America handing the Tech torch away???

Being an undergraduate of Engineering, I am no doubt upset that the latest economic media frenzy is that the U.S. is losing commercial industry in the field of technology. And for good reason: a general lax attitude about higher education, limited expectations of the youth of this country, no involvement or signs of interest from the majority of the younger citizens of our country, etc... I could go on, but this abstract says a little more.

Does Globalization of the Scientific/Engineering Workforce Threaten U.S. Economic Leadership? This paper develops four propositions that show that changes in the global job market for science and engineering (S&E) workers are eroding US dominance in S&E, which diminishes comparative advantage in high tech production and creates problems for American industry and workers: (1) The U.S. share of the world's science and engineering graduates is declining rapidly as European and Asian universities, particularly from China, have increased S&E degrees while US degree production has stagnated. 2) The job market has worsened for young workers in S&E fields relative to many other high-level occupations, which discourages US students from going on in S&E, but which still has sufficient rewards to attract large immigrant flows, particularly from developing countries. 3) Populous low income countries such as China and India can compete with the US in high tech by having many S&E specialists although those workers are a small proportion of their work forces. This threatens to undo the "North-South" pattern of trade in which advanced countries dominate high tech while developing countries specialize in less skilled manufacturing. 4) Diminished comparative advantage in high-tech will create a long period of adjustment for US workers, of which the off-shoring of IT jobs to India, growth of high-tech production in China, and multinational R&D facilities in developing countries, are harbingers. To ease the adjustment to a less dominant position in science and engineering, the US will have to develop new labor market and R&D policies that build on existing strengths and develop new ways of benefitting from scientific and technological advances in other countries. http://www.nber.org/papers/W11457

Apparently South Korea is the best of the best right now, in terms of higher education. I am actively searching for the other side of this story...

It has been said that some of the programming jobs that went to India are coming back because of both the difficulties with international relations, and introductory assesment of interfacing with existing code and system operations. This is soothing, that while there is a knowledge of a presense of white collar outside of the U.S. its still not dominant as of yet. There is still a chance of changing the way Americans view the current situation, work to achieve a solution, and learn so as to accomidate what we have been lacking for so long.

CAN AMERICANS COMPETE? Is America the World's 97-lb. Weakling? In the relentless, global, tech-driven, cost-cutting struggle for business, America isn’t ready—here’s what to do about it. By Geoffrey Colvin uncle sam (Illustration: R. Sikoryak) It’s a crisis of confidence unlike anything America has felt in a generation. Residents of tiny Newton, Iowa, wake up to the distressing news that a Chinese firm—What’s it called? Haier? That’s Chinese?—wants to buy their biggest employer, the famed but foundering Maytag appliance company. Two days later, out of nowhere, a massive, government-owned Chinese oil company muscles into the bidding for America’s Unocal. The very next day a ship in Xinsha, China, loads the first Chinese-made cars bound for the West, where they’ll compete with the products of Detroit’s struggling old giants. All in one week. And only two months earlier a Chinese company most Americans had never heard of took over the personal computer business formerly owned—and mismanaged into billions of dollars of losses—by the great IBM. "Can America compete?" is the nation’s new No. 1 anxiety, the topic of emotional debate in bars and boardrooms, the title of seminars and speeches offered by the liberal Progressive Policy Institute, the conservative economist Todd Buchholz, and countless schools and Rotary Clubs. The question is almost right, but not quite. We’re wringing our hands over the wrong thing. The problem isn’t Chinese companies threatening U.S. firms. It’s U.S. workers unable to compete with those in China—or India, or South Korea. The real question is, "Can Americans compete?" continued http://www.fortune.com/fortune/articles/0,15114,1081269,00.html