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03.09

The Technology Paradox: A Digital Economy Without a STEM Workforce?

By Edward E. Gordon

In late 2007, the World Economic Forum — a Swiss-based think-tank — gave the United States the top spot in its annual report on global competitiveness. The Swiss praised America’s market efficiency and ability to innovate [1]. About 175 years earlier, another European, Alexis de Tocqueville, reached similar conclusions in his book Democracy in America. Among his startling observations were the informality and dynamism of American society and the vulgarity of its mass popular culture. This seems just as true today [2].

Are you a “digital native” or a “digital immigrant”? You’re probably a “digital immigrant” if you still refer to mobile phones, digital cameras or computer games. To the natives, they’re simply phones, cameras and games.

For “digital natives” young and old, new media — iPods, BlackBerry handhelds, cell phones, the Internet, blogs, instant messaging, YouTube, chat rooms, DVDs, CDs — have made print literacy obsolete. Witness the continued decline in most newspapers’ readership over the past 30 years. Today only 47 percent of Americans bother to read a daily newspaper [3].

Fewer people are visiting bookstores or libraries to read books for recreation. An Apple Computer showroom’s window display contained a large picture of a full bookcase fronted by a line of Apples beneath the message, “The Only Library You’ll Ever Need!” As Apple Chairman Steven Jobs says people don’t read anymore. Scanning is the “in” activity. Catching Internet or cable headline news with the above “info-snacking” tools provides all the information the average person really needs. It just takes too much time and concentration to slowly read long, detailed print media like newspapers and books.

A 2008 study showed that the average American child begins using digital media at age six and a half. Children aged eight to ten spend more than six hours a day using some form of digital media.

Many people are wondering, “Is technology taking over?” The Consumer Electronics Association says that a rising percentage of U.S. adults own a cell phone (79%), VCR (78%), desktop computer (65%), digital camera (64%), laptop (44%), MP3 player (40%), video game console (35%), high-definition television (30%), or portable global positioning system (15%). These numbers will surely increase [4].

People young and old can become very overwhelmed. Some may ask if new media overuse is an addiction similar to kleptomania or compulsive shopping and others may ask how technology affects human fulfillment and where is it going.

“We’re failing by not bringing these kids up with the basic stuff that you need to exist these days,” says Ian McEwan of First, a multinational scientific educational charity. “They get on to MySpace and download songs from iTunes, but I’m not sure that we can teach them the fundamentals” [5].

Some may argue this is only the eternal rant of the older generation against the young. But what has become apparent is a huge mainstream culture disconnect by U.S. teens. Today, a third of U.S. school dropouts never even reach the tenth grade, according to an Education Week study [6]. What is happening?

About 15 percent of America’s high schools (2,000) produce about 50 percent of its dropouts. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia Education Fund termed them “drop-out factories.” Half of these academies to nowhere are in big cities. The rest are mainly in the South and Southwest United States. “What we do know is that the number of high schools with weak promoting power (to the next grade level), has nearly doubled in the last decade,” they concluded [7].

Jim Foster, a spokesman for South Carolina’s Department of Education offers this explanation, “Part of the problem we’ve had here is we live in a state [South Carolina] that culturally and traditionally has not valued a high school education” [8]. This cultural meltdown is spreading across America’s social classes. It encompasses teens, their parents and our institutions supposedly delivering “education excellence.”

We know the size of this education meltdown: 1,252,396 — the number of U.S. students who did not graduate high school in 2004. We know the price tag in a lifetime of lost wages, taxes and productivity to the U.S. economy: $325,622,960,000 — just in 2004 alone, according to the Alliance for Excellent Education [9].

Do the math. The long-term consequences of doing nothing over the next decade to reduce this immense U.S. techno-peasant underclass will be catastrophic for the future talent needed by the high-tech U.S. economy.

American high school graduation rates are bleaker for minority populations. According to the Alliance for Excellent Education, 52 percent of Hispanic students, 56 percent of African American students and 57 percent of Native American students graduate, compared to 78 percent of white students. Between 2010 and 2020, the U.S. Census Bureau predicts that most of the population growth (from 282 million in 2000 to 336 million in 2020) will occur within minority populations. Patrick Kelly, senior associate at the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, foresees an overall decline of 2.5 percent in the number of U.S. adults ages 25 to 64 attaining a high school diploma or higher, if current dropout trends are not corrected. The talent pool will constrict further rather than expand. There will be seven million more adult dropouts in 2020 than in 2010 [10].

