In a message dated 11/15/07 12:53:10 A.M. Central Standard Time, matloff@cs.ucdavis.edu writes:

To: H-1B/L-1/offshoring e-newsletter 98

Enclosed below are an insightful piece from the Electronic Engineering
times and a transcript excerpt from the Lou Dobbs show, both on the
Urban Institute study of science and math education in the U.S.  Many of
you readers will recall that I reviewed that study here a few days ago;
see http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/UrbanInst2.txt  Afterward, I'm
including an article on another study, reported on in the New York
Times.

The EET article includes some very insightful comments by the dean of
engineering at Dartmouth, surprising as university administrators
generally love to cry wolf on education, in the hope it brings them more
funding, and to please their industrial patrons.  (If you study computer
science at Stanford University, your courses will be in Bill Gates Hall,
right across the street from the Wm. Hewlett Teaching Center and the
David Packard electrical engineering building, etc.)

Here's the excerpt quoting the dean:

# The math and science backgrounds of foreign and U.S. students appear
# similar, at least at one top U.S. engineering school. While acknowledging
# that his students may not represent a true cross section of a typical U.S.
# high school, Joe Helble, dean of the Thayer School of Engineering at
# Dartmouth College, said he sees surprising uniformity.
#
# "When I look at incoming graduate students at Dartmouth and I compare the
# ones who are U.S.-educated and those [educated overseas], I don't see huge
# differences," he said.
#
# What Helble sees "are differences in creativity. I would say that the U.S.
# students are among the most creative and innovative."
#
# Although some Asian students may have better raw quantitative skills, that
# doesn't necessarily make them better engineers or scientists, Helble said.
# "You have to look at their ability to tackle a problem without a clear
# solution."
#
# Some Dartmouth engineering grads end up in other fields, including financial
# services and investment jobs where they are valued for their ability to
# think quantitatively and analyze technologies, the Dartmouth dean noted.

I have some comments on those points.

First, one of the themes here is that averages are often not very
informative.  If one is concerned with the future of science and
engineering in the U.S., one should look at the better students, as they
are the ones who enter those fields.  TIMMS and the other international
tests basically look at averages.

Second, the dean should have pointed out that the bar for admission is
usually higher for foreign students.  Accordingly, the average foreign
student at Dartmouth actually should be a bit better than the Americans;
but that is very different from saying that the countries the
international students come from are better.

The issue of creativity is of course key.  It was brought up by one of
the UI study authors here in this article as well:

# But the skills that testing evaluates may not be the ones needed for
# innovation in a global economy. "Japan, Singapore and [South] Korea do have
# the kind of education that leads to [better] test performance, but does that
# lead to more innovation, better jobs and a better economy?" Salzman asked.
#
# For example, Singapore is promoting a national "creativity initiative"
# because the Asian city-state's leaders realize the need to de-emphasize its
# narrow educational approach, Salzman said. But for now, he added, it makes

Where, for instance, are the "killer apps" (great software packages),
the miracle drugs and so on from these Asian countries?  There have been
very few important innovations from Asia to date.  And though the Asian
governments have tried to improve creativity (besides Singapore, the
governments of Japan, S. Korea, China and Taiwan have all had such
initiatives), it's not just a matter of changing the education system.
Instead, the problem is cultural:  The teacher is treated as such a
master that the students don't realize they may have some good ideas
themselves.  Obedience does not produce the Einsteins and Edisons of the
world.

Nobel physicist Yang Zhen Ning has also commented on this.  So has Chen
Lixin, an engineering professor in China ("China's New Engineering
Obstacle," Chen Lixin, Prism, pub. by the American Society for
Engineering Education, September 1999).  Chen warns his nation that the
engineers being produced by Chinese universities are not good enough for
China to compete in the global high-tech market.  Professor Chen says
the educational system in China produces students who cannot think
independently or creatively, and cannot solve practical problems.  He
writes that the system "results in the phenomenon of high scores and low
ability."  This turn of phrase captures the problem quite succinctly,
especially in our context here of test scores.

The New York Times article is a little odd.  To my knowledge, the Times
has not covered the UI study, nor for that matter has any major
newspaper.  Why would the NYT cover this rather superficial study by AIR
and not the more extensive UI work?  The answer is probably that the
industry's PR people want to draw attention to the rather gloomy tone of
this AIR study.

