We have lost our way in America. We still have this industrial revolution style education system and we haven’t conformed to an informational revolution style or structure. Too many of our institutions are focused on making money and increasing their endowment coffers versus modernizing the classrooms. We need a nationalized university system to compete with the private and state university systems. This will drive down costs and make college more accessible to everyone in society. Oh my God…that sounds like a healthcare solution…

An Asian-American collegue, still with family in China, told me two years ago how much China was investing in its’ educational system and universities. He ended with a statement which still rings in my ears….”…and they’re not spending money on Football Stadiums!”

I don’t know what you are talking about? We have the best higher education sports program in the world. Take University of Kentucky for example, teachers salaries have been frozen for the past two years but we have the highest paid coach in the nation. And we just got promised 7 million dollars to add Coal to the name of the athletic dorm. “Wildcat Coal lodge” Never mind that wildcat coal means “mined illegally”.
If we invested sports money into education where would we be?

Fifty years ago college graduates regarded popular songs and comic books as ephemera, and read *Scientific American*. Now they regard popular songs and comic books as high art, and read *Scientific American*.

The whole point to this argument is that in America the cost of living and lack of jobs does not endear its young populace to go into major financial debt without the Jobs in their field waiting for them.

American jobs are continually outsourced to other countries employing foreign workers instead of enticing the young Americans with this higher education.

If we wish to be the mathematics, science, and engineering leaders of the world, we must respect those disciplines in and of themselves—worshipping tech. billionaires doesn’t count.

Only then will taxpayers put up with enough taxes to support a good system, higher education and below. ‘Where your heart is, there your treasure will be,’ to anti-quote the Chrisitan book.

All the foreigners they mention who might end up figuratively eating our collective lunch honour education. America has retained its leadership partially due to sub-cultures that do.

@ Ed – Are you not entertained!!! (lol)… You are so right. The world has passed us by. Sure I love entertainment as much as anyone, but our insatiable appetite for it is disheartening. There was a time in our country when industrial barrons (DuPonts, Gettys, Carnegies, Rockefellers and the like)or even financial icons like the Rothschilds and Vanderbilts, stayed in the forefront of education initiatives. Sure they were private schools but it fueled the industrial age. Where are the barrons of today?

Could the guests please comment on the effect of cultural differences on the capacity for technological innovation? I was in Taiwan a few years ago to give a talk on a technical topic. I made every opportunity to get my listeners, 30 engineering students, to ask questions and challenge me, but not a single one did. Chinese respect for elders apparently was preventing them from engaging in the kind of freewheeling dialogue between instructors and students that we are accustomed to in US adacemic settings. Ande now, as I write this, I hear Charles Vest say that the capacity of Chinese engineering graduates for creativity is improving. I’d like to hear more about this issue.

While I think there is a problem, it comes from a lack of innovation in education. The Asian countries can look at us and know what they need to do to get the same results.

The question I have deals more with innovation in education. I don’t have a BS or above. But I have taken class through graduate mathematics and physics and have very in-depth knowledge of computer science.

When I talk to various colleges about getting my BS or going beyond I am told to take classes in computer science where I could teach the class!

So how come I can’t take my experience and past schooling and use it to springboard to a degree?

Tom

I have a 4 year college degree from the Philippines. Just like the thousands of Filipinos that graduated from colleges each year. The Philippines produced world class Nurses,Doctors, Engineers, Lawyers,Mechanics etc etc.

The Philippines has a 90% literacy rate and majority of College graduates can speak and write english.

The problem in the Philippines is not Higher education it is Jobs.

The quality of education in America is no longer competitive in Science and Math.You ask a high school student who is the Vice President or the Secretary of State? They would even know.

Education in America is no longer for learning it is for profit. A Filipino College graduate don’t have to worry about debt when they finished a college degree.

I am an engineer, and I don’t see why I should encourage anyone to follow in my footsteps. American industry doesn’t value engineering and science. They feel that we are just overhead, and not “revenue generating” members of the company. We are also easily replaced, and we can get the (now outsourced) component manufacturer to provide the engineering. Science and research that can’t show a profit within a year or two is not even considered. Our general culture views education (especially science) as valueless. We are already on the slide downhill, but most don’t know it yet. I just hope we can salvage something.