Technology: Consumers — Yes! Science — No!

Fortunately for America, most of its teenagers do graduate from high school. The great cultural irony is that these young people are eager consumers of technology, but not interested in working in technology careers. Ask the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” It is very unlikely that systems analyst, software engineer or industrial/civil engineer will appear high on a list of career interests.

The unpleasant cultural fact for the U.S. technology-based economy is that careers in information technology (IT) and other scientific, technological, engineering and mathematical (STEM) professions are not as popular among young people as they were 20 years ago.

As noted above, the paradox has developed that at one level—as consumers—the workers of tomorrow are tech-junkies. But at the second level—as employees—they are tech-phobics. On average, dwindling numbers of students enroll every year in STEM-related courses in secondary schools and colleges. Andrew Herbert, head of the Microsoft Research Cambridge Laboratory, said, “As an industry, we have an image problem, and it’s time we recognized that, so we can start putting it right” [11].

His boss, Bill Gates, Chair of Microsoft, couldn’t agree more. In a speech at Microsoft’s Redmond headquarters, Gates lamented that while physical education is growing as a college major, enrollment in STEM-related computer science programs is falling despite a rising number of unfilled jobs in such careers. Between 2000 and 2004, the number of computer science majors dropped 60 percent. However, Microsoft continues to fund research areas that show great promise.

Just don’t expect the breakthroughs to happen — at least in the United States — unless there are enough Americans doing the research, observed Maria Klawe, dean of Princeton University’s engineering school. She appeared with Gates and noted the declining number of women in these careers. Klawe sees the need for a big-time popular culture change, maybe something from Hollywood that glamorizes computer careers in the same way they have shaped young people’s views of law and medicine. Gates agreed, though he added, “I don’t know the magic answer” [12].

“We need to shake off this perception that people working in IT are socially inept ‘geeks’ locked in a cycle of uncreative repetitive tasks,” says Lindsey Armstrong, president of Salesforce.com. “The IT department is changing and dispersing to all corners of the business.”

Parents are partly to blame. Jockish parents can teach their children jockish ways. But as Americans enter the next decade (2010-2020), STEM-related careers will be in great demand across society. Talent shortages will result in higher salaries. This will begin generating more public attention. The nerds of today often become the leaders of tomorrow. They develop more high-level critical thinking skills than their peers. These students often possess higher-than-average levels of curiosity, creativity and enthusiasm. These are the core values for innovation. Every employer will seek these innovators between 2010 and 2020 and thereafter. In other words, nerds aren’t just becoming more useful, they’re essential to America’s economic prosperity. If that’s not cool, I don’t know what is [13].

A reversal of popular attitudes regarding science can’t come soon enough. At Bessie Carmichael Elementary School in San Francisco, third-grade students had a puzzled look when a visitor asked what they liked best about science. They had no answer.

Well, “What is science?” Silence. Then seven-year-old Manuel said, “Science is like art.” After that unrevealing remark, he walked away. He could have meant that science, like art, isn’t taught that often in his school. In a 2007 survey of 923 Bay Area elementary school teachers, 80 percent said they spent less than an hour each week teaching science. Just as the U.S. economy is increasingly science-based, these schools have cut science instruction in half over the past seven years. This seems to be a disconnect with reality.

Considerable evidence exists that young adults who go into STEM-based careers generally learned to love science when they were children, says Rena Dorph, the lead researcher of this new survey from the Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of California, Berkeley and WestEd, a San Francisco education think tank. Yet 10 times as many teachers say they feel unprepared to teach science than math or reading. Thus it is hardly surprising that fewer than half of Bay Area fifth graders scored at grade level or above in science on the 2007 California Standards Test [14].

