Human Capital
The 624,000 international students attending U.S. colleges and universities in 2008 contributed $15 billion to the U.S. economy. The majority come from India and China. For every 100 foreign students who received an American Ph.D in engineering or the physical sciences, the U.S. got 62 patent applications. As for the students who returned home, many took with them warm feelings toward America, democracy and free enterprise. Do the math. Yet, since the Patriot Act was enacted, all foreign student applications have to be screened by the Office of Homeland Security, which gets bogged down, forcing students to defer their studies for a year.
University presidents are justifiably outraged. “We don’t want our students saying we might as well go to Britain rather than the U.S.,” Yale University President Richard Levin said during a student recruitment visit to China in 2007.
While the enrollment of foreign students is just now rebounding in the U.S. in the wake of 9/11, it is increasing dramatically at universities in Britain, Germany, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. The European Union is even considering offering citizenship to foreign students who complete their doctorates at European universities.
Technological leadership is the key to prosperity and security, and America remains the world’s technology leader – for now. But, as highlighted by a 2005 report from the National Academies, the U.S. lead in science and technology is not guaranteed. America must now “prepare with great urgency to preserve its strategic and economic security,” the report said. Asian universities now produce 47 percent of engineering graduates worldwide and foreign-born inventors account for nearly half of all U.S. patents.
China has moved up to third place in the world after Japan and the U.S. in the number of patent applications filed. According to the World Intellectual Property Organization, Chinese inventors submitted 173,327 patent applications in 2005, a 33 percent increase over the previous year and the biggest leap in submissions of any country that year. Japan had the most filings followed by the U.S.
More than half of the high-technology startups launched in America between 1995 and 2005 had at least one founder of overseas origin, a 2007 study by Duke University in Northern Carolina found. It revealed that in the Silicon Valley, 52.4 percent of startups in the past decade had at least one founder of foreign origin, significantly higher than the California average of 38.8 percent and the national average of 25.3 percent. Sergey Brin, from Russia, co-founded Google. A German, Andy Bechtolsheim, and Vinod Khosla from India founded Sun Microsystems. Jerry Yang, a Chinese, co-founded Yahoo.
The result is that the U.S. is losing its dominance in critical areas of science and innovation, as evidenced by the rise of foreign patents. “The rest of the world is catching up,” said John E. Jankowski, a senior analyst at the National Science Foundation, the federal agency that tracks science trends. “Science excellence is no longer the domain of just the U.S.” This is best exemplified by the number of patents registered today. Asians, most notably Chinese and Indians, have become more active and in some fields have taken the innovation lead. The U.S. share of its own industrial patents has fallen steadily over the decades and now stands at 52 percent.
China has invested heavily in human capital that promises to sustain growth and create greater prosperity. Parents in China spend $90 billion a year on their children’s education. This is over and above what the government spends. Government and families constantly increase their investment in primary and secondary education. Elite English private schools are setting up campuses in China to capitalize on the educational opportunities. Given the excellent core curriculum available across China to its 230 million students, the country is well positioned to continue to upgrade its human capital over the next decade. Shouldn’t America be doing the same?
University presidents are justifiably outraged. “We don’t want our students saying we might as well go to Britain rather than the U.S.,” Yale University President Richard Levin said during a student recruitment visit to China in 2007.
While the enrollment of foreign students is just now rebounding in the U.S. in the wake of 9/11, it is increasing dramatically at universities in Britain, Germany, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. The European Union is even considering offering citizenship to foreign students who complete their doctorates at European universities.
Technological leadership is the key to prosperity and security, and America remains the world’s technology leader – for now. But, as highlighted by a 2005 report from the National Academies, the U.S. lead in science and technology is not guaranteed. America must now “prepare with great urgency to preserve its strategic and economic security,” the report said. Asian universities now produce 47 percent of engineering graduates worldwide and foreign-born inventors account for nearly half of all U.S. patents.
China has moved up to third place in the world after Japan and the U.S. in the number of patent applications filed. According to the World Intellectual Property Organization, Chinese inventors submitted 173,327 patent applications in 2005, a 33 percent increase over the previous year and the biggest leap in submissions of any country that year. Japan had the most filings followed by the U.S.
More than half of the high-technology startups launched in America between 1995 and 2005 had at least one founder of overseas origin, a 2007 study by Duke University in Northern Carolina found. It revealed that in the Silicon Valley, 52.4 percent of startups in the past decade had at least one founder of foreign origin, significantly higher than the California average of 38.8 percent and the national average of 25.3 percent. Sergey Brin, from Russia, co-founded Google. A German, Andy Bechtolsheim, and Vinod Khosla from India founded Sun Microsystems. Jerry Yang, a Chinese, co-founded Yahoo.
The result is that the U.S. is losing its dominance in critical areas of science and innovation, as evidenced by the rise of foreign patents. “The rest of the world is catching up,” said John E. Jankowski, a senior analyst at the National Science Foundation, the federal agency that tracks science trends. “Science excellence is no longer the domain of just the U.S.” This is best exemplified by the number of patents registered today. Asians, most notably Chinese and Indians, have become more active and in some fields have taken the innovation lead. The U.S. share of its own industrial patents has fallen steadily over the decades and now stands at 52 percent.
China has invested heavily in human capital that promises to sustain growth and create greater prosperity. Parents in China spend $90 billion a year on their children’s education. This is over and above what the government spends. Government and families constantly increase their investment in primary and secondary education. Elite English private schools are setting up campuses in China to capitalize on the educational opportunities. Given the excellent core curriculum available across China to its 230 million students, the country is well positioned to continue to upgrade its human capital over the next decade. Shouldn’t America be doing the same?
posted by Peter de Krassel's Custom Maid Politics at 2:43 AM
1 Comments:
Yes we should be doing the same.
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