I have been looking for data on just who is earning technical PhDs and find some interesting facts. That is what this blog is about.
For some years I have been concerned about the decline in interest in technology by our k-12 schools and thus our children. Remember that our children are our future and what they do or don't do will have a major affect on our future. Here is a short story that I think will show my point. A few years ago I had the chance to have coffee with our new school superintendent. This is the most important person in your public schools in your town so this is important. I asked the new superintendent a simple question. "What do you think were the 10 most significant events of the past century?" There was no limit on what areas these events were in, but I expected to hear some that were technical. The superintendent never had a single event that was technical. !00% were social "fuzzy feel good" type events. Me and my friends were surprised because we all knew that our kids needed to be prepared for the future by our schools and that mean a new focus on technology. We gave the new superintendents a second chance to come up with something that was technical and he came up with the telephone. We reminded him that the telephone was invented in the 18th century, not the 19th.
Many of my coffee friends were engineers so I asked them about how many students that they had in their engineering school compared to now. In all cases but one, both the percentage of technical students had gone down as well as the absolute number. Next I asked what percentage was female or foreign and the number was either zero or very small. Next I asked about today and all agreed that there were more females and many more foreign students. Now, what do you make of this?
If we now have more females and at the same time have fewer total students, that mean the change in male students has been even higher. This is significant and I ask you "why?" If you adjust for the foreign students the picture gets darker for our future. I checked on the Internet to see if I could find more information and was surprised that in Material Science 90% of those earning PhD's were foreign students. In this area that is so critical for our future, why don't more of our children opt for this type of degree? I don't know the answer, but we all need to wake up.
It is clear that we have finally tapped in to the females in our population, but what has happened to our males? Like all countries in the world, 50% of our children have IQ's below 100 and 50% above. We don't have an unlimited number of children with IQ's above 100 and thus we can not afford to waste any. It appears to me that there are at least two factors at work here. The quality of the out put from our schools have definitely gone down. That is number (1). The next is that many of our children have avoided technical majors in favor of "fluff" majors like political science and sociology. Is this last one due to the decline in our public schools or poor parenting?
The problem with foreign students taking over technology is that it means we will soon not be able to control our future. Further, the ratio of foreign students is actually getting worse. The half life of this kind of change is many years and that means that if we start working on the problem seriously today, it may be 25 or more years before we actually turn the corner. That is why I am so concerned about this situation. How about you? Do you think that we can turn this around?
The problem that we face is that we can not waste the intellectual potential of anyone and that means those in some of our poorest and crime ridden communities. Each community needs to hold up their end. At this time it seems that Asians are holding up their end, but at the other extreme, Blacks are not. I don't know what it is going to take to get more Blacks into technology, but we need to figure out how. It is my understanding that Blacks have the same ratio of smart kids as any other group, so why are they not holding up their end? Just as with non-Blacks, it appears that they are being let down by our schools and their parents. It seems that out of wedlock births is the main problem in the Black community and no change appears to be in sight. For our future, we need all groups working together to carry their own weight and technology is just a good example.
PS--Here is an interesting fact affecting our technical future. There was just a study of the salaries of our college and university professors that showed that those in things like Black Studies or Transgender Studies earned more than those in Math and Science. This has to be a total perversion of our educational system and confirms that the future of our country is in danger from the "inside". You can bet that the graduate students from places like China are not in these "fluff" classes!
For some years I have been concerned about the decline in interest in technology by our k-12 schools and thus our children. Remember that our children are our future and what they do or don't do will have a major affect on our future. Here is a short story that I think will show my point. A few years ago I had the chance to have coffee with our new school superintendent. This is the most important person in your public schools in your town so this is important. I asked the new superintendent a simple question. "What do you think were the 10 most significant events of the past century?" There was no limit on what areas these events were in, but I expected to hear some that were technical. The superintendent never had a single event that was technical. !00% were social "fuzzy feel good" type events. Me and my friends were surprised because we all knew that our kids needed to be prepared for the future by our schools and that mean a new focus on technology. We gave the new superintendents a second chance to come up with something that was technical and he came up with the telephone. We reminded him that the telephone was invented in the 18th century, not the 19th.
Many of my coffee friends were engineers so I asked them about how many students that they had in their engineering school compared to now. In all cases but one, both the percentage of technical students had gone down as well as the absolute number. Next I asked what percentage was female or foreign and the number was either zero or very small. Next I asked about today and all agreed that there were more females and many more foreign students. Now, what do you make of this?
If we now have more females and at the same time have fewer total students, that mean the change in male students has been even higher. This is significant and I ask you "why?" If you adjust for the foreign students the picture gets darker for our future. I checked on the Internet to see if I could find more information and was surprised that in Material Science 90% of those earning PhD's were foreign students. In this area that is so critical for our future, why don't more of our children opt for this type of degree? I don't know the answer, but we all need to wake up.
It is clear that we have finally tapped in to the females in our population, but what has happened to our males? Like all countries in the world, 50% of our children have IQ's below 100 and 50% above. We don't have an unlimited number of children with IQ's above 100 and thus we can not afford to waste any. It appears to me that there are at least two factors at work here. The quality of the out put from our schools have definitely gone down. That is number (1). The next is that many of our children have avoided technical majors in favor of "fluff" majors like political science and sociology. Is this last one due to the decline in our public schools or poor parenting?
The problem with foreign students taking over technology is that it means we will soon not be able to control our future. Further, the ratio of foreign students is actually getting worse. The half life of this kind of change is many years and that means that if we start working on the problem seriously today, it may be 25 or more years before we actually turn the corner. That is why I am so concerned about this situation. How about you? Do you think that we can turn this around?
The problem that we face is that we can not waste the intellectual potential of anyone and that means those in some of our poorest and crime ridden communities. Each community needs to hold up their end. At this time it seems that Asians are holding up their end, but at the other extreme, Blacks are not. I don't know what it is going to take to get more Blacks into technology, but we need to figure out how. It is my understanding that Blacks have the same ratio of smart kids as any other group, so why are they not holding up their end? Just as with non-Blacks, it appears that they are being let down by our schools and their parents. It seems that out of wedlock births is the main problem in the Black community and no change appears to be in sight. For our future, we need all groups working together to carry their own weight and technology is just a good example.
PS--Here is an interesting fact affecting our technical future. There was just a study of the salaries of our college and university professors that showed that those in things like Black Studies or Transgender Studies earned more than those in Math and Science. This has to be a total perversion of our educational system and confirms that the future of our country is in danger from the "inside". You can bet that the graduate students from places like China are not in these "fluff" classes!
