Jozef, RE: "This is good news and bad news. Bad news is that they are not coming here, that we are not poaching the best talent from the rest of the world."
India and China alone have several million students per year because they have billions of people - we only have 290M people and David Ray said our population will drop by 50% in 60 years. We only generate around 100k to 300k students per year. During Clinton years, job growth was 300k/month at times. During a recession there are layoffs due to restructuring, but in an economic recovery we come up short on labor. So, we have to open our doors for students. But I see your point too. The answer isn't to take all of the students away from them, but we certainly will need more than what we are currently getting, and they certainly have a much higher population than ours so probably can share some with us.
RE: " Parents don't care enough, and they are unaware of the fact that the education their kids get is sub-par compared to competition in Europe and Far East."
Add to your list, the lower school system is also sub-par compared to India, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Taiwan, etc. etc.
First thing I did when I entered college: checked out exactly what my foreign friends had taken in high school - what were their courses and what exactly was taught when in each course. Their school system offered math courses one year ahead of ours, meanwhile my 8th grade math was completely redundant to what I already knew and I couldn't get transportation to an 9th grade math class that was around 10 miles away from my home - and walking was too dangerous.
We need to move the math courses by at least one year. Why isn't anyone doing anything about this? It's getting worse I hear.
RE: " Today, you may have parents who want the right thing, but are trapped in the system."
Many hightech people are teaching their kids at home.
RE: "kind of a market place in education"
I think it was okay not to have a marketplace in education back in the old days - when the USA didn't have to compete globally. But now that it does, for each job (not just hightech), the school lower systems have to adjust for this and improve. The only way to do that is like you say, thru some type of marketplace education. It's the only way to get more competitive in a more competitive global system.
Regards,
Amy J |
