<p>I agree, the Humanities should change. I think Humanities majors are destroying themselves by failing to produce educated individuals due to lax grading standards. STEM isn’t inherently more useful, but it is often practically more useful for this reason I think. </p>
<p>I think Americans can compete against anyone in the world on American turf. I personally would like to see something with an unlimited number of H1-Bs issued, with a substantial fee (without any analysis something like 30K/year sounds reasonable) attached. If someone on an H1-B visa is genuinely worth 30K more than an American, we should welcome them in. It’s much much better that than the job that would go to them be outsourced. It seems to be that this should allow enough protectionism that people with legitimate arguments shouldn’t protest, but enough freedom that we should be able to get the best from other countries and integrate them into America. </p>
<p>I really want my architects, bridge builders and Dr.'s to know their stuff. They make life and death calculations that may affect me on a daily basis.</p>
<p>@sax, yes perhaps colleges should save the “holistic admission” stuff for the rest of the students and just send engineering the geekiest students they can find. I too would rather have someone who was very focused on their studies making sure our nuclear power plants don’t blow up and I’d much rather have them thinking about that than worrying about their next concert at Carnegie Hall.</p>
<p>Sorry, but I’ve recruited for and hired engineers. Without the “soft skills” of communications, team work, ability to push back appropriately, peer influencing skills, able to write a coherent paragraph using nouns and adjectives, all those geeky students can’t figure out how to make sure the O-rings don’t fail or how to alert their management to the fact that the concrete and rebar is substandard and won’t hold in sub-zero weather, or what have you. Nobody builds a nuclear power plant by themselves, and sadly, the plant can be designed by geniuses but it will be staffed on a long term basis by high school graduates (preferably smarter than Homer Simpson). Safety is very much a function which requires a wide range of non-geeky skills in order to work effectively.</p>
<p>I would include writing skills and communication skills in the geek package. When is the last time you asked one of the engineers you hired about their athletic or musical skills?</p>
<p>Also, I don’t think there was any problem with the NASA engineers. By Feynman’s account, they were able to communicate their concerns quite clearly. It was the managers who chose not to listen. </p>
<p>It is short-sighted to suggest we should train only enough scientists and engineers for available jobs. Instead, we should educate scientists and engineers with the skills to create new jobs. That in fact is what many of them do.</p>