As chairman of the Computing Research Association--a group made up of academic departments, research centers and professional societies--his job at CRA is to improve computing research and education. But Foley sees troubling trends in the nation's system for nurturing and training new information technology scientists.
The number of doctorate degrees awarded in the United States has dropped not only in computer science and engineering, but also in noncomputer science and engineering fields in general. And top U.S. undergraduate computer science departments are seeing enrollments fall.
Some industry analysts argue that the country already has a glut of Ph.D.s. But to Foley, also a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing, the educational declines may very well contribute to an economic malaise. He wants to excite youngsters about computers, in part through better-trained teachers. Foley would also pump up federal research funding and give young scholars independent funding.
CNET News.com recently spoke with Foley about computer science education, the flow of programming work offshore and how the computer science profession in America can weather the trend toward offshoring.
Q: The number of science and engineering Ph.D.s awarded in the United States has been falling, from 27,300 in 1998 down to 24,550 in 2002. How big a deal is that decline? A: One way to look at is in the context of what other countries are doing. The per capita production of engineering students in the United States is a lot lower than in other countries, including Korea and Japan and China and Finland. The per capita data is a little dangerous because we have different bases, and the U.S. has a big population compared to Korea. But on the other hand, compared to China, our population is small. So there is a larger base of smart people to draw from than in the United States. That just says that there is going to be a potential long-term issue.
A major part of our economy has been built on scientific advancement--computers, telecommunications, planes, the whole Internet and increasingly, the bio-world of medicine and life sciences and genetics and genomics and all that. So if other countries are increasingly stronger than we are in the technical base, the economic results of the technical base are going to fall behind after a while. So I think it's a big deal because of the potential threat to our economic strength.
What about the argument that it's hard for a lot of Ph.D.s to get good jobs these days, and also that there is a long period of time in which science Ph.D.s aren't getting independent funding. Isn't that a sign that the United States has a glut? There is this kind of disconnect in life sciences, physics and chemistry, in which you have to do a post-doc for three or six years before you get a faculty position, which is not the case in computing.
We need to provide direct funding to new graduates rather than having them working under the wing of the more senior scientists.
In computer science and related fields, that hasn't been necessary, because there has just been the demand for computer science professors. I frankly cannot make sense of it, because there was a great ramp up in funding for the National Institutes of Health--from seven years ago to two years ago, it doubled--and a lot of that money goes into universities for research. I've got to conclude that the money is supporting lot of post-docs but is not supporting a lot of new faculty positions.
Is that an unwise approach? The argument has also been made that we aren't paying good-enough salaries for some of these federally supported scientists. Do we need to have more fully funded scientists? We need to provide direct funding to new graduates rather than having them working under the wing of the more senior scientists. There are a lot of benefits to having a senior mentor guide you. But that creative urge and that thinking out of the box is particularly strong early on, and we should be encouraging it by giving direct funding to new and recent Ph.D.s--which does happen in computing, by the way.
The number of Ph.D. degrees awarded in computer science and computer engineering in the United States and Canada, according to CRA's survey for last year, totaled 877--up 3 percent from 2002 but was still the second-lowest since 1989. What does that say to you? During the boom days of the late 1990s, some students were being distracted by dollar signs in their eyes. I think that we had this phenomenon, in which fewer students were going to graduate school. If you say the average time to get a Ph.D. is in the six to seven-year range, that would go back to then--let's say '96 to '97, when the boom was really starting up.
The good news is that the number of students passing their qualifying exam, which is the first step toward a Ph.D., has been going up in the last couple of years. So that's a positive sign for the future.
Numbers have been down in a time when computing and information technology are more and more central to everything that we do, not just in our everyday lives, but also in research.
There is this stereotypical image that computer science education leads to heads-down programming jobs, and it's those heads-down, isolated-from-the-problem jobs that are going to some extent offshore.
In research spanning from computer sciences to life sciences, medicine, physics, chemistry and health care, computers are more and more central.
So here we are with a technology that has been recognized as increasing productivity and therefore national economic competitiveness. And what we are seeing is fewer Ph.D.s. So that's a problem. And we are seeing a smaller or a flattened-out government investment in computing research, and that's also a problem, given what we know about the importance and centrality of computing to economic competitiveness.
