In a Feb.17, 2006 post, the World in 2020, I described how the National Intelligence Council imagined the world might look only 14 years from now. One of the most powerful suggestions of the NIC report was that the engine of the world’s economy in 2020 would no longer be the United States, but rather that role will have shifted to China and other Asian countries.
In this light, an article in the May 14 Los Angeles Times entitled Emerging Nations Power World Economic Boom leapt right out at me. In that article, Tom Petruno writes, “Yet this is a different kind of boom from any other in the post-World War II era, analysts say. The soaring economies of China, India, Russia, Brazil and other emerging nations increasingly are setting the pace, overshadowing the slower growth of the United States, Europe and Japan, where the benefits of the expansion have eluded many workers.” Numerous statements in the article indicate that the underpinning of the boom in the emerging nations is the buying power of the United States, so one cannot yet take the US out of the driver’s seat. However, it is obvious that the global economic situation today could be interpreted as a step on the way to the condition predicted for 2020 by the NIC.
In the US, advanced study in many of areas key to the global knowledge economy has become increasingly dominated by international students. For example, the 2004 Survey of Earned Doctorates showed that US citizens made up only 65% of new Ph.D’s in the life sciences, 50% in the physical sciences, 47% in business, and 34% in engineering. Should changing conditions (economic or political) make this country a less attractive site for the best international students, the US could have increasing difficulties competing in the global knowledge economy.
In What has offshoring got to do with research universities? I predicted that the US would become less attractive to the best international students if the US ceased to be the engine of the world’s economy. If one reads the Petruno article as suggesting that we are marching along the road seen by the NIC, then it is time to begin to worry about decreasing representation by international students in key areas of advanced study.
While mitigating the effects of a drop off in our attractiveness to international students will certainly have many aspects, the most obvious is that we must begin to attract American students into these areas once again. In A D- in science education, I described what one eminent scientist, Carl Wieman, is doing to try to make this happen in physics. As shown by Wieman and others, American universities in general are remarkably ineffective in teaching science, with the result that we loose most of the young Americans who express interest in science as high school seniors. Fortunately, educational researchers have developed enormous insight into how students actually learn ( post How People Learn, May 1, 2006), and application of these principles by Wieman and others is showing great promise. Without question, however, meeting the potential fall-off in international student interest in American advanced education will require a focused commitment by our universities to significantly improve the effectiveness of much of our undergraduate education.
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