Engineering Science - More Graduate Students - Brought to You by IGERT Comments

Comment on 'More Graduate Students - Brought to You by IGERT' by Geoff Davis

2007-05-02T23:05:52Z

A couple of points:

There are arguments for increasing the number of S&Es in the US independently of the number of S&Es in China / India / EU. Romer's rationale for increasing the # of S&E PhDs is that S&E workers are linked to GDP growth.
I heard Blinder talking about the 40 million number on NPR a couple of weeks ago. One thing he pointed out was that there would not be 40 million NET jobs lost. Outsourcing does save money, and that money ends up in other places in the economy and creates jobs. The trouble is that it's pretty hard to count those other jobs because they are widely diffused.

The solution Blinder proposes is to emphasize training people in things that are impossible to outsource, which seems problematic to me. We'll end up with a nation of barbers.

One read of the article you cite above is that we should be training more, not less native S&Es, since relying on the H-1Bs is problematic. See http://voxbaby.blogspot.com/2007/03/blinder-on-free-ish-trade.html

Comment on 'More Graduate Students - Brought to You by IGERT' by Bob

2007-05-02T02:15:07Z

Yet another fundamental flaws in the logic of the "Gathering Storm" report is the conclusion that since China and India are training more S&Es, the U.S. must also train more S&Es to remain competitive. Although the report mentions outsourcing by U.S. firms, it seems to naively ignore the fact that layoffs of U.S. S&Es often precede the outsourcing of such jobs to India and China.

The article below is a nice summary of a scenario that runs completely counter to conclusions and policy actions of the Gathering Storm report, namely, the movement of "perhaps 40 million high-skill American jobs to other countries."

This trend, if it plays out, begs the question of where all those "10 million minds" educated in the U.S. will find work, without moving to China or India-a trend that is occurring more frequently for some U.S. workers.

Bob

Highly skilled Americans in jeopardy

Tuesday, April 17, 2007 FROMA HARROP

http://www.dispatch.com/dispatch/contentbe/dispatch/2007/04/17/20070417-A7-04.html

The master plan, it seems, is to move perhaps 40 million high-skill American jobs to other countries. U.S. workers have not been consulted.

Princeton University economist Alan Blinder predicts that these choice jobs could be lost in a mere decade or two. These involve computer programming, bookkeeping, graphic design and other careers once thought firmly planted in American soil. For perspective, 40 million is more than twice the number of people now employed in manufacturing.

Blinder was taken aback when, sitting in at the business summit in Davos, Switzerland, he heard U.S. executives talk enthusiastically about all the professional jobs they could outsource to lower-wage countries. And he's a free trader.

What America can do to stop this is unclear, but it certainly doesn't have to speed up the process through a government program. We refer to the H-1B visa program, which allows educated foreigners to work in the United States, usually for three years. Many in Congress want to nearly double the number of H-1B visas, to 115,000 a year.

To the extent that the program helps talented foreign graduates of U.S. universities stay in this country while they await their green cards, it performs a useful service. But for many companies, the visa has become just a tool for transferring American jobs offshore.

Ron Hira, a professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology, has studied the dark side of the H-1B program. He notes that the top applicants for visas are outsourcing companies, such as Wipro Technologies of India and Bermuda-based Accenture.

The companies bring recruits in from, say, India to learn about American business. After three years, the workers go home better able to interact with their U.S. customers.

In other cases, companies ask their U.S. employees to train H-1B workers who then replace them at lower pay. "This is euphemistically called, "knowledge transfer, " said Hira. "I call it, "knowledge extraction. "

Another rap against the program is that it?s used to depress the wages of American workers. The program's defenders argue that the law requires companies to pay "the prevailing wage."

But prevailing wage is a legalism, Hira says. It does not translate into market wage.

The median pay for H-1B computing professionals in fiscal 2005 was $50,000, which means half earn less than that. An American information technology worker with a bachelor's degree makes more than $50,000 in an entry-level job.

Businesses bemoan the alleged shortage of Americans trained to do the work. But wait a second. The law of supply and demand states that a shortage of something causes its price to rise. Wages in information technology have been flat.

