I spent the weekend up in Palo Alto, attending Stanford’s graduation, and had the occasion to hear Dana Gioia, head of the National Endowment for the Arts, speak at the graduation ceremony. Gioia, a poet and a Stanford MBA, talked about his view that America’s popular culture has suffered a decline–with a focus only on NBA stars, celebrities, and entertainment, to the detriment of American culture as a whole. Gioia suspected that more people could name NBA players and “American Idol” celebrities than any of the artists or scientists of the age. In particular, Gioia expressed his concern that the only role models youth have today in America are sports figures and entertainment celebrities. He also expressed concern for the ability of the U.S. to compete, when the education system only strives to graduate minimally skilled graduates for entry level jobs.
Gioia’s comments echo a recent conversation I had with some associates, about how almost all of the graduate students, and pretty big chunk of engineering and science students now seem to be from overseas. It’s somewhat alarming that the U.S. is not keeping up in supplying the core of the high tech business here — the technically skilled, highly educated engineers and scientists who are the backbone of the technology industry. This is somewhat mitigated by the great appeal of the U.S. to the technically elite, who move here and help to bolster the available work force for building the next big technology company, but I can’t help but wonder what happens when it starts becoming more appealing to build the next big business in Mumbai, Prague or Beijing, because of the availability of a local, highly skilled engineering workforce.
I recall exchanging email with a “highly respected economist” over outsourcing a few years ago who claimed that the U.S. would adapt because the engineers here would become the designers and outsource all the “grunt work”. Having a technical background (with an electrical engineering degree and having worked in software for many years) I didn’t make any headway trying to convince him that the engineers and programmers doing the “grunt work” today, are the ones who are designing and inventing the next generation of hardware, software, and products. You can’t just become “a designer” through engineering courses or taking classes, you have to be in the trenches actually implementing products. It seems to me that to ensure American competitiveness in the high tech industry in the future, we’ve either got to figure out how to attract and welcome the best technical talent here, or we’ve got to figure out how to make engineering and sciences attractive for today’s students.
