AMERICA DUMBING DOWN: WE DON'T LIKE ELITES

Actually this posting isn't about American elites. It's about our waning power in the world of science. Not only do we no longer produce as many scientists as we used to, we don't allow the scientific elites from other nations to come to America to be educated and, once here, produce much of our vaunted leadership in science and technology. Because of anti-foreigner emotions in America and restrictive immigration policies caused by 9/11 fears, we aren't even getting foreigners to come over here and do our white collar work for us. I also can't help blaming the American anti-intellectual bias for putting us in this position. We haven't been in this position since the days of Eisenhower, the last period of conservative, anti-intellectual fevers.

A recent Newsweek report by Fareed Zakaria, excerpted below, from November 29, 2004, p. 33 gives us some details:

"The dirty secret about our scientific edge is that it’s largely produced by foreigners and immigrants. Americans don’t do science.

"The facts are plain. U.S. visa procedures have become far too cumbersome, and bureaucrats are turning down far more applications than ever before. One crucial result is the dramatic decline of foreign students in the U.S.—the first shift downward in 30 years. Three new reports document the magnitude of this fall. Undergraduate enrollment from China dropped 20 percent this year; from India, 9 percent; from Japan, 14 percent. The declines are even worse in graduate schools: applications from China have dropped 45 percent; from India, 28 percent.

"The NSB put out another report this year that showed the United States now ranks 17th (among nations surveyed) in the proportion of college students majoring in science and engineering. In 1975 the United States ranked third. The recent decline in foreign applications is having a direct effect on science programs. Three years ago there were 385 computer-science majors at MIT Today there are 240. The trend is similar at Stanford, Carnegie Mellon and the University of California, Berkeley.

"...the single most deadly effect of this trend is the erosion of American capacity in science and technology. The U.S. economy has powered ahead in large part because of the amazing productivity of America’s science and technology. Yet that research is now done largely by foreign students. The National Science Board (NSB) documented this reality last year, finding that 38 percent of doctorate holders in America’s science and engineering work force are foreign-born. Foreigners make up more than half the students enrolled in science and engineering programs. The dirty little secret about America’s scientific edge is that it’s largely produced by foreigners and immigrants.

"Western ideas about the benefits of free markets and free trade have become the global standard. This may have much to do with Western foreign and trade policies. But surely this shift has been strengthened and facilitated by the fact that so many of the people in the ministries of finance, trade and industry in the developing world were educated at Western universities.
Falling foreign enrollments will produce a broader but no less profound loss for the United States. America has spread its interests, ideas and values across the world by many means, but perhaps the single most effective one has been by educating the world’s elites."

Strangely, I feel that if you're reading this and, in fact, read for pleasure and information, you already know what I'm putting down here. It's all those talk radio heads who get "Rushed" information and the Southerners in their pews of ignorance who need to hear and to think about this American plight, but who'll inform them? Informed, compassionate people are always more liberal people, and Hannity doesn't want that. Who with a grain of sensibility listen to him?
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"Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad." —Euripides [Who imagines he's doing god's will? Who thinks god is speaking to him and through him? Isn't that a form of madness?]