By BonusOnus
http://news.yahoo.com/s/bw/20090303/bs_bw/feb2009tc20090228990934
The study is tainted and leaves a few points out.
"Despite the fact that they constitute only 12% of the U.S. population, immigrants have started 52% of Silicon Valley's technology companies and contributed to more than 25% of our global patents."
This is misleading. Immigrants have contributed immensely to our economic growth. HOWEVER, just because they go back to their home country doesn't mean that they will create the next Yahoo or create patents.
There is a reason why you can't name a Chinese or Indian version of Microsoft, Yahoo, or Google. While the immigrants from these countries are talented and help American innovation, these people did it in the American environment. The same people in the Chinese or Indian environment will not start tech companies or file patents because the business environment there does not foster such things.
I do not fear that China and India will overtake America for innovation on growth, not unless either country becomes more like America in terms of corruption, infrastructure, access to capital, free flowing thought, and entrepreneurship. People, go back 20 years - people were saying that Japan Inc would overtake America by now. Has it?
"Nearly a third of the Chinese returnees and a fifth of the Indians came to the U.S. on student visas. A fifth of the Chinese and nearly half of the Indians entered on temporary work visas (such as the H-1B). "
I don't have a problem with giving H1B visas to students from other countries who study here, get a degree and want to work here.
I have a problem with bodyshops like Satyam, Wipro, and Tata who use H1B visas to bring foreign workers and undercut the salaries of American workers.
Why don't we have separate visas for students who studied here and want to start working here? I have no problem with that.
Finally, I have a problem with Americans, white, black, Hispanic not getting science, math, and engineering degrees.
At one of my former companies, it sponsored interns. The company was a high-tech company in Silicon Valley. Most of them are post-graduate students. They had a little fair to show off their work at the company, to talk about the project that they worked on.
Almost all the interns for marketing, finance, and sales were filled with Americans. 95% of the interns for the engineering departments were filled with foreign students, mostly from India and China. Why the f**k are more Americans not getting post graduate degrees in engineering and computer science? And then we complain about Indians and Chinese taking our jobs? ***> This is the other half of the H1B problem!
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By CK:Well Bonus - "... problem with Americans, white, black, Hispanic not getting science, math, and engineering degrees"
The reason is that the other cultures usually invest in their children and their education. Some of those schools are very competitive!
But here it is different! Where I'm at they are cutting education down to the bone! Big companies want us dumb - we will then work for less and a dumber society is easier to control.
By BonusOnus:That's not true. Compare what the US spends per student against what Japan or China spends per student (factoring in the price parity factor). The US spends way more.
The average school size in Japan is 42.
Countries like China and Japan don't spend as much per student as the US. But they turn out engineering students because they have more people and their culture values education.
Our culture does not.
Money is not the problem for the state of our public education in this country
By CK:Well the way they are cutting teaching jobs here you'd never know! But it is also the level of the teachers as well. I have heard some teachers (in a different state) use such poor English that I hardly could understand it!
If you hire poor teachers you will get poor students who become poor adults.
But regardless - our state has cut education to the bone! There is nothing left to cut! Yet they lay off more and more teachers, closing schools, and pushing students into over-crowded classes. They are creating a condition of poor learning.
By BonusOnus:The reason poor teachers are in the public school system is because of the NEA (the school teachers' union). Any measure to reform the public schools is reflexively opposed by the NEA. Consider:
the NEA has opposed any measures to test teachers for proficiency. After you are "certified", that is it, no more testing.
the NEA has opposed any proposals to allow people who didn't go thru the approved-NEA process to teach.
the NEA has opposed merit pay for teachers
the NEA has opposed charter schools (these are public schools BTW)
the NEA has opposed vouchers
the NEA opposed an initiative measure in California that would have forced the state to spend a set percentage of all school funds directly for the classrooms. Bureaucrats and sundry programs would have been contained. This measure was authored by a public school teacher. The NEA opposed it.
the NEA has opposed a measure to make schools year long. Instead of having a long summer vacation, some educators wanted year long quarters with 4 weeks of vacation between quarters. This would have helped the students retain knowledge that they learned. The NEA opposed it because it would take away the summer vacations of public school teachers.
the NEA has opposed No Child Left Behind or any proposal to test if students are learning.
The supposed lack of money spent on public education is not the biggest impediment to education. The NEA is a bigger impediment.
By sympathetic reader:I think school boards and the government are cutting the wrong programs. Teachers have the responsibility of influencing our future leaders. Do you want our kids/future leaders to be hard working and intelligent or do you want them to be able to regurgitate test answers on command?
I do not begrudge one dime of my local school taxes. I am very pleased with my local school system. They do not hand out A's and their programs are challenging. I do not want a lazy slob who wants the summers off teaching my child. If you want quality teachers you are going to pay for them, union or no union.In most schools if you look at the athletic budgets you will be shocked. This information comes from a college professor.
