n a message dated 10/29/07 9:30:42 P.M. Central Daylight Time, News@JobDestruction.info writes:
<<<<< JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER No. 1777 -- 10/29/2007 >>>>>
Vivek Wadhwa, the enigmatic part-time editorialist and CEO, wrote a thought
provoking article for Businessweek that is spreading around the internet
like a wildfire. Without a doubt, Wadhwa is turning into an internet celeb
over this one.
One thing really caught my eye -- he wrote that during the time period from
1985 to 2000, about 435,000 U.S. citizens and permanent residents a year
graduated with Bachelor's, Master's, and Doctoral degrees in science and
engineering. Over the same period, there were about 150,000 jobs added
annually to the science and engineering workforce.
Let's consider just what those numbers mean. Every year, for the 15 year
time period considered (1985-2000) there was a job deficit of 285,000 jobs
per year. That translates to a total job creation deficit of 4,275,000. Pay
attention to the time span -- those years were considered to be the boom
times for high-tech careers. Numbers may not be available for the last 7
years but you can bet things are far worse now.
So here is the jobs scorecard for 15 years:
2,250,000 S&E jobs were created
-6,525,000 Americans graduated with S&E degrees
---------
-4,275,000 jobs deficit
Put another way, we graduated more than 4 million science and engineering
grads than the job market needed. Corporations also fired a lot of them,
which is not counted in those numbers. What kind of shortage is that?
During this time what was the U.S. government doing to help the problem?
Well, at the same time millions of S&E grads couldn't find jobs in their
chosen profession, the government was solving an alleged "shortage" by
importing vast numbers of H-1B and L-1 visa holders, and if that wasn't
enough they were giving even more jobs away permanently by handing out
millions of green cards. Also, let's don't forget they were also giving
incentives for companies to move jobs overseas. I'm not sure how to
calculate the total deficit that visas added to the total above because
many H-1Bs return home, and others convert their visas to green cards.
Still others just let their visas go out of status and stay in the U.S. as
"documented" illegal immigrants.
All of this math gave me a headache, so I decided to ask Vivek Wadhwa where
the millions of grads go after they find that they can't find a job in
their chosen career. He answered that about two thirds of the engineering
graduates take jobs in other professions, complete higher education, or
leave the field because they don't do well. In other words, most of the S&E
grads have to get other types of jobs because of a glut of scientists and
engineers.
Put another way, the success rate of engineering and science graduates at
finding jobs in their chosen major is 33%, which means conversely means
that 66% of them are unable to find a career in science and engineering
after they graduate. It appears that many of them go onto graduate school
in the desperate hope that a more advanced degree will help them in the
marketplace. What Wadhwa was saying got me curious enough to go to a few
university websites to see if they were telling prospective students about
the risks involved in choosing S&E as a career choice.
If universities were required to have "truth in advertising" they would put
these statistics up there so that students could make intelligent decisions
about what career to pursue, but instead the students are lied to from day
one.
I decided to go to a few university websites to see if they are starting to
be more truthful in the advertising. The results didn't surprise me because
nothing has changed. Universities are in the business of recruiting
students, not in giving them good career advice.
Take this example from the Penn State engineering website. Notice how they
avoid any mention of specifics, like for instance what percentage of their
graduates actually get engineering work at companies like AT$T. Instead
they prefer vague terms like "others". Considering this is supposed to be a
school of engineering they sure are squishy on the math!
http://www.esm.psu.edu/faq/
What do engineering Science students do after graduation?
A large number of our graduates continue on to the top graduate
school in the US (for example: Carnegie Mellon, Cornell,
Michigan, Penn State, Stanford, UC Berkeley).
Others accept positions with companies such as AT&T, Bechtel
Bettis, Dupont, ExxonMobil, Ford, GE, IBM, Lockheed Martin, Lucent
Technologies or government agencies such as the Naval Research
Lab and the US Patent Office. Still others enter medical school,
law school, obtain MBAs, and/or start their own companies.