As to the AIR study itself, the same criticisms UI made of the TIMMS and
NAEP data apply to the AIR work.  This is even more true in light of the
fact that the AIR authors used TIMMS and NAEP, and attempted to link
them together via a statistical technique.  It was an interesting idea,
but is, as noted, subject to the same shortcomings as TIMMS and NAEP

Norm

EE Times
Study questions U.S. shortfall in math, science
Sheila Riley
(11/06/2007 7:27 PM EST)
http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=202803135

SAN FRANCISCO — It's been said often: Uninterested U.S. students aren't
keeping up in science, technology, engineering and math, ultimately leading
to a decline in skilled workers and U.S. competitiveness.

But new research contradicts the conventional wisdom, asserting that U.S.
students are doing well compared to their foreign counterparts. Moreover,
the U.S. is educating a sufficient number of scientists and engineers to
maintain its current global competitiveness, according to a Urban Institute
report.

International test rankings for U.S. students are often cited as evidence of
national math and science weakness, and these data inform national
educational policy. But the tests themselves are flawed, said Hal Salzman,
senior research associate at the Washington-based organization and co-author
of the report.

U.S. students have taken more math, science and foreign language courses
over the past ten years than in previous decades, the study found. In 1990,
only 45 percent of high school students took chemistry. By 2004, the
percentage had risen to 60 percent.

The proportion that hit the math books for three years jumped from 49
percent in 1990 to 72 percent in 2004, while those taking math for four
years increased from 29 percent to 50 percent.

SAT math and science scores showed similar gains, according to the
Institute's report, "Into the Eye of the Storm: Assessing the Evidence on
Science and Engineering Education, Quality, and Workforce Demand."

But the skills that testing evaluates may not be the ones needed for
innovation in a global economy. "Japan, Singapore and [South] Korea do have
the kind of education that leads to [better] test performance, but does that
lead to more innovation, better jobs and a better economy?" Salzman asked.

For example, Singapore is promoting a national "creativity initiative"
because the Asian city-state's leaders realize the need to de-emphasize its
narrow educational approach, Salzman said. But for now, he added, it makes
little sense to compared math and science scores in tiny Singapore with the
sprawling U.S.

Indian policy makers have argued against connecting overall educational
success to economic performance. The study notes that the Indian
subcontinent has a 39-percent illiteracy rate and high school enrollment of
under 50 percent. It owes it success to a small percentage of its citizens,
Salzman said. "The use of average rates across a diverse group of nations
and diverse populations is of limited use in drawing conclusions about
global standing economically or educationally," the report concluded.

There is support for the criticism of testing methods, even from those who
disagree with the study's conclusions. "When you're testing a broader
selection, it's going to put the U.S. at a disadvantage," said George Haley,
director for the Center for International Industry Competitiveness at the
University of New Haven.

Lower-performing students reduce the U.S. average. In other countries, they
wouldn't even be eligible to take the tests, Haley said.

But Haley takes issue with the study's broader conclusion that the U.S.
isn't falling behind in math and science education. Other recent studies
show that the very top percentage of U.S. students is beginning to drop in
comparison to students from other countries, he said.

"The problem arises with the comparison of our top-performing students to
those in other countries," Haley said.

There's another element to consider in the education debate: the nature of
U.S. society. "The U.S. stands alone in having more challenges to its
educational system than any of the advanced industrial countries," Salzman
said.

For one thing, there's a stronger relationship between a school's economic
situation and its success, or what some have called the "zip code determines
education quality" phenomenon. Other countries do a better job of
compensating within a school system for students' disadvantages, according
to Salzman.

"This is what tends to get lost" in the debate, he said.

The report also questions whether there is indeed a shortage of U.S.
engineering graduates. "The standard labor market indicators do not indicate
a shortage," Salzman asserted, adding that a shortage would result in lower
unemployment for engineers and rapidly increasing wages, similar to what
occurred during the dot-com era, he said.

The U.S. science and engineering workforce currently stands at 4.8 million,
according to the study.

From 1993 to 2002, U.S. colleges awarded some 380,000 science and
engineering bachelor's degrees, over 70,000 master's degrees and, on
average, nearly 20,000 engineering doctorates.

"Rather than a supply problem, we probably have a demand problem," Salzman
said Tuesday (Nov. 6).

The math and science backgrounds of foreign and U.S. students appear
similar, at least at one top U.S. engineering school. While acknowledging
that his students may not represent a true cross section of a typical U.S.
high school, Joe Helble, dean of the Thayer School of Engineering at
Dartmouth College, said he sees surprising uniformity.

"When I look at incoming graduate students at Dartmouth and I compare the
ones who are U.S.-educated and those [educated overseas], I don't see huge
differences," he said.

What Helble sees "are differences in creativity. I would say that the U.S.
students are among the most creative and innovative."

