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AEP Online |
Federal Program Addresses American-Asian STEM GapIn response to China’s rapid rise in the fields of science and engineering, a federal pilot program that teaches students Mandarin Chinese was recently instituted in Oregon. The funding for the program does not come from the Department of Education, however. It comes from the Department of Defense. Recent studies have shown that there were a mere 70,000 U.S. engineering graduates in 2004, compared with 600,000 for China and 350,000 for India. The disparity was enough to convince the Defense Department to award a $700,000 grant to fund the program this fall. The program, run by the Portland school district and the University of Oregon, teaches students Mandarin from kindergarten to college in the hope that they will move from the Portland school system to the university, where they can receive scholarships to take a standard college curriculum taught largely in Chinese. If the program works, organizers say, it will serve as a model that other schools and universities can duplicate. But the program, while innovative, is not the first attempt to address the gap between the number of U.S. and Asian Science and Engineering students. In the Senate, the Foreign Relations Committee is considering a proposal to allocate $1.3 billion to boost classes on Chinese language and culture in public schools. And in 2004, the congressional Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) caucus was formed by Congressmen Vernon Ehlers (R-Mich.) and Mark Udall, D-Colo. "There is a crisis,” Ehlers recently told Education Week. “And it is getting steadily worse...If we aren't able to educate our children, they won't get decent jobs, and I am not just talking about scientists and engineers.” But while legislators and businesspeople have repeatedly said that U.S. dominance in science and engineering may soon be eclipsed by China and India, a recent study by Duke University says that the gap between America and Asia is not as wide as previously believed. “Framing the Engineering and Outsourcing Debate: Placing the United States on a Level Playing Field with China and India”, was released last month by Duke University, and says that figures touting a large disparity between the number of American, Chinese and Indian engineers are inappropriate. U.S. engineering graduates have completed four-year degrees from accredited institutions, while some Chinese and Indian engineers have completed three-year programs or diplomas, the report says, adding that, unlike the U.S., China and India include computer science and information technology graduates in their counts. The report says that when the numbers are compared counting only holders of four-year-degrees in the three countries, and adding information technology and computer science graduates in the U.S., the disparity isn’t as large as previously believed. According to the report, the adjusted numbers show that the United States produced 137,400 engineers in 2004, compared with 351,500 in China and 112,000 in India. The report also says that the U.S. still produces more engineers per capita than China and India. Questions, ideas, or in need of more information? Please contact Stacey Pusey at 856-241-7772. |
Click here to download a PDF of the Duke study. |
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