I’m wondering why this is a problem. It’s not likely that droves of US or European students will head for Asia anytime soon. Institutions such as MIT or Harvard will never lack for exceptional students. Perhaps if the Asian schools offered first rate educations in English at a fraction of the cost of a US education, maybe then, US institutions should be worried.

Are we really worrying about preserving an American monopoly?

I am an international student who has graduated last year. Although I would like to stay in the US and go to grad school, and maybe even start my own business in the future, I feel that I can’t due to the difficulties of getting an H1B visa. If the immigration system made any sense in this country, there would be a lot more cooperation and intellectual diversity around here. Have you considered that all of those brilliant Asian engineers are going back home simply because they can’t stay here legally?!?

Well, I see we have ourselves another non-issue topic of discussion to stir up unnecessary anxiety among the masses. Those who desire to learn and become educated will do so; in spite of the amount of money allotted to the education system. Americans always mistakenly think that the more money you throw at something the better it has to be. Guess knowledge isn’t worth much without a little wisdom.

Why would our young people chose to go into Engineering and Science. Where are the jobs? Why would our Engineers go on to get PhDs. They are often the first laid-off in this country. My husband discouraged our sons to stay out of engineering. He has survived multiple lay-offs but find he is to be available 24/7 even when on vacation. The stress in this field has become horrible in this country. Americans training their Asian counterparts to do the work they are doing, and then the Americans lose their jobs. We need to change the attitude of American companies to see that our workers are worth having and not just look at the bottom line.

I just came back from China (giving career seminars for Universities in Guangzhou, Wuhan, Shanghai & Beijing etc)from Oct 7 to Oct 27, 2009.

Developing China’s homegrown workforce, all the elements are in place for China’s leap into the global sector.

Young people are eager to learn, they are hungry to learn science, and there is strong Gov support for excellence in education, extensive research infrastructure and other conditions for creating a fertile environment for all seeds.

As China increases its presence in the global sector, its most pressing needs include more homegrown innovation and a well-trained workforce. Today, there are many career opportunities for both Western scientists and Western-trained Chinese scientists who will be instrumental in training and developing workforce to meet the rising demand.

In Asia can rich daddies of mediocre students buy their way into the better schools; or do the countries have anything like Christian fundamentalist push-backs against science and technology?

Tom, ask your guest what an electrical engineer with an MS and 10 years experience earns in this country. Then ask him what someone in business, medicine, or law earns with the same experience. There is a HUGE difference. I’m an engineer and all of my friends who are in any of the above non-engineering fields are fairing much better than me finacially, not to mention that I have foreign competition for my job.

Being prosperous allows people to be almost-lazy. Americans have been living with cheap oil for so long, they have forgotten how to struggle, how to sacrifice, and how to join with others to invest in common goods. The comparison between China and the US drives home the danger of a narrow, libertarian vision of a society guided by “the invisible hand” of Adam Smith. Chinese leaders seem to be thinking “what do our people need to prosper?”, While our leaders seem to be thinking “How do mollify my rich donors and keep my job?”.

here my opinion. as long as tuition keeps growing faster than inflation, the United States is uncompetitive and on the path to second tier status with respective to the standard of living. the country is on a deadly path as a third world nation. who can really afford $30k tuition per year? not many. as besides, we can all agree that employers in this nation are biased against people without a 4 year college degree.

Please don’t praise central planning in China. They seem enviably successful now, but only because they are cheating at the games of capitalism AND communism.
China is leveraging slave labor for economic growth. I will be impressed when they can grow without cheating. Their empty economic system gives both capitalism and communism a bad name.

But on the topic of education, our culture has a flaw from our agricultural days of a huuUUuuuuge loooOOoooong summer. Even the relatively stupid and lazy children of Asia can seem smart and hard working by comparison when we are culturally handicapping our own children.

Anthropology teaches us that culture is what we teach our children about how we can survive as a people. Our educational flaw in the US of long summers breed a character flaw of laziness. Their flaw of slave labor is breeding dishonesty and stealing. In an economic system of competition, which culture can overcome their character flaw sooner?

