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Strategies & Market Trends : China Warehouse- More Than Crockery -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RealMuLan who wrote (2877)	3/17/2004 12:51:53 PM
From: RealMuLan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6370

Will U.S. ever produce Bill Gates version 2.0? NATION MUST INVEST IN A CREATIVE AND SKILLED TECH WORKFORCE Mercury News Editorial In China, universities are minting engineers at more than triple the rate of U.S. schools. As Mercury News reporter Kristi Heim notes in today's front page story, their education and sophistication are growing rapidly. Elsewhere -- in India, Eastern Europe and beyond -- hundreds of thousands of skilled and eager techies are joining the global workforce. In the United States, by contrast, interest in engineering and related fields is waning. Enrollments at colleges and universities appears to be flat, at best. The Bill Gateses and Andy Groves of the world no longer seem to be the role models that thousands of students want to emulate. It's a troubling trend. Unless the United States breathes life into its math, science and engineering education at all levels, its technology and economic leadership will face an even more uncertain future. At a time when unemployment for electrical engineers is at 6.2 percent, an all-time high, an alarm over a dwindling interest in engineering could easily be dismissed. The last thing unemployed tech workers need is competition from younger tech workers, who can probably do the same jobs for lower wages. Yet the current cycle is unusual. It follows a bubble that produced an unprecedented glut of tech gear and software. It coincides with gains in productivity, meaning the same tasks can be done with fewer workers. And it coincides with a surge in tech employment overseas, which is chipping away at some potential job gains here. That cycle will end. Government statistics show that employment in various technology occupations should grow between 46 percent and 57 percent in the next decade. If American students don't pursue tech careers, many more of those jobs could shift overseas. Worse, chances are the next wave of technology innovation and job creation would not originate here. The point is not that we should try to match China in engineering graduates one-to-one. That would produce a glut of talent. And for decades, Japan has graduated more engineers than the United States, yet its tech industry pales in comparison to America's. It's not about numbers. It's about investing in sustaining the most diverse, creative, skilled, innovative and entrepreneurial tech workforce anywhere. mercurynews.com