[Vision2020] A reply to what Nick 'Knows'

[Phil Nisbet]

Reading the latest article by Nick Gier is interesting, more for what it 
tells us about how academia views the world than as a true picture of 
reality either here in America or in the rest of the globe.

People study science and engineering not only for fire in the belly, they do 
so because they want to eat.  Students gravitate to institutions of higher 
learning because after they are done with grabbing a degree, they want to 
find a nice job at which to exercise their skills.  I never met, say, a 
geological oceanographer who was planning on going for a master’s degree 
just for the shear joy of knowledge.  I have never seen a person go through 
the struggles of P Chem just for the unmitigated hell of it, they did so to 
grab a chemical industry job.

Look at Nick’s example;

“European and Asian cultures still respect knowledge as an end itself and 
they value their teachers more and pay them accordingly.  These societies 
also give solid support their schools and their students. For example, all 
Danish university students who keep up their grades are given a $500 monthly 
stipend.”

Well, gosh, the kids there value education so much they do it for money!  I 
fail to see the difference between that and the American example, save 
perhaps that the American kids go for the delayed gratification of waiting 
to get a job to see their benefit.  What Nick is suggesting is that we bribe 
them while they study with money to keep them in University.

Had Nick spent the time and asked those Asian parents why they put such 
emphasis on education, I doubt that their reply to him would have been, “We 
push young Privat to study because we want him to have lots of esoteric 
knowledge”.  More likely they would have cited the fact that they wanted 
their young to get ahead in life and make more than they had and that means 
JOB at the end of the academic road.

So, why do the Asian nations have a larger number of scientists and 
engineers graduating?  It’s because that is where the jobs in science and 
engineering are.  And why are they hiring more scientists and engineers?  
Because they are building an industrial infrastructure and we here in 
America are not.

And why are so many American schools not graduating engineers and 
scientists?  Because we are not building any industry here, rather, we have 
driven our industry offshore.  No industry, no jobs and definitely no R & D 
related to a field, so hence the closure of schools related to those 
pursuits.

Here at the University of Idaho, we closed down the School of Mines, because 
the mining jobs are now in places like Indian, Thailand and China.  Its not 
that there are no mineral resources here or that it does not make more sense 
on an economic basis to mine them here, we have simply decided as a group 
and nation that scientists and engineers in mineral related industries are 
not desired or needed by deciding we hate mining.  We do not graduate 
engineers in steel work or people destined for factory floors or chemical 
plant engineers, because you can not build those here anymore.  Why get a 
degree in Petroleum Engineering when the newest plant was built in 1970 and 
you will have to wait for somebody to die to get an entry level job?

Look at multi-billion dollar industries like the silicon or the silicon 
carbide industries and you can see the pattern.  Just a few years ago we had 
a thriving industry here in the Pacific Northwest that hired people and 
produced the raw materials for the base of the computer industry, silicon 
and the base of the material sciences by making silicon carbide and silicon 
nitrides and the rest.  Those particular plants by their very nature produce 
carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide are clunky and big and hot and ugly.  So 
in 1996, efforts were initiated to drive them out of business.  So where did 
they go, since we still use computers and new high tech materials?  They 
headed for China and now the Chinese make all that basic materials and teach 
engineers and scientists to work in those industries.  Our lose of several 
billion dollars in business was their gain and that closure stepped right 
back up the totem pole and did in the need to have Professors to teach that 
type of engineering.

And yes, because they have the industries and therefore have the income from 
those industries, the Chinese and the Indians and the Thai, are going to 
also have the money to put into Research and Development and make the new 
finds and start the new industries that will end up surpassing us.  Those 
that actually are doing things make the discoveries that make the processes 
more efficient.  Just as an example, you do not come up with new and cheaper 
and less environmentally unfriendly minerals extraction if your nation does 
not have any mines.