The Maintenance of Yesterday vs. the Realities of Today

If all this is true, skeptics might ask, how does America remain the world’s leading high-tech economy? The answer is foreign-born students. The annual survey of the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago found that foreign students comprised 44 percent of science and engineering doctorates last year. U.S. citizens earned only 32 percent of engineering degrees and 47 percent in the physical sciences (2006). It would seem that American culture isn’t into science anymore [15]. There are broad economic ramifications to this cultural decision.

Whether it is cell phones, computers, automobiles, CDs, DVDs, medicine or airplanes, advanced manufacturing applies cutting-edge concepts in electronics, computers, software and automation performed by highly educated technicians. A 2007 Manpower Survey, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the Manufacturing Institute all report that STEM jobs are the hardest to fill. Wages are rapidly rising. More dollars will chase less talent over the next decade.

Joel Leonard, a technical jobs expert, explains that, “Many complain that our society’s view of the mechanic of yesterday hasn’t caught up with the realities of today, and as a result, business growth is stalled.” We are caught in a technological dead-end scenario, “Since thus far automated machines don’t repair themselves,” Leonard reminds us [16].

For some, this forthcoming “labor shortage can be a blessing not a curse,” says Michael Lind, Whitehead Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation. “Where labor is scarce and expensive, businesses have an incentive to invest in labor-saving technology which boosts productivity growth by enabling fewer workers to produce more.” This is the current Japanese business model, found in a government white paper, “A Strategy for Growth.” Japan aims to become the world leader in developing sophisticated new products that have big price tags by having manufacturers focus on high-value production, in contrast to their low-cost Chinese rivals [17].

U.S. high-tech manufacturers want to follow the same strategy, yet they fail to recognize a fundamental difference between Japan and the United States. For decades, Japan’s business community has heavily invested in continuous workforce training. And even though Japan’s schools may be largely rote-learning machines, every high school senior studies calculus. The catch-22 here is that high-value production using the latest advanced labor-saving technology requires a high-skilled workforce. Japan has attained one; America has not.

A practical solution is broader investment by large and small businesses in updated career-education programs. Business has a leading role in helping to expand the proportion of highly skilled Americans who can fill the widening talent shortfalls of every American community [18].

This is the topic of my book, Winning the Global Talent Showdown: How Businesses and Communities Can Partner to Rebuild the Jobs Pipeline. Across America, community-based organizations (CBOs) and non-government organizations (NGOs) are being organized through business-education partnerships and the participation of chambers of commerce, unions, parent organizations, workforce boards, economic development commissions, professional or trade associations, and other community activists. The aim of these CBOs and NGOs is to reinvent the local/regional education-to-employment system. Their long-term goals are to ultimately change their state education/training mandates so that schools will offer education programs for a knowledge economy and businesses will see lifelong employee training and education as another essential component of just “doing business.” These are the “Gateways to the Future.” They are now spreading across the United States and deserve our support through greater civic engagement.

The United States is at a critical 2010 crossroad. Our economic future depends on the actions we take to reinvent the education-to-employment system over the 2010-2020 decade. We must turn our system and culture around to address the long-term challenges associated with a STEM-based knowledge economy designed to support technology and job growth. Together we can win the global talent showdown.

References

1. Chris Giles, “Economists Rule Change Puts US On Top of World,” Financial Times, 1 November 2007, p. 2.
    

2. Hugh Brogan, Alexis De Tocqueville, Prophet of Democracy in the Age of Revolution (London: Profile Books, 2006).
    

3. Richard Perez-Pena, “More Readers Trading Newspapers for Web Sites,” New York Times, 6 November 2007, C9; “Papers Suffer Erosion,” Chicago Tribune, 6 November 2007, sec. 3, p. 4; Juliana Baggini, “How Do Computers and Mobile Technology Shape Identity in the 21st Century, Financial Times Life & Arts, 17-18 May 2008, p. 18; “Here’s His Story: People Still Read,” New York Times Sunday Business, 2 March 2008, p. 2; L. Gordon Crovitz, “The Digital Future of Books, Wall Street Journal, 19 May 2008, A13; Digital Youths,” Education Week, 16 January 2008, p. 5.
    