The US is #1 in quality of education but the quality is not quantified in the society. The jobs are in other countries who have costs of living that match their GDP more equitably. In the US wages have comparatively decreased while profits and costs of education has increased. We are required to go into debt to obtain and education, to get jobs that under pay us, and gives major corporations exorbitant profits. This imbalance is destructive.

I work in a town where the largest private employer is a defense contractor. The largest public employer is the school system. The private defense contractor hires engineers from France and pays the school system to hire French instructors to educate the French students in the local school system. This is the investment the defense contractor is willing to make in the education of children of their employees. What if private contractors invested money in educating American students, so that they could grow up and get these engineering jobs? Isn’t this strange? Maybe it’s just me…

If we are to criticize American Universities, we should look at how they spend the money they receive. I have worked at several universities in various parts of the country and have seen cut-backs at each school where I worked. Invariably the one area that never had to share in the financial problems was the athletic department. The football and basketball teams, depending on which the school pushed, got new buildings, airplanes, stadiums and what ever was needed to appeal to the alumnae while academics suffered. Sometimes to the point of laying off people and not updating facilities to meet student needs.

I think we need to place more emphasis on the academic portion and less on the athletic side.

regarding the “chicken & egg” of graduating US-based Science & Technology Masters/PhD candidates but needing private, public, or non-profit sector jobs to put those grads to productive use, could US community colleges or corporate training organizations partner with companies & gov’t needing Scient & Technology talent to develop more effective hands-on training programs? there are some examples of this in the software field today, and the corporate or gov’t investment is justified by the control the prospective employer has over curriculum, recruiting, co-op programs, etc…this could re-train or prepare capable US citizens for work / research that otherwise seems headed for the 60% of PhD’s who are international students today.

What do the guests think the anti-intellectual/anti-science attitudes of many politicians and religious leaders today are having an effect on the interest of young people in science and higher ed in general?

Several issues with this…

For one thing, the caller was correct that we have major problems culturally. Learning has to appear easy. It’s not cool to work for anything good.

Another issue is definitely the absurd cost of higher education. The only way to get funding as a TA or Research assistant is to have extremely high scores. Otherwise, you have to pay huge sums of money for a PHD that is not going to get you a great job in the majority of cases.

I was interested in the fact that your guest spoke about the space program and how it fueled a generation of highly trained and educated students. An earlier caller mentioned that there is limited demand and opportunities for students now as they graduate with higher degrees in science and engineering. This is also what I have seen in Biology and Chemistry. Have we underestimated how much of a factor the space program played in encouraging students to get higher degrees? Has the drastic reduction in our space program decreased the jobs and opportunities for science and engineering graduates? I would say that it has.

The majority of our students attend public universities where their entry level calculus (the foundation for entering engineering programs) are often as large as 500 students and often taught by teaching assistants whose first language is not English—-how can we expect students to learn under these conditions? Over the years I’ve met countless people who wanted to be engineers but after slugging through these conditions they decided to go into the Humanities. Should we blame them for dropping out?

If we are to compete in the future global marketplace we need to revamp this outdated system and push for small classes taught by easily understood professors (not assistants) who can answer questions quickly (how can an assistant possible get to 500 students? It’s crazy)and thereby help the students keep up their confidence and keep the students headed in the direction of the engineering program.

Our higher education system grew out of our success industrially. We as a nation could employ our graduates.
For years we were told that bigger is better with the result of less competition leading to less creativity,abuse and the loss of our competitive edge.We have witnessed the result of bignesss in the near collapse of our banking system and the collapse of the American automobile industry.
Unless we once again create a dynamic industrial base with many players as opposed to a few we will continue to slide in all areas of endeavor.

Just a little food for thought: in her book on the coming Dark Ages Jane Jacobs (The Life and Death of Cities) says that accreditation vs education is one of the signs of a culture heading into their Dark Age.

Higher education as comodity (higher education for all) means that this sort of accreditation of degree can be purchased with enough money or, in other cases, time.

How many of you writing here have a kid in the house at age 30 still engaged in some post graduate twaddle?

To get a real idea of what the Chinese are doing as engineers, take a look at National Geographic’s series on megastructures. It’s easy to find. The port construction, Olympic pool project for the last games, any number of large projects including mega wind farms show a society on the rise.

