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To: Amy J who wrote (176646)	1/26/2004 9:32:06 AM
From: rudedog	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 186894

Amy - while I am not overly impressed with the general level of elementary education, I think I need to challenge the assertion that we are a year behind India. Back when I was in high school ( a LONG time ago), I had a friend who came from England in the 11th grade. He had been told by his parents that he would be a year ahead of US schools especially in Math. And when he first started taking courses, that seemed to be the case. However, he was not in the 'fast math track' initially - when he was moved onto that track, he discovered that he was in the same level of class as when he was in England. My son was also in the fast track in Math when he was in high school here in Texas, about 5 years ago. The fast track was pretty much unchanged from when I took it - trigonometry and pre-calculus in the 11th grade, and an introduction to calculus as a senior. Also, the Indian students who come here, and those who come here later after college, are almost certainly those from the upper end of their tracks in high school. So I would suggest that you are comparing the fast track students from other countries with the average students here, which is not a good comparison. I don't know if the course selections across the US are the same as here, but Texas is not known as an education leader, so I would be surprised if they were ahead of the curve on this.

To: Amy J who wrote (176646)	1/26/2004 9:54:30 AM
From: GVTucker	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 186894

Amy, RE: We are one year behind in our lower grade schools. Do you have any evidence of this? Because it is contrary to my understanding. In fact, I am pretty sure that there isn't any education available at all for the poor in India and China. We see a pretty small subset of the Indian and Chinese education systems here in the US. We see the smartest kids from the best schools. Although I don't have any concrete evidence, I would imagine that if you compared our smartest kids from the best schools here to the smartest kids from the best schools there, they'd be comparable. Which industry recently had 4 out of 5 recent companies go public? It sure wasn't a law firm, not a hospital, not retail store, not an insurance company, not an auto company, not a financial firm, not even biotech. It was hightech. I think you've got a highly biased sample there. The main exit strategy for venture cap of most high tech firms is the public markets. That is not the case for law firms or hospitals or insurance companies or financial firms. Even biotech industry's primary exit strategy is not the public markets. As an example, just about every single innovation in financial services happened here, in the United States. Look at biotech or pharmaceuticals. The innovation is happening here, not elsewhere. There are a bunch of smart entrepreneurs in the US. Not all of them are at work in high tech. Look at the horrible condition vaccines are with respect to this Avian Flu? When was the last decent vaccine created? Polio vaccine? When was that - the 1950s! I see biotech vaccine entrepreneurs, who should be hooked up with all the tools a proper university's RND center offers! Not putting wacko stuff in their freezers. Egads. The chicken pox vaccine was licensed by the FDA in 1995. Human clinical trials for a SARS vaccine just recently began. A two-tier society develops if you do not fund RND for new innovations. And if you don't continue the pipeline supply of PhDs. The poor have a heck of a lot better opportunities here than in India or China.

To: Amy J who wrote (176646)	1/26/2004 12:48:55 PM
From: Lizzie Tudor	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 186894

Hightech has the best opportunites, and is the most innovative. Sure, there are some industries that have matured - database industry, but there's lots of new technologies coming online and so many more inventions to be created in a variety of hightech areas. VoIP and wireless are the #1 priorites for many IT people at some large companies this year. I also think hightech is going to drive a lot of the biotech inventions - it costs $75M to launch a biotech company (vaccines, Rx, etc.), while it only costs a few million to launch a hightech device company. There's always new innovations - just read the Red Herring, Mercury, CNN, etc. Amyj, I agree that high tech has some great investing opportunities but the point is that these new opportunities are not manifesting themselves in jobs for graduating engineers from Stanford or Berkeley, in any field- VoIP or Linux or you name it. We have more engineers than can find work in a fairly robust growth environment in technology, not to mention the famous 8% GDP. This study, which was reiterated in the WSJ a few days ago (with more detail) illustrates the facts. The 2 hardest hit groups who are being forced to take low wage service jobs vs. professional employment are new college grads and blue collar men from the rust belt. siliconvalley.com Take Juniper networks for example, they are hiring all their engineering out of bangalore. If I had to name a star company right now that looks good for the future JNPR would be near the top of the list. So to claim that only mature industries are moving offshore doesn't really wash. New engineering graduates who are interested in VoIP have to be looking at this and wondering what their future is in the USA. Combine this with the wage deflation and management antagonism towards "US engineering training" (when anecdotal evidence suggests otherwise) and you get a disinterested public in the field of engineering. There are some things the government can do to improve the situation for the workforce in the US. For example drop payroll taxes, since offshore indian employees are exempt from both US and Indian tax. These are things that can really help matters but from what I can see... nobody has suggested it (at least no tech CEO)- how come? Is it possible that Fiorina and Barrett actually gain a competitive advantage by this practice, I think so. BTW on an unrelated note, I used to support the non-expensing of stock options but I am switching sides on that issue- due to the widespread practice of offshore R&D. I thought stock options were a way to level the financial playing field for US engineers, and it hasn't worked (although I think msft's decision to move offshore and start expensing options were related).