The US has 5% of the world's population but a third of the world's scientific and engineering researchers. More than half of the doctoral-level scientists and engineers under 45 are foreign-born. How long can this continue when more and more Chinese and Indian kids are studying at home and we are putting up barriers to foreigners studying here? With their populations above a billion each, China and India can easily outnumber our native-born scientists and engineers with only a small percentage of their population involved in the sciences.
As Richard Freeman points out in this paper, we need to make science and engineering careers more attractive to our students. Business must not only scream about the lack of graduates, they have to pay them more.
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