Our architecture, with a few starchitect exceptions, is dull and lifeless and our infrastructure and ability to generate power are in decline.

I believe American culture values education; however corporate America does not. Corporations say they value higher education but they are not willing to pay top dollar to people that have worked towards advance science and engineering degrees. I have an electrical engineering degree and physics graduate degree. I thought that having an advanced degree in a hard science would make me more valuable to a company but early on in my a career I was surprised when negotiating my salary that they were unwilling to pay me more for my knowledge because, I was told, they could hire someone with less education to do the job. I’m sure they could but what does this tell our young people moving through our education system? Work hard and pay ridiculous amounts of money to a institution all you want but don’t expect to be fairly compensated for it when you enter the job market. Or get an MBA or Law degree move up the corporate ladder and sink a company almost to the ground and will pay you millions just to leave. Hmmmm… if I’m a smart and greedy person the later options is tons more compelling.

While I agree that athletics receive far too much attention within our society, most major university athletic departments are self-sustaining and serve a vital service to their parent institution– they generate financial support for the university and help maintain the university’s connection with its alumni. At The Ohio State University, where I earned my Ph.D., we just completed a major renovation of the main library. A large donation made by the athletic department made this renovation possible. In addition, the funds generated by the football program support ALL of the university’s athletic programs, including programs that provide athletic scholarships to student athletes in less popular sports, both male and female, that might not have access to a college education without this financial support.

“Asian countries pour money and resources into higher education, while American universities go begging.”

You should give numbers when you make statements like this. What’s the per-capita higher ed spending in each place?

Whenever I hear education-in-the-US talked about it’s always, ‘We need to keep up with X,Y,Z’, and I get the impression that people believe the purpose of education is to further nationalist pride, as opposed to say, personal self-fulfillment.

I obtained a bachelors in Mathematics and Computer Science from a state school with a direct loan from the government. I’d say the govt was quite supportive of education in my case.

Maybe I’m missing something here but to me, all of this sounds just like “Globalization” impacting yet another American industry, this one being Higher Education. Are these not many of the same academics that have long counselled our manufacturing and agricultural interests just to remain calm and refocus on new fields while hundreds of thousands of our good, traditional jobs disappear? Instead of East and South Asian students flocking here for their scientific/technical finishing, in future our scientific/technical students will begin going to Asia to complete their education. Surely that’s just “Globalization” at work? I think the main, unspoken concern of these academic leaders is over their future job prospects here in North America.

And here’s an irony. To the extent that we probably should retain higher scientific/technical education and research onshore, it’s in areas such as medical research–certainly no sign of the phamaceutical industry slowing up yet; energy conservation and climate change–that urgent need to cut reliance on foreign energy; and, Cybersecurity and national defence generally. These are areas supposedly dear to the heart of American Conservatives. Yet in pandering to the most benighted portion of our population–the Creationists, the anti-Stem Cell research crowd, the fossil-fuelers and anti-Global Warming crowd–these political Conservatives continue to sully America’s image as a leader in science and technology.

Ask Charles why, if higher education is so important, the administration of the universities are eliminating tenure for faculty. Without this perk, attracting and maintaining faculty is much more difficult.

Can’t speak for math and science, but I came from the former Soviet Union and went to law schools in Boston and NYC. Got my JD and LL.M. Both institutions were quite good (neither was an Ivy League school). I also went to law school in my old country so I can compare.

It is sad to hear the death knell sounding for “classical” education.

I received a liberal/classical education in the early nineties before tuition became too outrageous. I majored in something because it fascinated me, without much thought about what kind of job it would land me. Twenty years later, I don’t work in my area of study and am fairly poor. I have paid off my school loans though, and regard those years as some of the best of my life.

I don’t entertain any ideas of my children being able to enjoy the type of education I received. They are much more likely to slum it through some sort of dingy tech school or job center to make themselves appealing to employers. It is very sad that higher education is being supplanted by “higher employability”.

Yet another area in which the quality of life of the average American is being eroded/destroyed. Most may not even know what they are missing, it has just become the new, sad reality.

