Published: January 26, 2007 05:40 pm      

The quiet crisis: Educational leaders must rally to grow U.S. technology promise

Every couple of decades, a book comes along that undercuts the very foundation of American thought. “The World is Flat”, by Thomas Friedman, is such a book. So insightful (and prophetic) are Friedman’s observations and those of the experts he cites that the book should be required reading for everyone involved in American education.

The book’s premise — that the world has entered a truly global economy — gives way to the startling revelation that the United States, long the undisputed leader in science and technology, is now falling rapidly behind.

For those who need statistical evidence, the numbers are clear: Last year, only 5 percent of the college degrees earned in the U.S. were in science and engineering; bachelor’s degrees in science and engineering make up 60 percent of the total degrees earned in China. While U.S. enrollment in science and engineering has dropped by 12 percent in the last five years, China will graduate 350,000 engineers this year alone. By 2010, it is predicted that 90 percent of all the world’s scientists and engineers will be in Asia.

“The diminishing of U.S. technological leadership could signify the beginning of a new world order,” writes Willard Daggett, president of the International Center for Leadership in Education. Traditionally poor countries like China, India, and those in Eastern Europe will grow richer while the U.S. grows poorer.

The process has already begun, Friedman points out. Our present information-based society can “move work to worker.” In India, more than 245,000 well-trained computer technicians answer customer service calls from all over the world. Motorola, Hewlett-Packard, Cisco Systems, and other technology giants rely on Indian engineers to design software and futuristic multimedia features. Most MRI and CAT scans performed in American hospitals are analyzed in India, and a growing percentage of U.S. income tax forms are processed by Indian accountants.

Demographic differences between countries only compound America’s problem. The population of China is 1.5 billion — and growing. According to Geoffrey Colvin, “Even though China provides higher education to only a portion of their youth, in 2005 the nation produced 3.3 million college graduates — 600,000 with degrees in engineering.”

India, another huge country, produced 350,000 engineers — all fluent in English. America, in contrast, graduated 70,000.

“The sky is not falling, nothing horrible is going to happen today,” says Shirley Jackson, president of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. “The United States is still the leading engine for innovation in the world. It has the best graduate programs, the best scientific infrastructure, and the capital markets to exploit it. But there is a quiet crisis in U.S. science and technology that we have to wake up to.”

Educational leaders must realize that the solution to this quiet crisis resides with them. What is at stake is the global leadership position and standard of living Americans have long taken for granted.

Although No Child Left Behind legislation set out to raise achievement for all students, it has — in practice — emphasized reading and math to the detriment of science and social studies. Public schools now struggle to pull all children up to the middle. To compete globally, they must apply the same torque to pull middle to top.

Educators must also motivate and prepare more high school students for careers in math and science. Too many technical and skilled-labor jobs can be outsourced.

“If the work can be digitized, it can easily be moved anywhere in the world,” says Friedman. If American workers want to maintain salaries far above those paid to their counterparts in Asia, they will need to compete on the high end of the job market, not the low. In other words, America must produce more and more scientists, researchers, programmers, and engineers.

Challenges abound — not the least of which is the exponential growth of scientific and technological knowledge. The Human Genome Project alone powered an explosion of new research about how life works. According to Daggett, the processing power of a computer chip doubles every 18 months — at about the same rate as the body of data it is capable of storing. As a result, science textbooks — usually adopted every six years — become outdated even before they roll off the presses. For middle and high school teachers to keep abreast of such rapid scientific change is asking the impossible.

High school seniors and their parents must also renounce the long-held tradition of a “light” senior year. To successfully complete a college engineering degree requires that high school students take every math and science course offered, be well-grounded in English, speech, and a foreign language, and have competency with computer-aided drafting.

Students with aptitude and motivation for math and science should be identified early and channeled to rigorous programs, camps, and opportunities. They should also be told, early on, that their efforts will pay off — both in high salaries and limitless opportunities.

“Tipping the scale of competitive balance in favor of the U.S. worker requires one thing ... better educational standards,” writes Daggett.

Friedman’s message is the same: The world (i.e. playing field) is flat. American students will no longer enjoy the home-court advantage. Their counterparts worldwide will have the same opportunities, access the same information, and vie for the same jobs. American educational leaders are only holding the ball while other nations are scoring.

Let’s hope America has a plan to stay in the game!

Kellan Sarles is a former high school English teacher, now Information Specialist for Mercer County Schools.