In his best-selling book The World Is Flat, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman has made considerable hay touting the idea that the United States is losing its competitive advantage in technological fields to India, China and other behemoths that are graduating manifold more engineers than the U.S. But a new study says that ain’t necessarily so.
This Christian Science Monitor story points to a Duke University study which claims: “Inconsistent reporting of problematic engineering graduation data has been used to fuel fears that America is losing its technological edge. A comparison of like-to-like data suggests that the US produces a highly significant number of engineers, computer scientists, and information technology specialists, and remains competitive in global markets.”
Furthermore:
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Last year, the US awarded bachelor’s degrees to 72,893 engineering students, according to the American Society for Engineering Education. But using India’s more inclusive definition, the Duke study finds the US handed out 137,437 bachelor’s degrees last year, more than India’s 112,000. The US number is far more impressive in rela-tive terms, since India has more than three times as many people.
China’s numbers are more problematic because its government does not break them down. In its revised figures, the National Academies reduced the Chinese total from 600,000 to 500,000. The Duke study pegs the total at 644,106, as reported by the Chinese Ministry of Education. But the study also points out that, as with India, the Chinese total includes engineering graduates with so-called “short cycle degrees” that represent three years or less of college training.
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