The US does not need to compete with India & China

I'm going on another explosive rant - this time in the education forums. Politicians, think tanks and "experts" think the US needs longer school days for kids. That's garbage.

I work directly with smart people from both China and India and while they're good at following rules in difficult math, science, and computer problems they lack one thing that makes Western nations successful - creativity.

Yes, I said it, and coming from lots of experience - if you need a creative solution to a difficult problem, then don't choose folks educated in China or India. If you need a smart "worker" then by all means these countries produce the best people.

If you need to innovate, if you need solid workarounds, if you need to make money because you're different and new - don't choose folks from these countries - they are not equipped to help you.

I'm not digging on India and China either, just the lazy pundits talking about extending the school day so kids spend less time with their families and more time learning for tests. It's BS and it doesn't work.

Western countries succeed at innovation, the others don't. There's a reason and it isn't more school.

Get in the real world - you dumb# apologists and talking-heads. You live in a bubble and look at numbers, you don't know the "working" world and where education actually succeeds and fails. More art, more gym, more playtime, more vocational schools during the existing schedules will work - not more school for the sake of school. Idiots.

reply to post by Jason88


There isn't a problem with American intelligence, it has to do with the likely hood of acquiring a Job after graduation in a technical (Science related) field that is easily outsourced or given to H1 imported foreign consultants. Why would a student invest their time and money to get involved in a field that is highly outsourced?

It has nothing to do with demand or the availability of qualified American workers. It has to do with the bottom line. I can hire an American to develop my application or I can outsource my application to a Foreigner who will do it for half the price. So why would I want to hire an American?

In addition there are numerous of companies in the US that hire temporary workers with 6 month visas to do high paying jobs in the US at half the rate of an American consultant

Why, because they charge half price or less. Why or how can they charge half the rate, because the cost of living overseas is far less than in America?

American companies have no desire to hire an American worker that demands higher wages ,benefits, and workers rights. They created this false image of not enough qualified American engineers and scientist a while ago in order to increase the number of allowed foreign workers that can be imported. Funny that these MORE qualified workers cost those corporation half the cost of an American worker. I'm sure that is just pure coincidence.

So the question is not if the US needs to compete with India or China , but rather if the US wants to compete with China, India, and the upcoming African workers.

In order to compete with China,India,Africa we need to drop our ideals and ways of living such as slave labor, cost of living, giving up child labor laws, benefits, family life, disposable income, etc .........

However, I do agree with you that extending the students day is b$ , but does the government really want educated voters?

Originally posted by interupt42
reply to post by Jason88

 

It has nothing to do with demand or the availability of qualified American workers. It has to do with the bottom line. I can hire an American to develop my application or I can outsource my application to a Foreigner who will do it for half the price. So why would I want to hire an American?

Simples and I've seen it firsthand at Fortune 100 companies - you'll have to redo that application. Debug it, fix the UI for a Western audience, and generally have "do over" now paying twice the price at you cheap ass outsourced prices. Congratulations on short term savings - nice business plan.

In addition there are numerous of companies in the US that hire temporary workers with 6 month visas to do high paying jobs in the US at half the rate of an American consultant.

This is tough to argue, folks from Indian and China that are trained in the US (Western countries) will excel in this market. The difference is believing in derived value from gaining workers (outsourcing) solely from these countries in innovation markets.

Why, because they charge half price or less. Why or how can they charge half the rate, because the cost of living overseas is far less than in America?

You get what pay for, and you pay in spades for great "workers" but garner no value for innovation or true money making opportunities.

American companies have no desire to hire an American worker that demands higher wages ,benefits, and workers rights. They created this false image of not enough qualified American engineers and scientist a while ago in order to increase the number of allowed foreign workers that can be imported. Funny that these MORE qualified workers cost those corporation half the cost of an American worker. I'm sure that is just pure coincidence.

