Letters to the Editor
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Sigh....
Another hyperventilating article on America's declining stature in the world of science and engineering that has a half dozen different threads all tangled up in a rat's nest of logic and emotion that then leaps to a solution without a clear statement of the problem (if a problem exists) or an assessment of the root causes of the problem. The first problem is conflating science and engineering. They are very separate disciplines (outside of their common need for technical capabilities and the ability to speak the language of mathematics).
"The Problem" is typically stated as "everybody else is graduating more science and engineering students than we are". Is this actually a problem? Given the willingness of foreigners to come to the US and the US's willingness to issue H1B visas, it would seem that the need for technically educated people is being met by an adequate supply of technical people. Also, given the number of articles etc I've read about American graduates being aced out for jobs by H1B holding foreigners, business should be happy because the foreigners are willing to work for less. So what's the problem?
Another facet here is that both government and industry have cut back on both basic and applied research from their levels in the '60s and research seems to be an easy target during corporate cost cutting. On the engineering side, who the hell needs engineers? An earlier study on this same topic noted that of the something like 120 odd chemical plants being built in the world, 1 was being built in the US and the rest were being built elsewhere in the world. The problem here seems to be lack of work, not lack of graduates. So what's the problem?
And what, I'd like to know, will a presidential debate do for this? As far as I can tell, nothing any good. Oh, politicians are great at coming up with ways to spend my money but if they aren't commercially viable, they'll go the way of the space program. They'll produce a bunch of results at odds with the needs of commerce and then it'll be straight out of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where Trillian says: "Well, with a PhD in Astrophysics and another in Maths, I'll be back to the dole queue on Monday." That'll help a lot, I'm sure.
So, what is the problem, really? I suspect the real problem is that we are seeing our lead in the world of science and engineering slip. The causes of that slippage are manifold but they don't include not enough graduates.
At the bottom line, we don't need yet another government program in this over regulated, over controlled, and over directed land of ours to address a problem that isn't a problem but a misguided attempt at a solution to an entirely different problem.