware of what these non-customary units were, and as a result, they spent a week's worth of courses going over grams, litres, metres/kilometres, etc., all the while the students bemoaned having to learn a "foreign" unit of measure. I can even recall something similar happening in my high school physics classes. What a waste!
If we're going to teach our kids to be proficient in math & science, the least we can do is give them a Base-10 system of measure with no fractions and simple conversions.
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Hey man, I think I speak for everyone here when I say, our appearance isn't necessarily what repels people - we're just weird regardless.
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...and trillions into defense (Score:3, Insightful)
How much of the "R&D budget" is spent developing new weapons?
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it's only a paradox if you're an idiot (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, if you have a system where the difference between the best and the average is high, what does that tell you? It tells you the system works well to promote the best and give them the tools they need to produce. Fact is, there is a natural heirarchy of ability among human beings in any field. Most are at some ordinary level, and only a few are very good. If you don't see the natural ability heirarchy reflected in the accomplishment heirarchy, then something is wrong. Since it's impossible to bring ordinary folk up to the extraordinary level, what must be happening is that the extraordinary folks are being held down (which is fairly easy to do).
Compare to sports. The difference between your average high-school athlete and Olympic or world-class athletes has never been greater, and the very few at the very top are amazing. Do we look at this pyramid of accomplishment and say, gee, there must be something wrong with how we promote and train people in sports, because there are so few at the top? Because the average 35-year-old pick-up basketball player, measured on the same scale that includes the championship Los Angeles Lakers, sucks? Not if we have any brains, we don't. We realize that the better a system is at sifting and placing people according to their abilities and motivation, the more pronounced the heirarchy, the greater the difference between the best and all the rest. Only in some doofus Lake Wobegon mode of (non)thinking do we imagine that a successful system would look non-heirarchical, with everyone above average.
The fact that heirarchies of accomplishment are more evident in the United States than elsewhere is no proof that the mass of people are being held down. It may well be evidence that in the United States the best are better able to rise to the top, to find their natural level of achievement, whereas in other places considerations of social class, restrictive groupthink education, or cultural barriers to personal ambition and radical innovation tend to keep the best from ever showing their stuff and emerging above the sea of average folk.
Re:it's only a paradox if you're an idiot (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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That's a nice view and all and it may even give you that fuzzy feeling in your tummy but unfortunately it doesn't have anything to do with reality. At all. The US's R&D success was accomplished and is maintained through a single factor: money. Lots of money. It has absolutely nothing to do with freedom nor other patriotic d
Re:Possible paradox explaination QWZX (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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It seems that you inadvertently touched the point where the European and Ameri
Re:Possible paradox explaination QWZX (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Maybe hatred is part of the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Religion is anti-science. The religous do pick fights with existing scientific explanations, but in a non-testable "god did it" kind of way.
I don't hate the religious, I pity the ignorant. I see ignorance and lack of education as a more serious threat to this country than any foreign terrorist organization.