4. Edward C. Baig, “Shopping for Gizmos Doesn’t Have to Be Land of Confusion,” USA Today, 28 November 2007, B5.
    

5. Danny Bradbury, “Perfect Storm Could Stifle IT,” Financial Times, 22 November 2007.
    

6. Diana Jean Schemo, “A Third of U.S. Dropouts Never Reach 10th Grade,” New York Times, June 21 2006, Online edition.
    

7. Robert Balfanz, and Nettie Legters, “Closing ‘Dropout Factories,’” Education Week, 12 July 2006, pp. 42-43.
    

8. Nancy Zuckerbrod, “School Graduation Rates New Fed Priority,” 29 October 2007, http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/WireStory?id=3789565 (Accessed 10 January 2008).
    

9. “High School Dropouts Cost the U.S. Billions in Lost Wages and Taxes, According to Alliance for Excellent Education,” Alliance for Excellent Education, March 2006, http://www.all4ed.org/press/pr_022806.html (Accessed 4 March 2006).
    

10. “Demography As Destiny: How America Can Build A Better Future,” Straight A’s (Alliance for Excellent Education) October 2006, pp. 4-5; Taken a step further, the U.S. Census Bureau projects today’s minorities will become the majority by 2050. Hopefully, we will have taken concerted action by mid-century to prevent an ill-educated techno-peasant underclass from fundamentally reducing the capacity of the U.S. economy.
     

11. Jessica Twentyman, “IT Sector Faces Growing Skills Gap,” Financial Times, 21 November 2007, p. 3; “STEM Employment Forecasts and Distribution among Employment Sectors,” Stem Workforce Data Project: Report No. 7, http://www.cpst.org/STEM/STEM7_Report.pdf (Accessed 1 May 2008).
     

12. 12. Ina Fried, “Gates: No Magic Answer to Tech Worker Shortage,” C/NET News.com, 18 July 2005, http://news.com/Gates-No-Magic-answer-to-tech-worker-shortage/2100-1022-3-5792283.html?tag=item (Accessed 5 August 2007).
     

13. Azam Ahmed, “Exhibit from a Galaxy Far, Far Away,” Chicago Tribune, 7 October 2007, sec. 4, p. 2; David Andregg, Nerds: Who They Are and Why We Need More of Them (New York: Penguin, 2007), pp. 15-38, pp. 43-64, pp. 239-253; “In Praise of Nerds,” The Economist, 12 January 2008, pp. 76-77; Lindsey Armstrong, “Less ‘Geek’ More Chic Is the Way Forward,” Financial Times, 14 May 2008, p. 2.
     

14. Nanette Asimov, “Science Courses Nearly Extinct in Elementary Grades, Study Says,” San Francisco Chronicle, 25 October 2007, A1.
     

15. “American Brain Drain,” Wall Street Journal, 30 November 2007, A16; During the 2004-05 academic year 565,000 foreign students were enrolled in U.S. higher education institutions: 80,466 were Indian, of which 72 percent were enrolled in graduate courses largely in engineering, computer science, and mathematics; Vaishali Honawar, “Indians Top Foreigners Bound for U.S. Colleges,” Education Week, 30 November 2005, p. 21.
     

16. Joel Leonard, “Think You’re Smarter Than a Maintenance Technician?” http://www.plantservices.com/articles/2007/086.html (Accessed 11 January 2008).
     

17. Michael Lind, “A Labor Shortage Can Be a Blessing Not a Curse,” Financial Times,  9 June 2006, p. 13; Jonathan Sapsford, “Japan Shifts Gears to Same Industrial Base,” Wall Street Journal, 9 June 2006, A4.
     

18. Pat Toensmeier, “The Amazing World of Advanced Manufacturing,” In Demand Magazine, http://www.careervoyages.gov/indemandmagazine-advmanufacturing/pdf (Accessed 16 May 2008).

Edward E. Gordon is a researcher and author of books on the world’s workforce including Winning the Global Talent Showdown: How Businesses and Communities Can Partner to Rebuild the Jobs Pipeline, The 2010 Meltdown: Solving the Impending Jobs Crisis, Skill Wars: Winning the Battle for Productivity and Profit, and FutureWork. He is the president of Imperial Consulting Corporation in Chicago and Palm Desert, California.

Comments may be submitted to todaysengineer@ieee.org.

Opinions expressed are the author's.