Let me ask you about a comment I heard from Peter Lee, associate dean at Carnegie Mellon University. He said one of the problems in computer science is that the field has been, in some ways, a victim of its success. Computers have become so practical to daily life that the big questions surrounding them have kind of taken a backseat. The field hasn't promoted the idea that these machines can help us improve our intelligence or move us ahead. Do you think the field has been imaginative enough?
I think that we have, over the last five to 10 years, been too worried about short-term things. And I am going to lay that back at the doorstep of the review process of proposals at National Science Foundation and also on the tenure process, which puts a lot of emphasis on publications.
This fall, there are just less than 200 undergraduate majors in the electrical engineering and computer science departments at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. That's down from about 240 last year and roughly 385 three years ago. Does that concern you? Could you comment on what's happening at Georgia Tech along those lines?
It does concern me. At Georgia Tech, enrollments are up a few percentage points, after in the past having had the same kinds of declines. And I believe that at other schools, there is kind of a mixed story. It's somewhere between beginning to see the end of the decline and actually seeing the end of the decline.
So you expect an uptick in the future in undergraduate enrollment?
I think we will have an uptick.
Why?
We have had kind of a perfect storm in computing in a negative sense over the last 3 years. We had the dot-com crash, we had 9/11 and we had the big offshoring hullabaloo, all of which in one way or another have had negative effects on enrollment in computing.
Is the 9/11 issue related to foreign students?
Yeah, that's mostly the foreign-student issue--students not being able to get visas or choosing to go to other countries where they know there is less of a hassle.
At the graduate level, you have mentioned that you hadn't been seeing the quality of American student candidates that is needed to get into these programs and succeed. Is that something related to not attracting the best and the brightest of the American students, or is it something about how Americans don't have the same proclivity or skill in computer science as, say, people from India or China or Taiwan?
We do not get into computing or into technology as many of the best and brightest as we need.
I don't think it's all about proclivity and skill. I think computing is seen as a hard discipline, and I do believe that we do not get into computing or into technology as many of the best and brightest as we need. One reason is that technology has historically been, to some extent, an upward-mobility path.
That's interesting. So it is tending to attract immigrants?
That's right. And, we don't have as many economically disadvantaged folks in the United States as we once did. So that's one element, though I don't think that's the whole story. Law, medicine and business, in some ways, are seen as more interesting.
The other element of it goes back to education and high school--this is a pretty well-documented problem--with having low-qualified science and math teachers in high school. So if math and science are being taught by individuals who are well-meaning but don't have enough of a background, then they are not going to make it be as interesting and exciting as it can be and as it is. The intellectual and emotional excitement that helps kids decide to go to school in science and technology won't be there. So that goes back to how we spend our money with high-school education, incentives for teachers, pay for teachers and all that.
Let me then ask about the offshoring issue, because a lot of people would look at it and say, "It doesn't make sense to get into computer science and then to become a programmer."
Right. It does not make sense to become a programmer. But there is a lot more to computer science and computing than programming, and that's part of our challenge. There is this stereotypical image that computer science education leads to heads-down programming jobs, and it's those heads-down, isolated-from-the-problem jobs that are going to some extent offshore. I think the trend of pure programming jobs will continue to go offshore, because in many ways, our computers and communications technologies enable that to happen.
What are the kinds of computer science jobs that make sense for the future--that are going to be, to some extent, offshore-proof?
The key is big-picture design--what you would call system architecture or system design. It's understanding end-user needs and translating them into the detailed specifications, designs and architectures that can and will be shipped offshore.
It's what we call the user-facing, or customer-facing, aspects of computing, which is sometimes characterized as "computing plus X." We are emphasizing a lot more with our students that they need to understand something besides computing--like business, biology, chemistry, mapping, geography, information retrieval or history. Like anything in addition to computing, because the big win with computing is that you use computers to do things. And to be a creative computer architect or computing systems architect, you need to understand "X" as well as computing.
Taking the temperature of computer science and computer science research, are you optimistic or are you pessimistic?
I am very optimistic. Wearing my hat as chair of CRA, I am seeing a lot of universities understanding this needed change in emphasis, which has been going on at some schools for quite a while.
While Dr. Foley is well-intentioned, his argument that computer science is really about requirements analysis and design is idealistic. Computer science doesn't really know what it's about, and that's the problem.
Computing is 100% about being able to translate the needs of a user into a machine-performable routine. It's about managing expectations, educating end-users and investigation techniques to get at the source of a problem.