Sports are important and they have their place but they are not more important than staffing and other programs.
By HaveADamnNiceDay:I think this problem is a little more deeply rooted than cutting programs or underfinanced education...
It seems our generation and the couple of generations previous (boomers, flower children, genX, etc.) have as a culture declined greatly. A lot of these folks have become parents, and haven't really learned how to rear children. They seem to assume the kids will raise themselves. I'm not trying to lump every person into this that's older than I am, but there are a great deal more parents out there these days that just don't care like they should, and are having more children than they can handle, and are stuck working to support all those hungry mouths as a single parent. Not only do a lot of these folks not care, but some of them just don't have the TIME to care. As a result, education has suffered and our competitive edge with the rest of the world has been dulled a bit.
I pray that our free thinking and creative culture doesn't get swept under the socialism rug.
By BonusOnus:SR,
what level of school are you talking about with regard to athletic budgets? high school or college? Some colleges have huge athletic budgets because they are huge revenue makers. Some do not.
High-school wise, the schools in my district had to cut some athletic programs because of budget cuts.
My alma mater had an athletic budget that was not too big. But because of Title XX, it had to provide teams for women to balance out the 50%/50% split required by Title XX.
On the other hand, we had remedial english and math classes for people who didn't know how to do basic math or write a proper sentence. Why was a 4 year public college providing remedial math and english classes when the money and professor time for them could have been used to provide classes for other topics? Shouldn't these students have gone to a community college and gotten up to speed on math and english instead and then transferred to my alma mater?
By SouthernProgrammer:It's all about the money.
A winning high school football team means college recruits.
This means parents will want their future quarterback to attend the school.
This means property values climb.
This means businesses thrive.
A town/city/state can make money when a High School / College has a winning athletic program.
Not too many businesses thrive when a school has a great math department except for hiring the math graduates to be accountants.
I don't mean to come across as harsh but those are the facts.
Our country values a quarterback who can lead a team to a superbowl victory over a math whiz.
Then again, Bill Gates has a lot more money than all the Quarterbacks combined...
By BonusOnus:SP,
...which dovetails with HANDN's assertion about the lack of culture. We as a society value a QB more than the next Sergey Brin (the founder of Google). Even in school, we make fun of intelligent people and call them nerds. This attitude does not exist in countries like India or China, where education is valued.No amount of money spent on public education will fix this problem.
PS: And I'm not bashing QBs either - I love football.
By labtech:India, Russia, and China all pay for their citizens' advanced degrees.
An Indian who attends university in India can come out with a MS in 4 years, a PhD in 6. A Russian can come out with a MS in 4.5 years. The Chinese, I'm not sure, but I know it's not as long as our 4 years for a BS, 2 years for a MS, and 4 years for PhD (and guess who gets to pay for it !).
So, if the US of A was going to pick up the tab for MY education, I'd be a double PhD, and not going into debt to get my MS, thanks so much. THAT is why the Americans are not getting higher education - we can't afford it.
By BonusOnus:Labtech,
Can you cite where you got the info that India, China, and Russia pay for their citzens getting advanced degrees?I'm assuming that this means these countries pay for them in a non-scholarship way.
By allbymyself:Education begins in the home! If the parents are active in their child's life and pay attention to teaching their children manners and basic common and decent behavior, we would not have this problem. You can not educate someone who does not want to be educated. Ask any teacher, some students will never be engineers, they do not care! Hey, that is okay with me because we need people to remove the trash and fix our cars and wire our houses etc.
By SouthernProgrammer:Bonus,
This attitude does not exist in countries like India or China, where education is valued.
You are 100% correct! In China, teachers are revered, to be sent home with a bad note from the teacher brings shame upon the family. In the US, the attitude is "those who can, do - those who can't - teach!". Well, who teaches you to read, do math, etc? TEACHERS.
Admittedly, our school system leaves a lot to be desired. Personally I think we should privatize our school system and give out vouchers. We also should have uniforms. Kids spend too much time worrying about how they look in school, if everyone had a uniform that would remove that distraction.
By labtech:Yes, unfortunately, Bonus, it is true. My sources are; 3 Chinese immigrants I have worked with. Two of them got their degrees in China, one got her advanced degree here, on a grant. They did not pay for this education. I have worked with 4 Indian immigrants; none of them paid for their education and the PhD expressed disbelief that it 'took that long' to become a PhD in America, it had only taken him 6.5 years to go through BS, MS and PhD. The 2 Russians did not pay for their degree; the one explained to me in great detail the educational system in Russia, also expressing disbelief that it took 6 years on average here to get a MS - it took her 4.5 years to get both the BS and MS degree in Russia, and she didn't have to pay a dime. I find it hard to believe all of those people were lying to me, the exact same lie, when they are separated over twenty years and 4 jobs.
So, perhaps when our wonderful country, the US of A, decides to put some money into the education of its citizens, we can have a better chance against those immigrants who DON'T have 'student loans' hanging over their heads.
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