For a moment…it was sweet…

This new “wrinkle” will make it unlikely that I will comment on future shows, as my comments will now be “a day late and a dollar short”. I have appreciated participating and have found the forum stimulating and liberating.

So farewell Putney, Millard, Mr. Fnord, michael, Alex, and yes… even you Louise. Keep fighting the good fight, my fellow commie pinko lefties
Posted by Cory, on October 29th, 2009 at 3:04 am EDT

It seems to me that Americans are unable to ask the right questions. The questions concerning class, race, and culture seems fundamental to the American system. America’s default position seems to consist of the idea that talent is inborn. Therefore, the notion that race determines one’s capabilities is deeply embedded in the American system. Most who looked at the question of Asian student will readily attest to their willingness to study long and hard. Americans tend to believe that you have it or you don’t, making it difficult to believe study will make a difference. Culturally, American must make the connection between investment in the young or continue giving the resources to an elite few.

Inner cities are one of many examples. Tens of thousands, maybe millions go uneducated in the urban areas because the nation lack the will to educate them. Is race behind many of these decisions?

In the case of African Americans, one need look no further than the patents that they acquired under the most trying conditions.

What about education for the pure pursuit of knowledge and learning – is higher education all about getting ahead – economic power? Knowledge and learning should be readily accessible to anyone who wants to learn regardless of socioeconomic standing or basic education. Entrepreneurs and innovation have little to do with university degrees – the richest man in the world does not have a college degree.

No, today’s universities are truly about brand building and joint partnership ventures to enhance their trusts – not educating the world. Oh, and how exactly do universities tap into the next brilliant human unlucky enough to be stuck in Africa or some other socioeconomically depressed part of the world? Or an American child facing a $50K to $200K education debt – this “exclusive club” cost is out of control.

How about education for anyone as a basic human right.

There always seem to be more international students in graduate programs at American universities than there are U.S.-born minorities, even though Asian-Americans tend to be over-represented in higher education. I am an African-American female with an M.S. in environmental engineering (2003). I was the only African-American female in my program during the entire three years that I was earning my master’s degree with thesis at the large research institution that I attended. My mother, who is also African-American, encountered similar demographic statistics in the Chemistry and Chemistry in Education master’s degree programs of another large research university 40 years ago when she earned her MS. In Western countries, a university education was originally a luxury for the privileged upper classes in the same way that performing scientific experiments was a hobby of the privileged upper classes. Now a university education has become an expensive necessity.

In K-12, public schools that are majority minority are still much more likely to be underfunded and lack the physical resources needed to equip the students. They are more likely to have lead levels in drinking water that impede learning and to have structural problems that threaten safety. As a result, students at these schools are less likely to be prepared to go on to college and to earn graduate degrees. As the U.S. moves to becoming a majority-minority country, the problem of built-in bias in the educational system has a larger effect on the nation as a whole. This is not a new problem, but it has never been effectively addressed in our nation’s history. Racial segregation and class segregation have never completely gone away.

There is a move in the K-12 system away from arts and humanities towards only math, reading, and standardized testing. It was ironic that Dr. Vest mentioned that creativity is so important to innovation and how the arts and humanities bring creativity to the sciences, mathematics and engineering while at the same time the arts are being systematically weeded out of public K-12 institutions because they are viewed as unnecessary or subordinate to math, reading, and standardized testing. This is happening even though it has been shown that the practice of music may increase mathematical aptitude. The same could be said for physical education and learning in general. The American K-12 education system needs to be totally revamped to focus on inculcating the critical thinking, problem solving, research skills, and financial literacy which will be crucial in the information age. A nation of people who can only regurgitate facts and fill in bubbles on scantron sheets cannot build the new economy we need.

Education of our children in K12 is deficient because of several reasons:
1 Most other countries in K6-12, offer a dedicated curriculum to kids, based on the kid’s abilities. The US gave up on this in the mid seventies. Public schools use handouts instead of standard text books. As a parent of two children in Suffolk county schools in NY, I have been unable to understand what the curriculum is. I have been unable see any logic in grading.
2 In The Netherlands a teacher will spend 32 of the 40 paid hours in front of the classroom. Summer recess is only 6-8 weeks, and the school day is 8 hours long.
3 Science teachers almost all have a PhD or at least a bachelors degree in their field.
4 Science is taught in an integrated fashion for 6 years. From grade 6 to 12, each student will have biology, chemistry, math, and physics at least 2-3 hours a week.
5 We can’t expect our students to work in May and June without central air-conditioning.
6 Teacher’s should be fully respected, and poor grades are a students responsibility.
7 Random drug testing of teacher’s, staff, and students would be very helpful in my opinion.

