[IP] Learning to Lose?
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From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: December 8, 2005 2:50:58 PM EST
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <dewayne-net@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Learning to Lose?
Reply-To: dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Learning to Lose?
Our Education System Isn't Ready for a World of Competition
By Norman R. Augustine
Tuesday, December 6, 2005; A29
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/05/
AR2005120501548.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns>
In the five decades since I began working in the aerospace industry,
I have never seen American business and academic leaders as concerned
about this nation's future prosperity as they are today.
On the surface, these concerns may seem unwarranted. Two million jobs
were created in the United States in the past year. Citizens of other
nations continue to invest their savings in this country at a
remarkable rate. Our nation still has the strongest scientific and
technological enterprise -- and the best research universities -- in
the world.
But deeper trends in this country and abroad are signs of a gathering
storm. After the Cold War, nearly 3 billion potential new capitalists
entered the job market. A substantial portion of our workforce now
finds itself in direct competition for jobs with highly motivated and
often well-educated people from around the world. Workers in
virtually every economic sector now face competitors who live just a
mouse click away in Ireland, Finland, India, China, Australia and
dozens of other nations.
Soon the only jobs that will not be open to worldwide competition are
those that require near physical contact between the parties to a
transaction. Visitors to an office not far from the White House are
greeted by a receptionist on a flat-screen display that controls
access to the building and arranges contacts; she is in Pakistan.
U.S. companies each morning receive software that was written in
India overnight in time to be tested in the United States and
returned to India for further refinement that same evening. Drawings
for American architectural firms are produced in Brazil. Call-center
employees in India are being taught to speak with a Midwestern accent.
This movement of U.S. jobs to other countries has few natural limits.
Manufacturing jobs were the first to go, but jobs developing software
and conducting various design activities soon followed.
Administrative and support jobs are starting to move overseas, and
even "high-end" jobs such as professional services, research and
management are threatened.
Other nations will continue to have the advantage of lower wages, so
the United States must compete on the basis of its strengths.
Throughout the 20th century, one of these strengths was our knowledge-
based resources -- particularly science and technology. But the
scientific and technological foundations of our economic leadership
are eroding at a time when many other nations are building their
innovative capacity.
This nation's trade balance in high-technology goods swung from a
positive flow of $33 billion in 1990 to a negative flow of $24
billion in 2003. Two years from now, for the first time ever, the
most capable high-energy particle accelerator in the world will be
outside the United States. Low-wage employers in this country, such
as McDonald's and Wal-Mart, create many more jobs than do high-wage
employers. In 2001 U.S. industry spent more on tort litigation and
related costs than on research and development.
Today, high-technology firms have to be on the leading edge of
scientific and technological progress to survive. Intel Corp.
Chairman Craig Barrett has said that 90 percent of the products his
company delivers on the final day of each year did not exist on the
first day of the same year. To succeed in that kind of marketplace,
U.S. firms need employees who are flexible, knowledgeable, and
scientifically and mathematically literate.
But the U.S. educational system is failing in precisely those areas
that underpin our competitiveness: science, engineering and
mathematics. In a recent international test involving mathematical
understanding, U.S. students finished 27th among the participating
nations. In China and Japan, 59 percent and 66 percent, respectively,
of undergraduates receive their degrees in science and engineering,
compared with 32 percent in the United States.
I've recently had an opportunity to review these trends as chairman
of a 20-member committee created by the National Academy of Sciences,
the National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine.
Congress asked the committee to examine the threats to America's
future prosperity. The panel was a diverse group that included
university presidents, Nobel laureates, heads of companies and former
government officials. We agreed unanimously that the United States
faces a serious and intensifying economic challenge from abroad --
and that we appear to be on a losing path.
[snip]
The writer is the retired chairman and chief executive of Lockheed
Martin Corp.
Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com>
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