Spend half a million dollars on a computing system and set a chimp in front of the keyboard and you have a half-million dollar paperweight. Computing students need to understand that the job is 70% pen-and-pencil investigations and 30% computing.
Your first question, "Q: The number of science and engineering Ph.D.s awarded in the United States has been falling, from 23,300 in 1998 down to 24,550 in 2002" seems to show an INCREASE of 1150 new PhDs. This seems to defeat the whole purpose of the article.
[http:// The number of science and engineering Ph.D.s awarded in the United States has been falling, from 23,300 in 1998 down to 24,550 in 2002. How big a deal is that decline? |http:// The number of science and engineering Ph.D.s awarded in the United States has been falling, from 23,300 in 1998 down to 24,550 in 2002. How big a deal is that decline? ]
Maybe it is as a total percentage they are talking about.
Assuming that the graduation rate of a university goes up over time, a small increase like that isn't "keeping" up with the overall percentage increase in graduates.
It's a fact of life, companies are usually run by MBA graduates - whos only concern is total profit. These "whiz-kids" were not only responsible for exporting the manufacturing base of the United States (which accounts for a large chunk of the trade deficit), but have also managed to offshore IT, Engineering AND Accounting jobs - white collar, vallue-added jobs.
The point of going to college and getting a degree (let alone an ADVANCED degree) is to realize the payoffs of the time, money and effort in the future.
The last time I checked, nobody is stupid enough to spend over $50,000 on an advanced degree - only have their job offshored to Bangalore, India.
What is even more amazing, is how the very same companies who offshored many of their jobs overseas use the lack of IT / Engineering / Accounting graduates as the reason for their offshoring move in the first place!
70% of computing jobs are with IT departments. Perhaps in more idealistic times I would say "so what" but the reality is, IT generally is purely a cost center for companies and many organizations are looking to reduce costs.
Having graduated in '91 and being in the field and working on a variety of projects (having even spent time with this BIG company in Redmond) I would dissuade anyone from entering the computer science field unless they have a tremendous amount of drive and are willing to build up business acumen and/or build up their own brand (including but not limited to themselves, i.e. being an industry guru).
Anything less and it is likely you will find yourself in one of these "heads down" programming positions which get old FAST and are prime candidates for offshoring.
A lot of people who get into computer science tend to be left brain types and a little off the level. Unfortunately this pesonality doesn't lend itself to achieving what I spoke of earlier, i.e. developing an awareness of business and/or marketing oneself.
There was a day when a pure tech play was possible but those days are gone. Commodization of many technologies as well as the prevalence of open source has changed the rules of the game.
If you are young and have an interest in attaining a computer science degree but are not so much interested in the business/marketing side of things, then let me give you another barometer. If you do not have the drive to learn and contribute to an open source project and learn technical minutiae above and beyond your peers my advice would be to find a different field. You have been warned...
When people ask me about going into CS (I have a PhD, have been a prof, have worked in big companies, and even contributed to early Linux kernel dev), I advise them to not get a CS degree but to get a minor instead to augment another major (eng, business, etc.) The skills most people need are not the skills kernel hackers need, and society doesn't need more kernel hackers. The CS skills that are most important today are strategies for solving difficult/intractable problems, translating subjective needs and ideas into objective solutions, the ability to think methodically and in a structured (deterministic) way, etc. These are general skills, and computing machines only made them manifest as software.
Dr Foley highlighted an important distinction to be made when considering offshore outsourcing: the difference between the programming effort and the system architecture. It would appear "safe" to outsource the massive, labor-intensive programming effort necessary to implement (and provide tech support for) a product. However, the value of a product is in the intellectual property (IP) associated with its architecture and design, and these disciplines should be guarded as carefully as the Coke formula. The question then becomes whether a company can parcel out outsourced work packages in units that are small enough that the IP is not reconstructable from the parts. If I recall Japan lost significant design information when they began outsourcing manufacturing not long ago.
"Cheap" support isn't "cheap" if it wastes my "expensive" time
Im beginning to realize that sending the boring jobs abroad and keeping the IP jobs here may be backwards. We should send the work that can be done out of context abroad and keep the ones that require human skills here.
Ill admit that Im a little sore today. Ive just been dealing with one of those Indian boneheads who, to put it as kindly as I can, lacked common sense, not to mention understandable English. As a result of his unfamiliarity the basic facts of western life, I lost the best part of a days work, which destroyed any savings anyone thought they made from offshoring the work.
