Some good questions are being asked here but a lot of necessary ones are
not, as well.
First, the primary reason there is a "shortage" of "qualified science and
engineering candidates" is because it's in industry's current perceived
interest to say that there is, so they can import H-1B candidates, smart
indentured servants microtomed from the stratified loaf of Third World
countries who will work for thirty or forty thousand dollars a year in
Silicon Valley. American students factor in this phenomenon when they
choose a major, and thereby a career field.
Why bust one's ass for five years (because that's how long the average
EE/CS major takes to get a BSCS or BSEE today) for a degree that unless
you are a top grad from a top school is going to get you offered primarily
glorified-salesman or glorified-technician positions when another year or
two will get you law or pharmacy school or a MBA?
GET RID of H-1B and see the situation improve.
A broader consideration is the sheer percentages of people going to
college today. Fifty years ago it was something like 25%, and most
colleges were still colleges: there was considerable rigor in even
liberal arts classes. Today, it's the accepted wisdom that everyone needs
to go to college, and that by doing so the economy will benefit because
more people will be able to do better paying, higher level work.
Boy is that a stupid idea.
What has resulted is twofold:first, employers increasingly demand a
college degree for consideration for jobs historically high school
graduates held, and secondly, the level of needed achievement in colleges
has largely-except for the elite schools-plummeted. Serious, well heeled
employers then up the ante by considering only graduates from "elite" or
favored schools.
Who benefits? Educrats, obviously. The upper crust of cognitive elites
whose elite school status gives them a competitive edge-a Harvard graduate
can find work in competitive towns like New York and Boston from a pool of
employers who simply don't exist for graduates of non-Ivy League schools.
And a few at the bottom whse careers are pressurized by this Peter
Principle and obtain undemanding makework jobs in government and
institutions open only to college graduates but which no seriously capable
and learned person would put up with, much less want. (Yes Virginia, the
Chauncey Gardners and Gilligans of the world are not without demand in the
job market. George W. Bush is living proof.)
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