Drexel University is even more coy. Prospective students who want to learn
about engineering careers are provided with nothing more than a links page
to engineering associations who are in the business of convincing gullible
students to go into engineering (the usual suspects are linked such as
IEEE, AEC, ASME, etc.). Nothing that I saw on the Drexel web pages honestly
discusses the miserable odds these students will face when they graduate.
http://www.library.drexel.edu/resources/guides/engineeringjobs.html
I'm not going to belabor this point much, but I did think it would be
enlightening to go to the big daddy of them all -- the National Academy of
Sciences. Most of the universities just copy and paste their writings so I
went to their website and found out all about careers for PhDs. The first
paragraph is such a bunch of politically correct gobblygook I just had to
share it with you!
http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/careers/chap2.html#how
In engineering, careers are being transformed by several
intersecting trends. International companies now draw
employees from many nations, seeking out valued experts
from a global pool of labor to work project by project.
Companies value multilingual workers with a breadth of
competencies -- managerial as well as technical -- and the
ability to access and apply new scientific and
technologic knowledge.
So nowadays engineers have to be mulitilingual and know soft skills like
how to do performance reviews. I'll bet most universities aren't requiring
their engineers to take business, management, or foreign language classes,
but they should since that's what many of them will be using their
engineering degrees for. Better yet, advisors ought to just tell them to
save themselves some trouble by getting an MBA with English as a second
language.
Nowhere on the NAS web page was I able to find an honest discussion about
the percentages of their students who actually go into their fields of
study. They do however write in the most glowing of terms that PhDs in
chemistry who get jobs in things like sales, management, and perhaps being
bank tellers.
Similarly, PhD chemists have success in moving beyond the laboratory
bench to a wide range of careers. Within companies, they might move
into marketing, production, manufacturing, sales, or management.
Or they can move into such related fields as environm ental
chemistry, public policy, education, journalism, scientific
translation, law, banking, medicine, patent law, public service,
and regulation.
I'm not accusing ALL universities of deliberately lying to innocent and
gullible young American kids. I'm sure there are a few out there that tell
the truth -- it's just that I haven't found one. If you know of a
university that tells the truth, please send me a link to the web page with
an excerpt.
You may wonder why I diverted so much on this issue of universities, but it
all ties back to Vivek Wadhwa. In our emails he made the comment that S&E
degrees are becoming more like liberal arts degrees. He follows with a
positive spin that S&E diplomas lead to many other fields that Americans
thrive in. He didn't elaborate on specific fields but I assume he meant
something better than the usual alternative like flipping burgers.
Sadly, Vivek is probably correct that S&E degrees are not much better than
liberal arts degrees. My BSEE is probably not worth its weight in toilet
paper! Of course that leads to the next question: wouldn't it be smarter
just to get a liberal arts degree? Why hassle with the tough coursework to
get a science or engineering degree when employers consider both diplomas
equally valuable? I asked Vivek that exact question but so far he has only
answered me in riddles. He also gave me a list of some companies the
graduates at his university went to work for, which is kind of like saying
everyone should play Powerball because there is a certifiable list of
winners.
Perhaps universities should explain on their websites that 33% of their S&E
grads will get decent jobs, while the others will compete with the liberal
arts grads for whatever crumbs are left. They might as well be honest
because nowadays the kids going to college know the truth, and that's why
they aren't enrolling in S&E. Everyone but the media and our politicians
understand that students are making intelligent career decisions by
avoiding S&E degrees.
Vivek Wadhwa is very good at diagnosing problems and articulating them on
paper. Having said that, there is not much in his article that hasn't been
written many times before (see footnote below). The only difference is that
Wadhwa is a CEO that happens to be a naturalized citizen from India, and he
happens to write for Business Week. My guess is that the mainstream media
will ignore his article because it has a little too much of the truth, and
he makes enough credible points to make most corporacrats squirm
Wadhwa is somewhat of a heretic, and I'm sure he will receive wide scale
condemnation in the business and Indian communities for writing the
article. That doesn't mean we should embrace his positions on employment
based visas, but we certainly should use what he says to bolster what we
have been trying to say for years.