I appreciate your snarkiness, but the point is lost on the "human causality" factor. A great CEO may follow that paradigm - a billionaire entrepreneur does not. Writing off expensive American's is something reserveed for the greedy, short-sighted, steal the coffers-type manager.

So the question is not if the US needs to compete with India or China , but rather if the US wants to compete with China, India, and the upcoming African workers.

Funny I work in Africa too. Please get them fresh water, reliable governments, and a good education.. then we'll talk. (Discluding South Africa from this).

In order to compete with China,India,Africa we need to drop our ideals and ways of living such as slave labor, cost of living, giving up child labor laws, benefits, family life, disposable income, etc...

IN order to compete we must re-focus on our ideals and where we started in the 1950s. It takes money to make money, it takes human capital to add value to organizations, it takes placing value on creativity, failure, and lost money to succeed. It takes less school and more free time to discover what the future holds. India and China play in today's market - they don't create the future.

Your last point.

Yes, I am an optimist. The government does want a smart populace to economically compete globally to make everyone rich.

Thanks, btw - you made me think.

I appreciate your snarkiness, but the point is lost on the "human causality" factor. A great CEO may follow that paradigm - a billionaire entrepreneur does not. Writing off expensive American's is something reserveed for the greedy, short-sighted, steal the coffers-type manager.

You are correct.This country is being run by greedy, short-sighted, steal the coffers-type CEO. The only difference between the billionaires and CEO is that the CEO is able to manipulate the market as they see fit while the CEO has to conform to the market.

Funny I work in Africa too. Please get them fresh water, reliable governments, and a good education.. then we'll talk. (Discluding South Africa from this).

I worked for a big 3 letter corporation for a while and one of my tasks was to architect software solutions for clients and then outsource and oversee the work done by the foreigners. Africa was one of the countries and the corporation had big plans for using them more in the future since they were cheaper than the other more evolved (inflation) markets like Asia,south America, etc.

Its all about the bottom line and quick returns.

Simples and I've seen it firsthand at Fortune 100 companies - you'll have to redo that application. Debug it, fix the UI for a Western audience, and generally have "do over" now paying twice the price at you cheap ass outsourced prices. Congratulations on short term savings - nice business plan.

I saw first hand that same corporation I worked for hire a bunch of new college graduates with no experience in a highly specialized engineering software application and put them through a 4 week boot camp. In the end of the camp they called each one of those students a Senior level engineer and shipped them to the clients with Senior level billable hours. After 6 months they pretty much realized what you said about paying twice the price because the clients refused to pay them for their work and therefore they got rid of most of those students. However, the fact is that was not the first time they tried this nor the last time.

Why does this 3 letter corporation take those risks , because it often pays off . In addition they know that most Gov't agencies have no choice but to use them because of liability. As it turns out no CEO or Politician likes to be held accountable with certain high liability risk applications. So what these CEO and Politicians do to minimize getting blamed is that they go directly to the manufacture of the software and hire their consultants. So when an accident occurs the CEO or Politician , says look we hired the company that makes the software so what more could we have done or who else could we have hired to do the work.

reply to post by interupt42


You and I are in not such dissimilar situations and are working from a similar knowledge base - I know what you're talking about.

In terms of Africa, I dug into my old company last night and saw an uptick in hiring from Ethiopia - I suspect for the same reasons you mentioned. Thanks for the clue-in; I thought the market was abandoned years ago until infrastructure changes occurred. Apparently that happened.

I saw first hand that same corporation I worked for hire a bunch of new college graduates with no experience in a highly specialized engineering software application and put them through a 4 week boot camp. In the end of the camp they called each one of those students a Senior level engineer and shipped them to the clients with Senior level billable hours. After 6 months they pretty much realized what you said about paying twice the price because the clients refused to pay them for their work and therefore they got rid of most of those students. However, the fact is that was not the first time they tried this nor the last time.

That is the sad reality. I am aware of this occurring as well - to maximize billable hours with fancy titles. And I agree they'll do it again Though in my experience client side, they'll typically go to established service providers for newer builds and support thereafter, or the parent company hires them to fit demand.