Although some Asian students may have better raw quantitative skills, that
doesn't necessarily make them better engineers or scientists, Helble said.
"You have to look at their ability to tackle a problem without a clear
solution."

Some Dartmouth engineering grads end up in other fields, including financial
services and investment jobs where they are valued for their ability to
think quantitatively and analyze technologies, the Dartmouth dean noted.



Lou Dobbs Tonight
November 13, 2007

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0711/13/ldt.01.html

And, we'll challenge corporate America's repeated assertions it can't find
enough qualified Americans to fill key technology jobs. It turns out it
just ain't so. Imagine that. We'll have that story, and a great deal more
as we continue, live tonight with our "Independents Day" tour, live from,
you guessed it, there's the Space Needle, Seattle, Washington. We'll be
right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

DOBBS: New study show American colleges are producing more than enough
graduates in Science and Math in this country to fill the needs of U.S.
business, but corporate America continues to claim there simply aren't
enough Americans trained in those fields and they must hire foreign
workers, workers that of course end up being paid quite a bit less than
American workers.

Bill Tucker has our report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BILL TUCKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): There is no shortage of
students studying for careers in Math and Science. There is a shortage of
jobs. That's the simply bottom line finding of a new study from the Urban
Institute.

The study shows that between 1985 and 2000 435,000 U.S. citizens and
permanent residents a year graduated with Bachelors, Masters, and Doctoral
degrees in Science and Engineering. That's three times the number of jobs
in Science and Engineering added per year, 150,000 during that time.

Separately Michael Teitelbaum at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation told
Congress last week that neither he nor a separate study by the RAND
Corporation can find any evidence of worker shortages. These studies are
not anomalies.

VIVEK WADHWA, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: Bottom line is that all of our research
at Duke and now at Harvard shows the same thing. That there is no shortage
of engineers; there's no shortage of scientists. Companies aren't going
abroad because of skills. They're going abroad because it's cheaper.

TUCKER: As a result, Wadhwa says that more than half of the engineering
graduate students at Duke don't pursue engineering as a career and there is
another indicator that the market is anything but short of scientists and
engineers.

PAUL ALMEIDA, DEPT. FOR PROF. EMPLOYEES, AFL-CIO: We should be trying to
figure out how to incentivize (ph) students to advance in these Math and
Science areas. It's clearly that there is no shortage. If there is a
shortage, the supply and demand wages would be going up in these areas.

TUCKER: Wages in the science and engineering fields over the last five
years when adjusted for inflation have been basically flat.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TUCKER: Now Lou, that's the Urban Institute, the Alfred P. Sloan (ph)
Foundation, Duke, Harvard, the RAND Corporation. Studies done independently
of each other, different researches, different funding, all reaching the
same basic conclusion that there is no worker shortage. Lou, the problem is
not a lack of workers. The problem these studies all conclude is a lack of
companies hiring them. And as we've reported many, many times on this
program those companies either off-shore the work or as you mentioned at
the top, demand more H-1B visas and then pay those workers less -- Lou.

DOBBS: We've been reporting on this issue, the exporting of American jobs,
the outsourcing of American jobs, middle class jobs, for four years. And
point of fact, the idea that all of these highly regarded, highly respected
institutions have found the same thing that we have reported her for four
years. Congress just last week, the subcommittee on technology and
innovation, suggesting that 30 to 40 percent of American jobs now are at
risk of being outsourced, in addition to the H-1B problem.

TUCKER: Right.

DOBBS: Let's put this in some context. Let's just deal with that H-1B
program, which all of these companies want to bring those foreign workers
in under. What's the number of Indian companies that are using H-1B visas,
seeking H-1B visas for the purpose of outsourcing those jobs right here in
the United States?

TUCKER: Well five of the top six users of the H-1B visa program, Lou, as
you well know, are Indian companies.

