Hi tejek, RE: offshoring & our school system
RE: "I think you might want to clarify your position"
I think offshoring happens for a couple of reasons, to name a few:
- supply of scientists (was esp. tight during the boom)
- cost of housing
- overseas costs are lower (wage & housing), which in itself is okay, as long as our schools step up to produce the next innovative wave of hard core technology, e.g. nanotechnology.
RE: " Many kids, particularly the rich, are coming out of private school system and not public schools. That transition began in full force about 15 years ago and its they who are the ones now coming out of our major universities like Stanford and Harvard. If there is a shortfall, it may well be private schools who have their own standards and are much more reliant on the largesse of parents that are the problem."
This probably is more true of Harvard, mainly because of what appears to be their donation policy. Stanford has diversity and is in fact having more of an alumni donation issue as a result - so Stanford gets penalized for promoting diversity of race. It's common knowledge among wealthy parents, that they need to give a $100k donation just about two years prior to when their child applies to college - it makes it into google and the word gets out there - this is at least how wealthy parents understand it to be. Whether it works or not, isn't something I know. I personally don't think it's a good thing, because it gives an advantage to the rich (and sometimes the dumb.)
Private schools will ask what your parents do for a living, as a way to assess your potential inheritance and family donation - at least I heard they did this years ago. Some candidates from Harvard, apparently need to get over the "Dear Sir" problem when applying for an executive position. Sometimes I think you can judge Harvard's philosophy by how they treat their own janitors. I've seen mixed success with folks from Harvard, some extremely superb walk-on-water people (and many from Harvard are) while some have a two-tier type of bad-employee attitude that doesn't work well for the innovative hightech areas, maybe this is due to their donation policy, I'm not sure. Or maybe it's due to how they train their mba students - it's possible they train their students under the assumption they will work in the more older smokestack firms, where employees are considered objects rather than valued intelligent beings. But this isn't always the case with Harvard, one thing I liked about Gates who went to Harvard for a spell, is he really values engineers and it comes through.
While improving, I think our VC firms are possibly a bit too fluffy, filled with WS types, and not made out of the technical stuff they had back when innovative entrepreneurs controlled the valley far more than the VCs do now. Fortunately, the technologist angel investor is getting a bit more in the drivers seat over this past year - they controlled 50% of all the Valleys funds in 2003 while VCs only controlled the other 50% (during the boom the VCs were fueling a larger % so the technology investor was getting pushed out. No wonder it eventually blew up.) To quote one VC whose philosophy depicted this, though I like him a lot because he's always candid, "why would I invest in hightech startups for an eventual market cap of only $2B, when I can invest in a dotcom and realize $13B, or even $25B.") One VC said there's a bias against MIT but a bias for Stanford, because (he said) VCs prefer WS types over engineering types. And then they wonder where the innovation has gone? No wonder we're getting companies like Friendster funded at a faster rate than hard core technologies such as nanotechnology. I actually found Malaysia's government response to this interesting - they created a fund that only engineers can apply for.
It also speaks to why so much of our technological innovation has moved down to San Diego. During the boom, the wireless entrepreneurs were getting ignored by Sand Hill crowd who had their eyes on "eyeball counting" rather than technology. Technology was a dirty word back then. It was common knowledge that tangibles (technology) was not Silicon Valley's area of interest so the entrepreneurs went south to San Diego, which is disappointing, because I wish they were all up here with me. There are though, some VCs that are still interested in hightech startups and these VCs bemoan the Valley's focus on Friendster.com and other non-technology based investments. Not that there's anything wrong with those kinds of firms, but they aren't a new technology that's going to produce lots of innovation we really need to spur the type of growth the Valley is used to. It's too bad the Valley lost out to San Diego in the wireless area.
RE: "For the past month, I have been student teaching at a local middle school. I don't know if its representative of all middle schools but overall I find the quality of the teachers and cirriculum to be equal to the ones when I went to school........and I went to some of the best public schools in my city. Ninety five % of my hi school went on to some form of higher education."
I think the schools are excellent too and wouldn't want to see teachers go through any more undue stress. However, the rug has been pulled out from underneath our school system in that we now have to compete globally. At some point, the school system will have to face the pain of that, preferably before it becomes a huger issue.
I can get into specifics of how our K12 isn't as good as oversea's K12 equivalent, because I went to a college school that had approximately 55% foreignors in engineer. The grad courses I had in CS were at least 70% foreigners, off the top of my head, probably closer to 75% to 95%.
The better the school, the more foreigners. And there's a reason why. Overseas K12 schools are better. In my freshman year of college, I asked my school friends from HK, Taiwan, Indonesia, India etc., the specific details of their K12 courses offered during which years, to make a comparison to our K12 courses. Our school system is behind theirs by one year. I was upset about this. Especially since my 8th grade was a complete waste of time. The math they taught in 8th grade was stuff I already knew so it was completely redundant. Even then, I realized how the system was hurting people. I tried to get into the high school's 9th grade math course, but they couldn't find transport. Walking 10 miles wasn't an option. I tried walking once. Too dangerous. I didn't own a bike, because I was saving all my money for college (my parents had more than half a dozen children). If the school system had been forced to provide a 9th grade course to able students who were in 8th grade, I would have entered college with the identical background as my foreign competition. Plus I had three concurrent jobs and not the high paying jobs the Palo Alto high school city students get, so that meant even more double duty. So overall, our system puts the American student at a competitive disadvantage when they enter K12. I could go on and on about the differences. Even though my math is better than two of my brothers, all three of my brothers received fully paid scholarships and extra cash - but tbe scholarship was for men only (the scholarship program people didn't think it was appropriate for a female to live coed in the guy's dorm where scholarship students had to reside, though I pushed on this point and suggested an all girls dorm, but they said the scholarship program owned the building and only men live in it. I had suggested it be divided so both men and women could live in it. They were a bit insulted I asked - "no woman has ever asked us before" - as if I had asked the unspeakable. Good grief. Looking back, I'm surprised the college supported such a gender biased scholarship program. Meanwhile, the foreign students in undergrad college didn't work. (Not to be confused with foreign grad students, who statistically have to work.)
But one leg up our schools have: America produces extremely creative students.
Regards,
Amy J |