Now I couldnt care less who does some bit architecture and design as long as its properly tested before being inflicted on me. PhDs are cheap in Bangalore only requires rote memorization there, not common sense or cultural knowledge. If they design screens without an OK button and here I speak from bitter experience -- I can reject it just as I would reject a Chinese PC with no ON switch. Let the manufacturers shop around: Maybe theyre smarter in Malaysia or Peru or Mongolia and just as cheap.
If we allow the off shoring of programming jobs, how will we get our next generation of architects and designers? They currently come from the rank and file of IT. Schools can't teach you to be an architect. It takes considerable experience to truly become an architect. So how do you climb the ladder when they off shored most of the rungs?
I actually had the same question. Were do you get tomorrows designers if you are taking away the very jobs which everyone starts off at. I havent heard of recent graduate X being hired by company Y to design their new enterprise system and if I did would you really trust the judgment of the company? You gain the experience and insight to design large systems by first being a part of the development of a large system(s) in a lesser role. Perhaps, dare I say it, as a Programmer.
First of all..... I wonder about the idea of "federally funded" "IT professionals" with PHD's. When you are payed by the governement, you tend to get backed into a corner by the government. This seems to go against the whole idea in the first place.
Secondly..... When it comes to the idea of engineers and architects, something just seems missing. This article seems to imply that some persue an education in "computer science" first. It seems to me that an engineer should be more concerned with engineering than what might be considered as a "computer science", unless of course you are trying to compete with Bill Gates.
I see a kind of thinking here that seems to be a bit one sided. Computers are tools. Tools to help you do a job. This article also seems to just a bit politically slanted. Almost as if there were things said just for the purpose of sounding good. I read things like this and it is no wonder that things have become the way they are. Just what is so wrong with a programing job? This article is a breif discription of how someone gets the frame of mind that they are better than everyone else. It is also a discription of how close to the inevitable insult the mass of the American public comes to from "elite" snobbery that helps to ruin something this great. It should be pointed out that it only takes one programmer to ALL these overpayed phd's into a panic.
Learning computers is something that everyone really needs to be ingauged in. I do realize that it takes a little something special to design new operating systems and new types of hardware, but on the order of tens of thousands per year? and how many of these American PHD's given to people who live, work, and whatever else in other countries? Ya want to talk to me about the status of the American economy? Especially when such a large number of these people are funded using American tax dollors? (Are we all paying a little bit out of every paycheck to create the high tech cyber-terrorists)(somewhere in the back of my mind...the term "industrial espianage" rattles around)
Is this how the creator of the MP3 format came to be? The format that coincidentally resulted in so many people being arrested and sued??
How much of a PHD did it take to formulate the WindowsXP SP2 extra software (that has a patch aswell)?
Don't forget that Dr. Foley is backing GaTech and CRA, not the profession. As such, he has to tow the current political correct line, which is that programming jobs should be outsourced so Americans can do the high-paying design and analysis work. As others have pointed out, design and analysis is not entry level work. This political alignment makes it more likely he will bring to more millions to do "research" and educate more CS people who won't find work. People at this level are too far removed from the real world to do anything of practical worth.
Mr Foley thinks that USA need to offer better pay in order to attract well qualified teacher. Personally I think that teaching is a rotting job and anyone with a technical degree would prefer a good,well gratificating job elsewhere rather then waste his/her life to teach unruly and unmotivated student. The only solution is the one adopted in Italy long time ago which,with all its flaws,it's working really well:allowing teacher to have a second job. In Italy a teacher can have 2 job and every year he/she must ask the permission to the head to continue teaching.The head can refuse if he/she thinks this happens by negletting teaching but they rarely do so because they know this is the best way to attract motivated and qualified teacher. A geek who know he don't have to chose between taching and other careers can well do both for the benefit of both teacher and students
A point that was made from the article was that "...we do not get into computing or into technology as many of the best and brightest as we need" and that immigrants are being attracted to the CS discipline than most American students.
I personally became involved in Computer Science as early as the 8th grade with curiosity and an enthusiasm to learn more about the subject. I wasn't a 'genius" or an "Einstein", but had a drive to learn and understand computer technology. Right now I'm an IT staff professional at a university and pursuing a master's in technology.
There may be other young people that may want to go beyond the Nintendos or X-Boxes and learn more about IT and other disciplines to compliment their knowledge. Should we tell these people not to bother because they may not have the genes, DNA or birth-smarts to make it in IT? Should they just settle for a McJob instead of an IT career?