At first blink many of you will buy into Wadhwa's solutions to the problems
because he warns of the dangers of outsourcing, and he even goes as far as
saying that H-1B should be abolished. Sounds good right? Well it would be
if his alternative made sense, but instead he is strictly party line when
it comes to how to solve the job mess. His solution to the problem is no
different than IEEE, or many others -- he wants to hand out unlimited
numbers of green cards for everyone who wants to work in the U.S.
Folks, trading H-1B for green cards is like making a deal with the devil!
You won't have to search hard to find more of Wadhwa's writings where he
voices support for expanding the green card program. Just to see if he
changed his mind about green cards I emailed him and was disappointed when
he reaffirmed his boosterism for handing out green cards like Halloween
treats.
I'm sure all of you that have been on my mailing list get tired of me
giving out these links, but keep in mind that I get new people and they
need this information. I suspect most of you haven't read either of these
either, and unless you do you will be suckered in by Vivek Wadhwa's
open-border slant.
To understand more about H-1B vs. green cards, go to the following links:
http://www.jobdestruction.info/ShameH1B/H1BvsGreenCard.htm
H-1B vs. Green Cards Which is Better?
Debate between Rob Sanchez, Dr. Norman Matloff, and Paul Donnelly in the
year 2002
http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/PrevWage.pdf
Fixing Our Badly Broken H-1B Visa and Employer-Sponsored Green Card
Programs
by Norman Matloff
Vivek thinks that the good of the nation is served by doing what's best for
business. That's understandable considering he is a CEO. Unfortunately
sometimes the interests of business and labor are in conflict with each
other. We cannot allow wild increases in the number of green card holders
without harming the workforce. Call me insensitive to the needs of business
if you will, but we shouldn't let big business dictate public policy or
allow them to run roughshod over this country. Most big businesses have no
national loyalty or identity so they could care less what's good for the
USA.
I have another major problem with Vivek's article: Vivek makes the
supposition that foreigners who come to the U.S. file more patents than
U.S. citizens. Let's just give him a pass on that one because it's so easy
to debunk it's just not much of a challenge for me.
What really gets my goat is when he makes the false premise where a
foreigner in the U.S., who is some kind of genius, is filing patents as
fast as popcorn pops. Naturally the U.S. cannot compete in the global
economy without this foreign born genius who was nice enough to bless our
soil with his presence. In Vivek's scenario this best-and-brightest
immigrant who is essential to the future of our nation is forced to go back
to his home country because he is going to be inconvenienced while having
to wait a few years to get his green card. Keep in mind he already has a
visa and that he is already working in the U.S. Vivek warns that unless we
start handing out green cards these foreign born geniuses and entrepreneurs
will move to someplace more lucrative, like Communist China, which of
course will use his scientific prowess to do evil deeds.
OK, I know it sounds sort of like a Halloween story, but I'm not the one
that made it up, Vivek did!
Let's just say for the sake of argument Vivek's scenario did occur. Imagine
if you will somebody that invented a new video game that our kids can't
live without, or perhaps a medical device that will save lives. Let's also
imagine that the meanies at the Department of Homeland Security acted like
imbecilic bureaucrats and deported him because his student visa expired, or
perhaps his H-1B went out of status. From a practical standpoint, why
should we care if that genius invents the widget in India or China vs. the
USA? It's still going to be made overseas by a company that isn't going to
share that new wealth in the USA, so who cares? Either was the profits from
the device is going to go into a CEO's Bermuda bank account.
Does anybody really believe that our kids won't get that game DVD because a
programmer designed a video game in Bangalore instead of Palo Alto? Either
way, the DVD won't be made in the USA.
Vivek's silly scenario only makes sense to people who haven't wised up to
the reality of trans-national corporations who have no national identity or
loyalty to the American consumers and workers who made them rich. Vivek is
all wet, but his imaginary scenario is a popular one in the press. Vivek
probably didn't invent this so-called doomsday scenario either but the
problem is that he is listened to more than most of the shills.