Why does this 3 letter corporation take those risks , because it often pays off . In addition they know that most Gov't agencies have no choice but to use them because of liability. As it turns out no CEO or Politician likes to be held accountable with certain high liability risk applications. So what these CEO and Politicians do to minimize getting blamed is that they go directly to the manufacture of the software and hire their consultants. So when an accident occurs the CEO or Politician , says look we hired the company that makes the software so what more could we have done or who else could we have hired to do the work.

As you say, this is true specially with government contracts.and covering one''s own behind in the risk filled world of application development and deployment on mission critical systems.

***

In terms of education though, I still maintain that the US and western nations do *not* need to follow an India/China model - long(er) school days, longer(e) school years, programmatically taught to memorize and repeat with emphasis on the state caring for children rather than parents.

The model produces great "workers", and maybe the US vocational school system could take a page from that book, but the public school system I believe needs to focus on fostering creativity and individualism while also teaching the basics across maths, sciences... (and of course there are AP classes for the truly talented student with plenty of great universities to further develop those skills).

I guess what gets me mad is hearing politicians, "experts" and the likes who never leave their bubble talking about how great China and India are, and how the US needs to compete with them starting in our school system. I just don't see it, different cultures, different priorities... I truly believe what makes the US great is its ability to innovate - China in India copy.

Now not every worker needs to be an innovator, but I do believe the top level ones must possess skills to creatively solve difficult problems - I don't see the education system in those countries producing that worker. But take someone for those nations and put them in the US school system - well, now you have someone who is dangerously good. So maybe it comes back to family life.

**Again, not digging on these two countries

***Side note, sorry in my last post, I came off as a jerk (I just re-read it); nothing personal, just was in bad mood yesterday.

I think we are kinda saying the same things and agreeing about copying other countries style of education systems.

I wonder sometimes if the problem with education is that we are trying to fit or mold the students into the education system instead of the other way around.

Do to technological advances such as computers and the Internet itself students actually have the tools to learn on a need to know basis. Perhaps we should be looking on how to incorporate that into how we will problem solve in the future.

Maybe instead of having kids study 6 different subjects in a day perhaps they should just concentrate in subject at at a time and perfecting it before moving on to the next one. Half the day could be in class room lessons and the other half of the day could be applying the lessons with hands on exercises.

In College I took principles of Electrical Engineers which had a notoriously high failure and drop out rate with a new professor that no one knew anything about. It turns out that was one of the best teachers I ever had. The guy still worked in the real world as an engineer and taught that class on the side.

He told us on the first day that for the first half of the semester we are going to cover 3 chapters max and the other half of the semester was going to cover at least 15- 20 chapters. At first we were like , Ok when is the drop out date and are the other teachers available.

He said not to worry and that he has to cover all the chapters because its required by the school system. He said that if we had an exceptional grasp of the basics then the rest of the stuff would just become fluff.

He was right , because our strong understandings of the basics we were able to easily comprehend the more so called difficult concepts. I think the majority of the class ended up with B or A in the class without any curve while the other classes required curves do to the numerous F and D averages.

reply to post by Jason88


OP actually has a point. I live in Asia, more exactly Tokyo, Japan, and I work as a teacher. I have been teaching for over 5 years and creativity is a huge problem in the Japanese education system. Also, the kids here go to school for most of the year. To make things even worse, a lot of parents send their kids to cram schools in the evenings because they believe that the regular school does not drill enough information into their kid`s head.

The students here are so beat down mentally that they often sleep too much and develop odd social habits in order to deal with the information overload. A lot of kids end up lacking needed social skills and creative thinking because when they are not studying there only outlet is playing video games or planning secret meet up for sex because many Japanese parents think that children should always be doing something `productive` i.e. studying, playing a sport they hate.

Well said i honestly cant add anything to this, brilliant piece i agree.