I believe Thomas Paine learned what he used to design and build the first iron bridge while he was employed in his father’s corset-making shop. Last night, a friend of mine and I lamented the loss of the apprenticeship system that used to be everywhere.

The people attending higher education institutions are very capable – that’s why they are there. The idea that a higher education system needs or can benefit from the support of government is problematic at the outset.

Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt, policy advisor to president Reagan, wrote a book about K-12 education called “The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America.” I believe that such an outcome is to be expected from government support. Look at small farms and railroads. I think that if we all took the responsibility to spend wisely what we earn and stopped letting taxes go up so that the government could (pretend to) make those “wise spending decisions” we’d all be a lot better off.

Bubba,

Sorry, couldn’t sleep.

The Chinese can pour as many billions as they can or as they will into technical education, but if their political/cultural environment isn’t receptive to innovation, their scientists will long to come here. Even better way of mixing asphalt is dangerously revolutionary in a command society.

The education system in this country has been decaying for decades without anyone realizing or caring about it. It has come to a point where higher education has become a business, it’s all about bottom line. Top educational insitutions in this country have billions in endowments yet they refuse to spend it to subsidize the education and make it more affordable for the greater good of this country. They prefer to invest that money with big financial institutions and worry more about ROI(return on investments) than about providing affordable & quality education which should be their top priority.
To me it looks like higher education is no longer about learning & knowledge, it is about big bucks both in tuition fees and the salary that the job will pay the student after graduation.
This is one more symptom of the current underlying problems in the american society where skyrocketing stock market & home prices had led people to believe that education & jobs are secondary as long as you had paper wealth. With the bubble now deflating the reality is becoming more and more clear as each day passes.

Of course it is easier to start a business in another country than in the US. If you are self-employed here, you have to pay for health insurance which will drain you of any money. If you have a pre-existing condition, you may not even be able to get health insurance. All of this, plus all of the red tape and taxes stifles creativity and inovation.

The fact that we are looking to these other countries for answers means we’ve already fallen behind. Now we are the followers. I guess every empire topples eventually according to history.

[...] Asia, America, and Higher Ed | WBUR and NPR – On Point with Tom Ashbrook For many decades, through economic ups and downs, the United States has had one big consolation and wellspring of faith in the future: the second-to-none American system of higher education, with universities dominating the world in new research and new horizons. [...]

Tom, you are unstoppable with most diverse discussion. I want to thank you and your crews. Great production team.

hey im Ahmad from lebanon im very good in chemistry i have a problem to study this subject here in lebanon because i dont finish my high school here
i wann some one to help me by giving me the chance to study this subject out of here !
please
contact me on my email : ahmad.diab1st@hotmail.com

I’ve been an asst prof in chemistry at a university in Singapore for a little over three years. I’m struck by the fact that universities here are very concerned with looking like Western-style universities but haven’t quite figured out how to establish this in substance. There are huge problems with setting up merit-based and transparent peer review systems for research grants, and they don’t quite understand how to identify quality without obvious quantitive outputs. In addition authoritarian structures are quite strong and many decisions are based on face saving and guanxi instead of true leadership. Education is still more focused on “training” where classes focus on rote memorization instead of teaching the students how to think independently. In addition Western-style ethics haven’t taken hold. Unless there are huge government coverups we are going to see major ethical scandals in the region in the future.

Once they figure this all out, however, the US et al. are in trouble.

Most foreign-trained engineers don’t get jobs in Canada. Their foreign credentials, training and experience are not recognized. Online training certificates have become an alternative.

FREE CONTINUING EDUCATION AND E-LEARNING FOR ELECTRICAL ENGINEERS AND ARCHITECTS – now available at:

philipjarina.blogspot.com

And use online certificates to prove you have product knowledge and understanding.