Now for the reality check: There are plenty of methods for the geniuses of
the world to stay here, including "O" visas or EB-1s. Despite what Vivek
would have you believe they are not hard to get for recognized experts.
They are only hard to get for foreigners who come here to supply our greedy
corporations with cheap labor, but even that's not a problem -- we have
H-1B for that.
Lost in any of this is a discussion of the ethics involved in stealing
other nations' geniuses, so I will only mention it in passing. An implicit
assumption is made in our media made that it's OK to steal other nation's
scientists and engineers as long as it increases the profits of our
corporations. Does anybody see something wrong with this but me?
Well, excuse the rather long commentary, now read it yourself. I know I'm
in trouble when my commentary is larger than the original article!
<<<<< FOOTNOTE >>>>>
In 1989, Citro and Kaltron did a study for the NAS titled "Surveying the
Nation's Scientists and Engineers" in which they described "attachment
rates", which is the propensity of S&E grads to work in occupations in
fields related to their degree. They found the attachment rate was only 33%
for advanced S&E grads and a dismal 25% for Bachelor degreed. Remember the
NAS? They are the ones that don't think there is a problem that PhDs in
chemistry work as bank tellers. They have also been one of the chief
prognosticators of the shortage theories for about the last 30 or 40 years.
Nothing has changed in that period of time, not even the statistics!
Speaking of attachment rates, Vivek Wadhwa got a BA degree in CS, and then
made his fortune as a CEO. Does that tell you something?
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/oct2007/sb20071025_827398.htm
Viewpoint October 26, 2007, 12:01AM EST text size: TT
The Science Education Myth
Forget the conventional wisdom. U.S. schools are turning out more capable
science and engineering grads than the job market can support
by Vivek Wadhwa
Political leaders, tech executives, and academics often claim that the U.S.
is falling behind in math and science education. They cite poor test
results, declining international rankings, and decreasing enrollment in the
hard sciences. They urge us to improve our education system and to graduate
more engineers and scientists to keep pace with countries such as India and
China.
Yet a new report by the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, tells a
different story. The report disproves many confident pronouncements about
the alleged weaknesses and failures of the U.S. education system. This data
will certainly be examined by both sides in the debate over highly skilled
workers and immigration (BusinessWeek.com, 10/10/07). The argument by
Microsoft (MSFT), Google (GOOG), Intel (INTC), and others is that there are
not enough tech workers in the U.S.
The authors of the report, the Urban Institute's Hal Salzman and Georgetown
University professor Lindsay Lowell, show that math, science, and reading
test scores at the primary and secondary level have increased over the past
two decades, and U.S. students are now close to the top of international
rankings. Perhaps just as surprising, the report finds that our education
system actually produces more science and engineering graduates than the
market demands.
Junior Scientists on the Rise
These findings go against what has been the dominant position about our
education system and our science and engineering workforce. Consider
reports on national competitiveness that policymakers often turn to, such
reports as the 2005 "Rising Above the Gathering Storm" by the National
Academy of Sciences. This report says the U.S. is in dire straits because
of poor math and science preparation. The report points to declining test
scores, fewer students taking math and science courses, and low-quality
curriculums and teacher preparation in K-12 education compared to other
countries.
The call has been taken up by some of the most prominent people in business
and politics. Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft, said at an education
summit in 2005, "In the international competition to have the biggest and
best supply of knowledge workers, America is falling behind." President
George W. Bush addressed the issue in his 2006 State of the Union address.
"We need to encourage children to take more math and science, and to make
sure those courses are rigorous enough to compete with other nations," he
said.
Salzman and Lowell found the reverse was true. Their report shows U.S.
student performance has steadily improved over time in math, science, and
reading. It also found enrollment in math and science courses is actually
up. For example, in 1982 high school graduates earned 2.6 math credits and
2.2 science credits on average. By 1998, the average number of credits
increased to 3.5 math and 3.2 science credits. The percent of students
taking chemistry increased from 45% in 1990 to 55% in 1996 and 60% in 2004.
