United States Failing to Produce Next Generation of Scientists, Technology Leaders Say

by Michelle Nealy
May 29, 2008

Policymakers, business leaders and educators gathered in Northern Virginia for a three-day symposium to discuss how to best retain this country’s scientific and technological edge, a task NACMEN (national Action Council for Minorities in Engineering) has coined the “New American Dilemma.”

While other nations such as China and India have recognized the connection between innovation and economic growth — and are pouring resources into their scientific and technological infrastructure — the United States has failed to prepare a new generation of scientists and engineers, particularly in communities of color, NACME asserts.

Only about 1.3 percent of the available pool of minority high school graduates earn engineering degrees from America’s colleges and universities each year. The percentage of bachelor’s degrees in engineering awarded to Black students between 1995 and 2005 declined. In 1995, engineering degrees accounted for 3.3 percent of bachelor’s degrees awarded to Black graduates, by 2005 this number decreased to 2.5 percent, the report reveals. Even more alarming, said Norman R. Augustine, retired chairman and CEO of the company that is now Lockheed Martin Corp., is that “China currently graduates more English-speaking engineers than the United States.

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when the US government has made its intent unambiguous, to flood the market with foreign engineers to the point where an engineering job is no longer a ticket to a solid middle-class lifestyle?

Borders will be meaningless because it is so easy to outsource information work to anywhere in the world, and techies will work from home most of the time anyway. American engineers can't avoid competing with Indian and Chinese engineers, regardless of where they live. And, increasingly, those people will be staying in their home countries with their extended families and communities but nonethless competing for engineering work in a global marketplace.

You've got an entire political party that wants to get rid of public education, and even more people who don't want to pay teachers enough, don't want to pay for proper equipment and supplies, and universities that, because of lack of federal and state funding, are slashing science education departmental budgets.

If you want science education to get better, you're going to have to:

- go to a 4+2 system where the teacher receives an undergraduate degree in the topic and gets a 2 year specialist degree in science education

- pay teachers better so that more people will be attracted to the field

- pay student teachers a training wage in return for future time commitment

- increase funding for school science supplies

- increase funding for science education departments and encourage experienced teachers to go into teacher training

And that's a start.

In China an engineer makes $20,000 USD, which is good money for China.

How many American students want to pursue an engineering degree to compete globally for that job?