TWIF (Part 2): Ready Or Not, Here China Comes!
“Close games for the Americans were rare in previous Olympics,
but now it appears to be something the Americans should get used to.”From an August 17, 2004, AP article from the Athens Olympics titled “U.S. Men’s Basketball Team Narrowly Beats Greece”
There are few examples that more thoroughly sum up the rest of the world’s ability to compete head-to-head with the America than the mediocre performance of the U.S. Olympic basketball team in 2004. The U.S. line up—composed completely of NBA stars and all-stars—returned home with the bronze medal after losing to Puerto Rico, Lithuania, and Argentina. Going into 2004 the United States basketball team had lost only one game in the history of modern Olympics. Remember when America sent only NCAA stars to the Olympics? And they dominated the competition! Then once they were challenged we sent our NBA stars; who once again, dominated the competition. Now our NBA stars are being successfully challenged and—though it’s hard to accept—beaten.
Believe it or not our NBA All-Stars were beaten by technology. Coaches in other countries can download our coaching methods off the web, watch our games on TV, and study ESPN’s highlight reel. In other words, they studied us so that they could beat us. And guess what? It worked.
Even so, when considering the leveled playing field created by technology Olympic basketball is important only as a metaphor. It symbolizes something much bigger and much more serious: America has failed to sufficiently invest in our future by neglecting to prepare our young people for the race ahead.
The crisis is happening on many different fronts, yet this post focuses on what I call the career choice gap. Nowadays American young people would rather be lawyers than scientists, pop stars rather than engineers. The generation of scientists and engineers who were motivated by the threat of Sputnik in 1957 and by the inspiration of John F. Kennedy are reaching the age of retirement and are not being adequately replaced.
An analysis of NASA records conducted by the newspaper Florida Today (March 7, 2004), showed that nearly 40 percent of the 18,146 people working for NASA are age fifty or older and 22% are fifty-five or older. Most astonishingly NASA employees over sixty outnumber employees under thirty by a ratio of nearly three to one! Only four percent of NASA workers are under thirty years old.
The National Science Board (NSB) reports that the number of American eighteen-to-twenty-four-year-olds who received science degrees has fallen to seventeenth in the world, even though we ranked third 30 years ago. Furthermore, the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) showed that American twelfth graders finished 15th out of sixteen countries in advanced mathematics and dead last out of sixteen countries in advanced science.
Don’t think for a moment that the up-and-coming world is sitting still. Of the 2.8 million bachelor’s degrees in science and engineering granted worldwide in 2003, 1.2 million were earned by Asian students in Asian universities. Only 400,000 were granted in the United States. Shirley Ann Jackson, the 2004 president of the American Association for Advancement of Science explains, “the proportional emphasis on science and engineering is greater in other nations.”
Science and engineering degrees now represent 60 percent of all bachelor’s degrees earned in China but only 31 percent in the United States. When you factor out science degrees the figures are even further removed; 46 percent of Chinese students graduate with engineering degrees vs. 5 percent of American students.
According to Friedman “these shortages could not be happening at a worse time—just when the world is going flat.” According to the NSB “the number of jobs requiring science and engineering skills in the U.S. labor force is growing almost 5 percent per year.” In comparison the labor force as a whole is growing just over 1 percent annually.
The world is speeding up and America—specifically the next generation—is falling behind. Blame could be placed on our parents but accomplishes nothing. Chinese young people are motivated and ambitious. I cannot stress enough that young Chinese and Indians are racing us to the top. They don’t want to work for us. Heck, they don’t even want to be like us. They want to dominate us. They are not content where they are and they’re studying us carefully in order to beat us. And guess what? It’s working.
A Chinese-American who works for Microsoft accompanied Bill Gates on his visits to China. He said that Gates is recognized everywhere he goes in China. Young people hang from the rafters and scalp tickets just to hear him speak. Same with Jerry Lang, the founder of Yahoo!
Contrast this obsession with the American youth culture’s obsession with Hollywood stars, hip-hop and pop artists, and reality TV shows such as American Idol. Our preoccupation with the “New American Dream”—namely getting rich by entertaining (sports star, movie star, pop star, etc.) has caused us to ignore traditional, foundational, and critical professions. Mr. Friedman, whose book supplied the quotations and statistics I’ve cited closes the issue:
In China today, Bill Gates is Britney Spears. In America today, Britney Spears is Britney Spears—and that’s our problem.
Note: Please take advantage of the insightful comments made regarding how American youth’s entitlement complex contributes to the problem.
In Christ, Brett Harris
Continue to Part Three…
August 10th, 2005 at 4:37 am
I think you’re right, Brett, in outlining the problems that face the American youth generation, but I think it goes deeper than just a fascination with the “fame culture” and a lack of science degrees.
Young Americans today have an attitude of entitlement. It’s their “right” to have an education, Social Security, a job, a nice house, a fun car, and plenty of money. We’ve taken the American dream a step farther. Not only can everyone have an opportunity to achieve their dreams, everyone has a right to have their dreams (the results of the opportunity) - without doing the work. We’ve built a culture of entitlement - and that’s where our fascination with Britney Spears and our lack of science degrees come in.
American Youth feel they’re entitled not just to the things their parents and grandparents work for, but to anything they want. ‘Fame - well, that lady from Texas got on Survivor - I should be able to do that and be famous.’
That attitude also affects our students. Science and math degrees require far more work than an English Lit degree - it’s harder for most people to get the science degree. So they get English Lit instead.
Our fascination with fame is a strong symptom, but our real problem is our culture of entitlement.
August 10th, 2005 at 4:38 am
Thanks for you insightful comment, Nqoire. I would completely agree. I like to call American youth’s entitlement complex the American Idol Syndrome.