But Nick asks us to believe that companies are fleeing to Canada because the 
quality of our people is lower than the Canadians.  All I can say is 
hogwash.  Just as a simple example, it took Ceradyne over 7 years to get 
approval to build a modern silicon carbide facility in upstate New York, but 
a similar plant built by Dow Corning was constructed in Manitoba with about 
a years permitting time.  The Canadians wanted the jobs and also wanted a 
piece of the new high tech materials industry that such a plant would bring, 
while here in the US we look down on those sorts of plants and jobs.  They 
speed permit, while we delay and the time cost of money sorts out where 
future construction will go as a consequence.

But why would Nick and his associates push an idea that the problem is a 
lack of spending or caring about education in the United States?

First, the United States has the world’s highest total expenditure on 
education, outspending its closest rival by hundreds of billions of dollars. 
  Second, only Norway spends more per pupil than we do.

Of course then you have this from the World Bank;

Average years of schooling of adults is the years of formal schooling 
received, on average, by adults over age 15. (Data Source: Barro-Lee Data 
Set www.worldbank.org/html/prdmg/grthweb/ddbarle2.htm)

1.	United States 12.0 (2000)

2.	Norway 11.8 (2000)

3.	New Zealand 11.7 (2000)

4.	Canada 11.6 (2000)

5.	Sweden 11.4 (2000)

6.	Australia 10.9 (2000)

7.	Switzerland 10.5 (2000)

8.	Germany 10.2 (2000)

9.	Finland 10.0 (2000)

10.	Poland 9.8 (2000)

Which seems to show that in terms of years in school, our students are 
spending more years in the education process than any other country and that 
the Japanese and Koreans and Indians and Thais are not even on the top ten 
for years in school.

So why are we not performing ‘up to speed’ with comparables?

Because what Nick did not tell you is that in Japan and Thailand and India 
and the rest of those high performance countries, not everybody gets to get 
an education.  In most of those countries they select who goes to college 
from just the best and the brightest, the rest are side tracked to 
vocational schools or simply denied any sort of educational opportunity.  
Those not full prepared students or simply not very bright kids are not 
allowed to attend their universities and for that matter not even allowed to 
go to a non-vocational High School.

And that discrimination is also a matter of wealth in those countries.  Poor 
but bright kids in Udorn or in Poorne do not have the same opportunity that 
a kid from wealthy backgrounds has in Bombay or Bangkok.

Compare that to the USA where it’s rare to even have a vocational High 
School and we expect almost every kid to be college bound.  It’s comparing 
apples and oranges.  Only Canada has a higher per capita college attendance 
than we do and they are just as far back on the scale of over all 
achievement as we are because of it.

Philosophically that means that whereas we seek to generally educate our 
whole population, the Chinese and the Indians and the Thai and so many 
others, are trying to batch through only their best and brightest.  They are 
doing so to meet job demands because they are also seeking to fill 
industries that we have rejected with the sciences and engineering 
specialists who will one day discover and develop new technologies.

What Nick would have us do is compete on the economic stage in a Global 
economy by continuing to do what we are doing but put more money into it.  
He is then shocked that kids are either not prepared or simply not 
interested in going into areas of knowledge that have no ability to provide 
jobs.  He expects our average student to compete with the world’s selected 
best and brightest and then figures that they should do so without a career 
at the end of the educational rainbow to have made the effort worth their 
while.

So, first you need to compare apples to apples, how are all the Japanese 
students scoring on tests, not just the culled out crowd of those headed for 
college.  Then if you want to see more scientists and engineers, clear up 
the problems we have with delays in permitting processes that make new 
plants and industry in new technologies uneconomic in the USA, so that the 
kids have a reason to get degrees and use their knowledge to develop new 
technologies.  The Japanese and Indians and Chinese are not training those 
kids for the joy of having bright guys, they are training them to build 
plants and generate business and we need to see that we can do the same.

This requires further discussion on several other points and I will continue 
it in other postings I think.

Phil Nisbet

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