Response to Comment

Superdestroyer wrote…

You may want to check the real statistics on graduate students in engineering in the US. Graduate students in engineering are more white than anything else, more native [than] foreign and most of the foreign went undergraduate in the US. However, the number have gone down a little.

Thanks for the link to this data. It was most enlightening. However, you seem to have completely missed the point of what this data is actually showing. I was talking about mathematics and physics, and you brought up engineering. If you look at the data you provided, you will see that engineering actually has a considerably LARGER percentage of temporary visa holders than either math or physics. In fact, among all the fields represented in your data, engineering is the one with the largest number as well as the largest increase in temporary visa holders, and the percentage in 2002 stood at an alarming 49%! This is exactly what I’m talking about. I’m not sure exactly what you’re debating, unless it's that 51% native - 49% foreign is not a problem.

Your claims that students are more "white than anything else" that "most of the foreign went undergraduate in the US" are absolutely NOT supported by this data.

Edit (9/16/2007): In attempting to create a new graph with more recent NSF data, I accidentally overwrote the graph that was part of this post. Note that on the new graph using data through 2005 the engineering foreign visa student percentage is above 50%. See my blog post dated 9/16/2007 for more details.

Also, probably the total number of high students taking calculus in the US is greater than it has ever been before. Why do you keep claiming that US schools are failing. How many US high students graduate in 1964 were taking calculus?

I checked; this is actually correct. The number of students taking calculus has gone up consistently since 1955 (the first year the AP Calculus exam was offered). Even more encouraging, the percent of students taking AP Calculus has increased. But these are absolutely NOT the students about whom I’m concerned. Even now, only about 2% of high school students take calculus. Anybody in this elite group is already a gifted math student who is going to do well regardless of what the school system inflicts on him or her. The students about whom I actually am concerned – and the ones whom US schools are indeed failing – are the ones who could be successful in math, science or engineering, but who are not provided with the skills they need because of the NCTM math idiocy pervading our high school mathematics curriculum.