Most comments are on track, but still missing the mark
No one has mentioned the defacto age discrimination that has crept into the IT profession. Speaking as someone with a degree in mathematics, physics, and computer science and with major experience with a few fortune 500 companies, including a fortune 10 one; I must state that saving a buck is more on the minds of so-called business professionals than interest in keeping an industry - indeed the country going.
I currently possess a Mc Job not because I lack the ability for analytical thinking and problem solving, but because I got paid too much. And I am not alone. I and others have sufficient background and ability to learn, but we just aren't cheap enough to line the pockets of the CEOs and company board members.
If I sound bitter - well I say I have earned it. However, there is a warning here to anyone who is crass enough to think their profession is immune. Yes, there has been no job for a lifetime for many a year. It is only recently, however, that there is no profession for a lifetime. This weakens the countries ability to carry forward due to ridding ourselves of our best commodity, that is experience.
Some would argue that manufacturing is the same. I say you are right, but so am I. Manufacturing was more in the area of skilled labor, however, we are losing competiveness in that area as well due to our American monetary thinking. Next quarter is no way to run a business, unless you want to run it straight into the ground.
Just where are businesses going to sell their merchandise if we rid ourselves of our diversity of skills and knowledge? Not everyone is suited to be a salesman, business man, doctor, or lawyer! This is the misgided message that is being sent to our youth via the company board room.
Web giant is spending $120 million to beef up its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters, according to filings with the city reviewed by the San Jose Mercury News.
The Samsung Galaxy Mini 2 S6500 could make its debut at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona later this month, according to a leaked promotional image.
MIT creates a simulation to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Spacewar. A relic of the early days of minicomputers, it was one of the first computer video games and set the stage for many others, including Asteroids.
Spend half a million dollars on a computing system and set a chimp in front of the keyboard and you have a half-million dollar paperweight. Computing students need to understand that the job is 70% pen-and-pencil investigations and 30% computing.
That looks like an increase of 1250 students.
Assuming that the graduation rate of a university goes up over time, a small increase like that isn't "keeping" up with the overall percentage increase in graduates.
It's a fact of life, companies are usually run by MBA graduates - whos only concern is total profit. These "whiz-kids" were not only responsible for exporting the manufacturing base of the United States (which accounts for a large chunk of the trade deficit), but have also managed to offshore IT, Engineering AND Accounting jobs - white collar, vallue-added jobs.
The point of going to college and getting a degree (let alone an ADVANCED degree) is to realize the payoffs of the time, money and effort in the future.
The last time I checked, nobody is stupid enough to spend over $50,000 on an advanced degree - only have their job offshored to Bangalore, India.
What is even more amazing, is how the very same companies who offshored many of their jobs overseas use the lack of IT / Engineering / Accounting graduates as the reason for their offshoring move in the first place!
You just have to love that circular logic!
Having graduated in '91 and being in the field and working on a variety of projects (having even spent time with this BIG company in Redmond) I would dissuade anyone from entering the computer science field unless they have a tremendous amount of drive and are willing to build up business acumen and/or build up their own brand (including but not limited to themselves, i.e. being an industry guru).
Anything less and it is likely you will find yourself in one of these "heads down" programming positions which get old FAST and are prime candidates for offshoring.
A lot of people who get into computer science tend to be left brain types and a little off the level. Unfortunately this pesonality doesn't lend itself to achieving what I spoke of earlier, i.e. developing an awareness of business and/or marketing oneself.
There was a day when a pure tech play was possible but those days are gone. Commodization of many technologies as well as the prevalence of open source has changed the rules of the game.
If you are young and have an interest in attaining a computer science degree but are not so much interested in the business/marketing side of things, then let me give you another barometer. If you do not have the drive to learn and contribute to an open source project and learn technical minutiae above and beyond your peers my advice would be to find a different field. You have been warned...
Likewise in tech, if your ambition is to learn a very narrow field that requires zero face time, don't be surprised if your job disappears.
Computing plus X is a very good way to put it.
Ill admit that Im a little sore today. Ive just been dealing with one of those Indian boneheads who, to put it as kindly as I can, lacked common sense, not to mention understandable English. As a result of his unfamiliarity the basic facts of western life, I lost the best part of a days work, which destroyed any savings anyone thought they made from offshoring the work.