If you’ve ever seen the faces of the American Idol contestants when Simon Cowell tells them they have no talent you understand what I mean. American young people cannot accept the fact that they don’t deserve high paying jobs, they aren’t “beautiful,” or their voices sound funny.
Perhaps we’ll wake up and start pushing ourselves once our lawn mower business is outsourced to China (however that might work).
August 10th, 2005 at 4:38 am
Americans can live a good life without working very hard. Why strive for a successful career when we can satisfy our needs in a less stressful fashion? Why major in a difficult subject when an easy one will do just as well?
Our entitlement mentality, as Nqiore points out, does play a part in this laxity, but our successful and affluent culture that supports underachievers and doesn’t point fingers allows the freeloaders of society to operate with impunity.
You mentioned the growth in technology sectors compared to labor and services and the disproportionate need in tech industries. This imbalance will eventually achieve equilibrium independent of the American workforce. If we don’t provide the labor to balance the scales, someone else will.
I don’t know how much further you plan to develop this issue here, but I am curious how you see Britney Spears (representing the US entertainment industry) affecting the young workforce. Do you think the pop star mentality will discourage potential employees from pursuing technology careers despite contradictory economic pressures? If so we have a really big problem on our hands.
August 10th, 2005 at 10:39 am
I think you’re right, Brett, in outlining the problems that face the American youth generation, but I think it goes deeper than just a fascination with the “fame culture” and a lack of science degrees.
Young Americans today have an attitude of entitlement. It’s their “right” to have an education, Social Security, a job, a nice house, a fun car, and plenty of money. We’ve taken the American dream a step farther. Not only can everyone have an opportunity to achieve their dreams, everyone has a right to have their dreams (the results of the opportunity) - without doing the work. We’ve built a culture of entitlement - and that’s where our fascination with Britney Spears and our lack of science degrees come in.
American Youth feel they’re entitled not just to the things their parents and grandparents work for, but to anything they want. ‘Fame - well, that lady from Texas got on Survivor - I should be able to do that and be famous.’
That attitude also affects our students. Science and math degrees require far more work than an English Lit degree - it’s harder for most people to get the science degree. So they get English Lit instead.
Our fascination with fame is a strong symptom, but our real problem is our culture of entitlement.
August 10th, 2005 at 11:17 am
Thanks for you insightful comment, Ms. Clark. I would completely agree. I like to call American youth’s entitlement complex the American Idol Syndrome.
If you’ve ever seen the faces of the American Idol contestants when Simon Cowell tells them they have no talent you understand what I mean. American young people cannot accept the fact that they don’t deserve high paying jobs, they aren’t “beautiful,” or their voices sound funny.
Perhaps we’ll wake up and start pushing ourselves once our lawn mower business is outsourced to China (however that might work).
In Christ,
Brett Harris
August 10th, 2005 at 11:23 am
Americans can live a good life without working very hard. Why strive for a successful career when we can satisfy our needs in a less stressful fashion? Why major in a difficult subject when an easy one will do just as well?
Our entitlement mentality, as Nqiore points out, does play a part in this laxity, but our successful and affluent culture that supports underachievers and doesn’t point fingers allows the freeloaders of society to operate with impunity.
You mentioned the growth in technology sectors compared to labor and services and the disproportionate need in tech industries. This imbalance will eventually achieve equilibrium independent of the American workforce. If we don’t provide the labor to balance the scales, someone else will.
I don’t know how much further you plan to develop this issue here, but I am curious how you see Britney Spears (representing the US entertainment industry) affecting the young workforce. Do you think the pop star mentality will discourage potential employees from pursuing technology careers despite contradictory economic pressures? If so we have a really big problem on our hands.
July 1st, 2006 at 1:44 am
It’s been almost 3 years since I was last in America. I’ve been living in China for 3 of the past 4 years. The year I was in America, I was made to feel like my life had no value. Indeed, during that time I absolutely loathed America and if the terrorists won, so what? It’s not like living under Sharia is any worse than working at Wal-Mart.
For most of that time I was working on a video game. http://www.flipcode.com/cgi-bin/fcmsg.cgi?account_info=8860 This is NOT something just anyone can do, especially on the technology side. But my childhood friend was looking down on me because he had a “real job” making $9 a Quizno’s. Another friend who had an EECS (Electrical Engineering and Computer Science) degree from UC Berkeley with a strong GPA but was about to apply to Best Buy because he couldn’t get work in his field and that was the case for 2 years. My uncle, who’s supposed to be family and look out for me, TOLD me I needed experience and was going to have me work for $8/hr making copies at his accounting firm while purporting to do me a “favor.” Meanwhile everyone was acting like *I* was the problem because I had a “negative attitude,” trying to drag me down into their morass of mediocrity. (No Child Left Behind anyone?) My experience showed me consistently over the course of the year I was there that America devalues human life and human achievement. Indeed, the cases I encountered were certainly not limited to just these.
These days, I’m an economic rationalist. I just live off my trust fund because there is no point in exerting myself. The rewards for effort and achievement aren’t there. Indeed, in every field BUT entertainment, the definition of achievement is asymptotic and is more appropriately defined as conformity with wages to match. No one is willing to hire someone who wants to reach for the stars and is willing to work to get there. They want people who will conform and won’t make waves.
I can speak for kids these days. They don’t lack values and they’re not unwilling to work. They are simply responding rationally to the economic incentive structure society provides.
December 31st, 2008 at 8:26 am
Wow, this article really helped confirm where I feel God is leading me. I’ve always been interested in chemistry and math, and I was just accepted to MIT Early Action where I hope to study chemical engineering. I never knew there was such a shortage of American engineers. Even as I go to school (I’ll probably defer a year) at one of the top engineering schools, I want to be an engineer for God’s purposes.