DOBBS: Yes I did, but I wanted because I'm in Seattle, Washington, tonight
Bill Tucker, and I thank you very much -- I want to repeat that just for
the purpose, the benefit, the illumination, the education, the
enlightenment of one of the -- this city's most famous citizens, Microsoft
Chairman Bill Gates. Bill Gates is among those calling for more H-1B visas.
In fact, Bill Gates wants an unlimited number of H-1B visas. And we really
think it's important that he be brought up-to-date on this issue. Gates
testified before a Senate committee in March -- by the way, he was the only
witness and there was only one fellow chariot -- that was Senator Ted
Kennedy -- and Gates said the United States should allow, as he put it, an
infinite number of foreign workers. We can't get above infinite no matter
what we do.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL GATES, MICROSOFT CHAIRMAN: We have to welcome the great minds in this
world, not shut them out of our country. Unfortunately, our immigration
policies are driving away the world's best and brightest precisely when we
need them the most.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DOBBS: Bill Gates, you just heard the RAND Corporation, the Urban
Institute, Harvard University, come on and look at the facts. Most of those
H-1B visas are being used by Indian companies seeking to outsource jobs at
a very, very reduced wage. In fact, most of the H-1B computer professionals
in this country are brought in at the lowest skill levels; about half of
the H-1B visa computer professionals recently admitted to the United
States, in fact during the (INAUDIBLE) entry level salaries, so much for
the advanced, best minds. These are entry level jobs, not the highly
skilled jobs seeking those H-1B visas.

So Mr. Gates, I certainly hope that you and I can have a discussion on
that. I'm sure that you would be delighted to do that, but I'm going to ask
for something less than an infinite number of H- 1B visas and when we
compromise, as a matter of fact, I want to return to two years ago levels.


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/14/education/14students.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

New York Times

Study Compares States Math and Science Scores With Other Countries

By SAM DILLON
Published: November 14, 2007

American students even in low-performing states like Alabama do better on
math and science tests than students in most foreign countries, including
Italy and Norway, according to a new study released yesterday. Thats the
good news.

The bad news is that students in Singapore and several other Asian countries
significantly outperform American students, even those in high-achieving
states like Massachusetts, the study found.

In  this case, the bad news trumps the good because our Asian economic
competitors are winning the race to prepare students in math and science,
said the studys author, Gary W. Phillips, chief scientist at the American
Institutes of Research, a nonprofit independent scientific research firm.

The study equated standardized test scores of eighth-grade students in each
of the 50 states with those of their peers in 45 countries. Experts said it
was the first such effort to link standardized test scores, state by state,
with scores from other nations.

Gage Kingsbury, a director at the Northwest Evaluation Association, a group
in Oregon that carries out testing in 1,500 school districts, praised the
studys methodology but said a flock of difficulties made it hazardous to
compare test results from one country to another and from one state to
another. Kids dont start school at the same age in different countries, he
said. Not all kids are in school in grade eight, and the percentage differs
from country to country.

Because of such differences, Dr. Kingsbury said, it would be a mistake to
infer too much about the relative rigor of the educational systems across
the states and nations in the study based merely on test score differences.

The scores for students in the United States came from tests administered by
the federal Department of Education in most states in 2005 and 2007. For
foreign students, the scores came from math and science tests administered
worldwide in 2003, as part of the Trends in International Mathematics and
Science Study, known as the Timss.

Concern that science and math achievement was not keeping pace with the
nations economic competitors had been building even before the most recent
Timss  survey, in which the highest-performing nations were Singapore,
Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Japan. American students lagged far
behind those nations, but earned scores that were comparable to peers in
European nations like Slovakia and Estonia, and were well above countries
like Egypt, Chile and Saudi Arabia.

The  Timss  survey gives each country a metric by which to compare its
educational attainment with other nations. The nationwide American test,
known as the National Assessments of Educational Progress, allows policy
makers in each state to compare their students results with those in other
states.

The new study used statistical linking to compare scores on the national
assessment, state by state, with other nations scores on the Timss. Dr.
Phillips,  who  from  1999 to 2002 led the agency of the Department of
Education that administers the national assessment, likened the methodology
to  what economists do when they convert international currencies into
dollars to compare poverty levels across various countries, for instance.

On the most recent national assessment, the highest-performing state in math
was Massachusetts, and in science, North Dakota. The new study shows that
average math achievement in Massachusetts was lower than in the leading
Asian  nations  and in Belgium, but higher than in 40 other countries,
including Australia, Russia, England and Israel.

Mississippi was the lowest-performing state in both math and science. In
math, Mississippi students achievement was comparable to those of peers in
Bulgaria and Moldova, and in science, to those in Norway and Romania.

In  math,  New  Jersey, Connecticut and New York students were roughly
equivalent  with  each  other  and  with their peers in Australia, the
Netherlands and Hungary.

The studys contribution is the high-level perspective it offers on the
nations education system, a bit the way a satellite image highlights the
nations topography, said Thomas Toch, a co-director of Education Sector, an
independent policy group.

It shows were not doing as badly as some say, Mr. Toch said. Were in the top
half of the table, and a number of states are outperforming the majority of
the nations in the study. But our performance in math and science lags
behind that of the front-running Asian nations.