I’ve previously blogged on Thomas Friedman’s fascinating book The World is Flat. A major theme Friedman unpacks is that technology, one of the primary forces leveling the playing field between nations in our increasingly global marketplace, is being more hotly pursued by countries like India and China. Whereas the average age of an engineer in the US is over 40 (and increasing every year), college and graduate students in India and China are pursuing science and engineering in droves while enrollment in these disciplines by US students remains flat. As an engineer by trade, and an engineering professor at Northwestern College, I find this recent comment in the August 2006 American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) newsletter to be very interesting:
The president of India, an aeronautical engineer who stewarded his country’s guided missile program, has made it his mission to raise India to glory through scientific scholarship. According to an article in the August 21-28 Newsweek International by Mac Margolis and Karla Bruning, 74-year old A.P.J. Abdul Kalam travels from school to school exhorting students to hit the books and excel in science. By all indications the budding scientists of India have taken that advice to heart. Enrollment is soaring in engineering and technical schools throughout India – and elsewhere in Asia. India, China and South Korea are producing legions of engineers much larger than the US, and those graduates are vying for and winning contracts, customers and patents in an increasingly competitive global marketplace. And that is leading educators in the wealthiest countries, such as the US, the UK and Germany, to lose sleep. These three engineering titans still lead the way in technological innovation, but enrollment in university engineering programs is stagnating and the dropout rate further diminishes numbers of graduates. Now Western educators are trying to fix the problem by curricular changes, such as presenting students with real-world challenges early on. And engineering organizations are trying to correct the misconception that science and engineering jobs are geeky, dirty and dull.
The above citation is based on an article entitled Sexing Up Science: Western educators and industrialists team up to boost engineering’s appeal.