Wipro's Azim Premji - 'The man who wants to take your jobs'

[John Chambers]

John Whitfield writes:
| Doesn't that suggest that the larger problem is the American educational system?  There are very few real scholarships left; students are encouraged to borrow far beyond their means to repay.  In the end, it's a better deal financially to be a truck driver than a doctor because there are no tuition loans to repay.  If America wants to stay a world leader, we need to stop wasting our resources of skill and talent with a flawed educational model.
|
| I work with several Indians and over there, if you have the talent, you are pretty much guaranteed the education it takes to exercise that talent.

One model that might explain it is a comment  I've  heard  from  some
economist-type  sources:  The  American  education  system has a very
positive trade balance. It's a major export industry. We have some of
the  best colleges and universities in the world, and the rest of the
world is buying.

The idea is presented occasionally that our taxes  support  education
for foreigners. But this turns out to be almost entirely false. There
are a lot of foreigners in our schools, but almost all  of  them  are
funded  from  their  home  country,  either  their  rich  family or a
government program.  For that matter, American support  for  our  own
college  kids is rather feeble.  A lot is made of the occasional poor
kid making it through college on scholarships, but  numerically  this
is  very  rare.   Mostly  they end up deeply in debt because the only
funding available is loans.  Or they drop out.

My wife spent a few years getting an advanced degree at BU. She likes
to describe what she saw there: Most of her BU friends were the wives
of foreign students at Harvard and MIT.  Their governments  supported
their husbands, who were usually the top students in their schools at
home.  But  usually  those  governments  didn't  support  the  wives'
education,  no matter how bright they were, because they were female.
Their families, however, wanted their daughters to  get  an  American
education,  so  they paid to send their daughters to BU.  This wasn't
just the Indian and Pakistani students; they were also  from  Europe,
Africa and South America.

I've also seen the observation that, historically, America  has  long
depended  on  immigrants  for  its technically-educated workers.  The
reason is twofold.  One is the lack of  financial  support  for  poor
kids'   college   education.   This  especially  hits  the  non-white
population, but it also affects the "poor white trash"  groups.   The
other  reason is that American society as a whole has a rather strong
anti-intellectual streak, and most kids grow  up  with  the  attitude
that the bright kids are all "nerds" and "geeks".  Most American kids
don't want a reputation for competence in math  and  other  technical
subjects, and they learn early to resist such education.

A few kids resist the taunting and insults and grow up to  be,  well,
like  the  people on this list.  But it's not nearly enough.  We need
lots of technical workers, and we have historically gotten them  from
groups  of people whose children grow up thinking that education is a
good thing.  This has been mostly recent immigrants, though there are
a  few  minority  groups  (we  all  know who they are) that instill a
pro-education attitude in their children.   This  is  something  that
isn't likely to change soon.

There is a bit of irony of the US having an educational  system  that
attracts  students  from  all  over  the world, while much of our own
population tries its best to not become educated.

But the minimal financial (and social) support for our  own  talented
poor  kids  isn't  irony  at all; it's tragedy.  With the rest of the
world waking up and sending their bright kids to  our  schools,  it's
easy to predict the eventual outcome.