The companies fret that not enough young Americans are studying science and technology. Well, cutting the pay in those fields isn't much of an incentive, is it?

The threat that they will outsource if they can't bring in foreign temps is a hollow one. "There's nothing stopping those companies from working offshore anyway," Hira said. "They're not patriotic."

This vision for a competitive America seems to be a few rich U.S. executives commandeering armies of foreign workers. They don't have to train their domestic work force. They don't have to raise pay to American standards.

A provision for revving up the H-1B program is contained in the immigration bill that last year passed the Senate. The co-sponsors, Democrat Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts and Republican John McCain of Arizona, have contended that their legislation requires employers to search for U.S. workers first. It does not.

Skilled U.S. workers had better start looking out for their interests. No one else is.

Froma Harrop writes for Creators Syndicate.

Comment on 'More Graduate Students - Brought to You by IGERT' by Bob

2007-04-27T12:13:20Z

HR 362, the 10,000 Teachers, 10 Million Minds Science and Math Scholarship Act

One of the fundamental recommendations of the NAS Gathering Storm report is that the U.S. government needs to subsidize, at taxpayer expense, the training of more (~10,000) math and science teachers at the high school level. I contend that increasing teacher retention, through improved working conditions, will go much farther towards increasing the quality of math and science education in the U.S.

However, the result of the Gathering Storm recommendations is that Congress (or the NAS) came up with HR 362 which was passed by the House, as discussed above.

See: HR 362, the 10,000 Teachers, 10 Million Minds Science and Math Scholarship Act, which funds S&E teacher training.

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:H.R.362:

Below is an article I noticed in the LA Times that discusses a survey of teachers in the LA School District, perhaps not a representative school district, but the results of survey, and the article are interesting.

Here is an excerpt of the article:

"By some estimates, about $455 million per year is squandered in teacher training in California because of premature departures. Vastly improving teaching conditions probably would cost much more.

"We have a high-school dropout problem," Futernick said, "in large part because we have a teacher dropout problem."

I believe there are many other fundamental policy flaws in the NAS Gathering Storm report, but seeing this article reminded me of one of them.

Bob

Teachers dropping out too

A study blames working conditions. Higher pay isn't the answer, it says.

By Howard Blume, Times Staff Writer

April 27, 2007

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-teachers27apr27,0,6989401.story?coll=la-home-headlines

As a mid-career professional with a doctorate in chemistry, Maurice Stephenson appeared made to order for the Los Angeles Unified School District, especially because he was eager to teach at a high-poverty campus in a system woefully short of qualified science teachers.

But the honeymoon ended abruptly after less than two years. Fed up with student insolence and administrative impotence, he stalked out of Manual Arts High School on March 12 and never went back.

Few teachers quit so dramatically, but leave they do. In California, teachers are departing the profession in alarming numbers — 22% in four years or fewer — but simply offering them more money won't solve the problem, according to a report released Thursday.

The real issue is working conditions, which are the flip side of a student's learning conditions, said Ken Futernick, who directs K-12 studies at the Center for Teacher Quality at Cal State Sacramento.

His study, which was based on a survey of nearly 2,000 California teachers, maps a growing crisis that fundamentally affects student learning.

The study also casts doubt on commonly pursued remedies both for the teacher shortage and student achievement in general.

Classroom interruptions, student discipline, increasing demands, insufficient supplies, overcrowding, unnecessary meetings, lack of support — all play a role in burning out teachers.

"They're not just driving teachers crazy; they're driving teachers out of the classrooms," Futernick said.

Stephenson is among the 35% of L.A. Unified teachers who quit within five years, according to school district data.

And as in most other cases, salary wasn't the primary factor.

In fact, L.A. Unified's data lists salary as the No. 9 reason why new hires leave. No. 1 is "moving." But also cited are "lack of support from administrator," "student discipline policy" and "unmotivated students."

Engineering Science - More Graduate Students - Brought to You by IGERT Comments

Comment on 'More Graduate Students - Brought to You by IGERT' by Geoff Davis

Comment on 'More Graduate Students - Brought to You by IGERT' by Bob

Comment on 'More Graduate Students - Brought to You by IGERT' by Bob

See link above for the rest of the article