Scores in national tests such as the National Assessment of Educational
Progress, the SAT, and the ACT have also shown increases in math scores
over the past two decades.
And the new report again went against the grain when it compared the U.S.
to other countries. It found that over the past decade the U.S. has ranked
a consistent second place in science. It also was far ahead of other
nations in reading and literacy and other academic areas. In fact, the
report found that the U.S. is one of only a few nations that has
consistently shown improvement over time.
Why the sharp discrepancy? Salzman says that reports citing low U.S.
international rankings often misinterpret the data. Review of the
international rankings, which he says are all based on one of two tests,
the Trends in International Mathematics & Science Study (TIMMS) or the
Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), show the U.S. is in
a second-ranked group, not trailing the leading economies of the world as
is commonly reported. In fact, the few countries that place higher than the
U.S. are generally small nations, and few of these rank consistently high
across all grades, subjects, and years tested. Moreover, he says, serious
methodological flaws, such as different test populations, and other
limitations preclude drawing any meaningful comparison of school systems
between countries.
Enough Jobs for the Grads?
As far as our workforce is concerned, the new report showed that from 1985
to 2000 about 435,000 U.S. citizens and permanent residents a year
graduated with bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in science and
engineering. Over the same period, there were about 150,000 jobs added
annually to the science and engineering workforce. These numbers don't
include those retiring or leaving a profession but do indicate the size of
the available talent pool. It seems that nearly two-thirds of bachelor's
graduates and about a third of master's graduates take jobs in fields other
than science and engineering.
Michael Teitelbaum, vice-president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation,
which, among other things, works to improve science education, says this
research highlights the troubling weaknesses in many conventional policy
prescriptions. Proposals to increase the supply of scientists and engineers
rapidly, without any objective evidence of comparably rapid growth in
attractive career opportunities for such professionals, might actually be
doing harm.
Shortages in Specific Skills
In previous columns, I have written about research my team at Duke
University completed that shattered common myths (BusinessWeek.com,
7/10/06) about India and China graduating 12 times as many engineers as the
U.S. We found that the U.S. graduated comparable numbers and was far ahead
in quality. Our research also showed there were no engineer shortages
(BusinessWeek.com, 11/7/06) in the U.S., and companies weren't going
offshore because of any deficiencies in U.S. workers.
So, there isn't a lack of interest in science and engineering in the U.S.,
or a deficiency in the supply of engineers. However, there may sometimes be
short-term shortages of engineers with specific technical skills in certain
industry segments or in various parts of the country. The National Science
Foundation data show that of the students who graduated from 1993 to 2001,
20% of the bachelor's holders went on to complete master's degrees in
fields other than science and engineering and an additional 45% were
working in other fields. Of those who completed master's degrees, 7%
continued their education and 31% were working in fields other than science
and engineering.
There isn't a problem with the capability of U.S. children. Even if there
were a deficiency in math and science education, there are so many
graduates today that there would be enough who are above average and fully
qualified for the relatively small number of science and engineering jobs.
Science and engineering graduates just don't see enough opportunity in
these professions to continue further study or to take employment.
Creating Wider-Ranging Demand
With U.S. competitiveness at stake, we need to get our priorities straight.
Education is really important, and a well-educated workforce is what will
help the U.S. keep its global edge. But emphasizing math and science
education over humanities and social sciences may not be the best
prescription for the U.S. We need our children to receive a balanced and
broad education.
Perhaps we should focus on creating demand for the many scientists and
engineers we graduate. There are many problems, from global warming to the
development of alternative fuels to cures for infectious diseases, that
need to be solved. Rather than blaming our schools, let's create exciting
national programs that motivate our children to help solve these problems.
Wadhwa is Wertheim Fellow at the Harvard Law School and executive in
residence at Duke University. He is a tech entrepreneur who founded two
technology companies. His research can be found at
www.globalizationresearch.com .
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