Now I couldnt care less who does some bit architecture and design as long as its properly tested before being inflicted on me. PhDs are cheap in Bangalore only requires rote memorization there, not common sense or cultural knowledge. If they design screens without an OK button and here I speak from bitter experience -- I can reject it just as I would reject a Chinese PC with no ON switch. Let the manufacturers shop around: Maybe theyre smarter in Malaysia or Peru or Mongolia and just as cheap.
I wonder about the idea of "federally funded" "IT professionals" with PHD's. When you are payed by the governement, you tend to get backed into a corner by the government. This seems to go against the whole idea in the first place.
Secondly.....
When it comes to the idea of engineers and architects, something just seems missing. This article seems to imply that some persue an education in "computer science" first. It seems to me that an engineer should be more concerned with engineering than what might be considered as a "computer science", unless of course you are trying to compete with Bill Gates.
I see a kind of thinking here that seems to be a bit one sided. Computers are tools. Tools to help you do a job. This article also seems to just a bit politically slanted. Almost as if there were things said just for the purpose of sounding good. I read things like this and it is no wonder that things have become the way they are. Just what is so wrong with a programing job? This article is a breif discription of how someone gets the frame of mind that they are better than everyone else. It is also a discription of how close to the inevitable insult the mass of the American public comes to from "elite" snobbery that helps to ruin something this great. It should be pointed out that it only takes one programmer to ALL these overpayed phd's into a panic.
Learning computers is something that everyone really needs to be ingauged in. I do realize that it takes a little something special to design new operating systems and new types of hardware, but on the order of tens of thousands per year? and how many of these American PHD's given to people who live, work, and whatever else in other countries? Ya want to talk to me about the status of the American economy? Especially when such a large number of these people are funded using American tax dollors? (Are we all paying a little bit out of every paycheck to create the high tech cyber-terrorists)(somewhere in the back of my mind...the term "industrial espianage" rattles around)
Is this how the creator of the MP3 format came to be? The format that coincidentally resulted in so many people being arrested and sued??
How much of a PHD did it take to formulate the WindowsXP SP2 extra software (that has a patch aswell)?
I think I like it better my way......
in order to attract well qualified teacher.
Personally I think that teaching is a rotting job and anyone with a technical degree would prefer a
good,well gratificating job elsewhere rather then
waste his/her life to teach unruly and unmotivated student.
The only solution is the one adopted in Italy long time ago which,with all its flaws,it's working really well:allowing teacher to have a second job.
In Italy a teacher can have 2 job and every year
he/she must ask the permission to the head to continue teaching.The head can refuse if he/she thinks this happens by negletting teaching but they rarely do so because they know this is the best way to attract motivated and qualified teacher.
A geek who know he don't have to chose between taching and other careers can well do both for the benefit of both teacher and students
I personally became involved in Computer Science as early as the 8th grade with curiosity and an enthusiasm to learn more about the subject. I wasn't a 'genius" or an "Einstein", but had a drive to learn and understand computer technology. Right now I'm an IT staff professional at a university and pursuing a master's in technology.
There may be other young people that may want to go beyond the Nintendos or X-Boxes and learn more about IT and other disciplines to compliment their knowledge. Should we tell these people not to bother because they may not have the genes, DNA or birth-smarts to make it in IT? Should they just settle for a McJob instead of an IT career?
I currently possess a Mc Job not because I lack the ability for analytical thinking and problem solving, but because I got paid too much. And I am not alone. I and others have sufficient background and ability to learn, but we just aren't cheap enough to line the pockets of the CEOs and company board members.
If I sound bitter - well I say I have earned it. However, there is a warning here to anyone who is crass enough to think their profession is immune. Yes, there has been no job for a lifetime for many a year. It is only recently, however, that there is no profession for a lifetime. This weakens the countries ability to carry forward due to ridding ourselves of our best commodity, that is experience.
Some would argue that manufacturing is the same. I say you are right, but so am I. Manufacturing was more in the area of skilled labor, however, we are losing competiveness in that area as well due to our American monetary thinking. Next quarter is no way to run a business, unless you want to run it straight into the ground.
Just where are businesses going to sell their merchandise if we rid ourselves of our diversity of skills and knowledge? Not everyone is suited to be a salesman, business man, doctor, or lawyer! This is the misgided message that is being sent to our youth via the company board room.
Hope everyone is happy!