On the 12th of this month, June, The Economist ran an interesting article on technology in America. Using the results of RAND Corporation’s National Defense Research Institute report, “US Competitiveness in Science and Technology” they inferred that “the world’s brightest people are gravitating to the world’s best opportunities. A higher proportion than ever of these paragons want to make their homes in the United States.” RAND’s findings:

-America “accounts for 40% of total world spending on research and development”;
-“produces 63% of the most frequently cited [science and technology] publications”;
-“employs 70% of the world’s living Nobel laureates”;
-“scientists and engineers continue to earn on average more than non-S&E workers (about 25 percent more) and continue to have lower unemployment than the non-S&E workforce for similar levels of education. The salaries of U.S. citizens in S&E have grown in line with those of U.S. citizens in non-S&E positions, suggesting that, on average, the relative attractiveness of S&E careers has not changed much”;
-“within each percentile category of S&E salaries there is little difference between the average salaries of U.S. citizens and noncitizens […]. The similarity in salaries across the salary spectrum suggests that the quality/skill range of noncitizen S&E workers is similar to that of citizen S&E workers”;

Is the funding importance of math and science over verbal skills and literacy simply a fact of life in America? Considering RAND’s findings, science and engineering fields provide a remarkably equal opportunity for immigrants – and probably the children of immigrants – to flourish. Does American public policy owe anything to English education or will America be fine without it? Perhaps English education, literacy, verbal ability and other characteristically similar skills should be optional like art or music rather than tested and touted as standard and indicative of intelligence. Or maybe the science/verbal imbalance is fine the way it is. If you can create your own markup language or write Java code in your sleep is it so important that you can’t decide where a semicolon is appropriate or you can’t conjugate the verb “nuke”? Perhaps not.

Link to the Economist article

Link to RAND report