To expand on my earlier post regarding the "trickle-up" effect of bad math education on U.S. technical Ph.D. programs...
In the 1979–80 school year, for example, out of the total number of Ph.D. degrees conferred in the physical sciences, U.S. students received nearly 76% and foreign students received nearly 22% percent. (Percentages do not equal 100 because some students’ citizenship status is unknown.) In the 1996–97 school year, 57.5% of doctoral degrees in physical sciences were conferred on U.S. citizens versus 36.3% on foreign citizens. Furthermore, in that same year, of those receiving Ph.D.’s in mathematics and engineering, only 46.2% and 44.3%, respectively, were U.S. citizens whereas 46.6% and 49.5% were students with visas.
And this trend has continued since 1996-7. The bottom line is that students trained in the U.S. simply can not compete (of course, I mean in the aggregate when I say this) with foreign-trained students for the slots of our graduate schools.
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It is not that the US students are not trained to compete, it is that they choose not to compete. Most suburban white kids would rahter go into law, busienss, or government instead of grind it out against the asain kids in graduate school. Also given the long years of low pay to get a PhD in a science and the lack of job prospects, maybe the MBA or LLB are better choices, economically) than grinding it out in engineering school.
Wow, that's a very insightful observation. I'm a child of Cuban immigrants, so I've always taken the attitude you describe for granted. It never occurred to me that lack of this attitude might be to blame for some of the results I've posted here. Thanks!
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