Description
Written by the former vice-president of the Sloan Foundation and a specialist in demographics, this book looks at the demand for PhD professionals in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields. The book's thesis is that the United States goes through a boom-and-bust cycle in these fields, driven by lobbyists seeking more visas for foreign workers. These visas tie the right to live in the US to a specific job, making it difficult for workers to change jobs or ask for better conditions. The author's idea is that industry lobbyists who prefer these workers trigger alarm that the US does not produce enough scientists and engineers and must import more workers. Universities and other institutions then push to increase the number of US graduates in these fields without looking at how many jobs are available, US graduates are often unable to find work in their fields, and word gets out that these are fields to avoid, triggering another wave of lobbyist-driven alarm that the US lacks competitiveness in hard science and engineering. Annotation ©2015 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)
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How the fear of a shortage in American science talent fuels cycles in the technical labor marketIs the United States falling behind in the global race for scientific and engineering talent? Are U.S. employers facing shortages of the skilled workers that they need to compete in a globalized world? Such claims from some employers and educators have been widely embraced by mainstream media and political leaders, and have figured prominently in recent policy debates about education, federal expenditures, tax policy, and immigration. Falling Behind? offers careful examinations of the existing evidence and of its use by those involved in these debates.These concerns are by no means a recent phenomenon. Examining historical precedent, Michael Teitelbaum highlights five episodes of alarm about "falling behind" that go back nearly seventy years to the end of World War II. In each of these episodes the political system responded by rapidly expanding the supply of scientists and engineers, but only a few years later political enthusiasm or economic demand waned. Booms turned to busts, leaving many of those who had been encouraged to pursue science and engineering careers facing disheartening career prospects. Their experiences deterred younger and equally talented students from following in their footsteps—thereby sowing the seeds of the next cycle of alarm, boom, and bust.Falling Behind? examines these repeated cycles up to the present, shedding new light on the adequacy of the science and engineering workforce for the current and future needs of the United States.
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