| |
Joint Committee on Education; Testimony of Ray Stata, Analog Devices
Testimony of Ray Stata
Joint Committee on Education
November 3, 2005
When I was the founding Chairman of Massachusetts High Tech Council (MHTC) back in 1977, we made education of our technical workforce, at all levels but especially engineering and science graduates, our highest priority.
Today we are in fact worse off than almost 30 years ago, not only in terms of preparation of our high school graduates for careers in high tech, but also in terms of the collective number of undergraduates pursuing engineering careers. To illustrate, in 2004 only 19% of Massachusetts college-bound seniors indicated an interest in science and technology careers compared to 26% in the 90’s, and of those, many are staying away from the hard sciences.
This workforce deficiency was marked in recent decades by several factors. First, we were able to attract and retain the best and brightest students from abroad to come here to study science and engineering and then to take jobs after graduation. Statistics show that the engineering population in Massachusetts would have declined over the past 10 years had it not been for foreign immigration. Second, the U.S. high-tech industry has been a magnet to attract and retain foreign engineers, especially from India and Taiwan and later from China, since there were few job opportunities for engineers in these countries.
Today we all know that this situation has changed and is changing dramatically. The high-tech industry in India and China is on fire, being fueled by an education system at all levels and by societal values which see engineering and science careers as the ticket to economic and social mobility. As a result there is an abundant supply of engineers at low wages in these countries.
The numbers are staggering, 184,000 engineering graduates per year in India and 220,000 in China compared to under 60,000 in the U.S.
Moreover, since there is now an increasing number of attractive job opportunities emerging in the high-tech industry in India and China, many of the engineers who came here to study and work over the past 10 to 20 years ago are returning to their home country to look after aging parents and to participate in the booming high-tech industry there.
There is no doubt that today and even more so in the decade ahead, the U.S. will be facing much stronger competition in high tech around the world. But all is not lost, the U.S. can still maintain its leadership in many high-tech industries, not in terms of sheer numbers, but in terms of innovation at the high end of the competitive spectrum.
The U.S. system of higher education, both public and private, is still the best in the world, especially our research universities. Thus our high-tech industry has significant advantages in commercializing leading-edge technologies and products.
So the major problem is not with our universities, although we should further enhance the quality of public higher education in Massachusetts. The problem is more with our K-12 education system which is failing to prepare our workforce for a more technology-based economy and to motivate a greater number of our high school graduates to pursue technical careers. Even though we have made progress on MCAS tests, the data clearly shows that our high school graduates are falling behind in the global race for human resource development, especially in technical areas. And this does not take into account the appalling number of dropouts in our fastest growing populations.
Something is seriously wrong with our K-12 education system, and we are running out of time to fix it. It’s a complicated puzzle, and it will take time and determination to correct the problem. But we know for sure some of the things that are broken and in desperate need of repair.
First, at the top of the li
|
