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Sakky, I think you overestimate the opportunity in China. I read about Microsoft starting a research center, where they needed to recruit 20 kids. It went on to give tests around china, involving either tens or hundreds of thousands of students, with less and less students going on to the next round etc., for only 20 to be employed. At the end of the year I think like 8 were let go and were replaced.
There is much much more opportunity in USA.
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<p>There is obviously much more opportunity in the USA right now. But that's the key - RIGHT NOW. What about in the future? Will the USA always offer greater opportunity than other countries will, until the end of time? After all, there is far more overall opportunity in China today then there was at any time during the last couple hundred years. That is why every major multinational company is implementing or is seriously contemplating building operations in China. That is why if you want to understand world manufacturing, you have to understand China, because right now and for the foreseeable future, that is where the bulk of the new world manufacturing capacity is being constructed. </p>
<p>Does the USA still offer greater opportunity than China does? Of course! That is why you still see desperately poor Chinese trying to sneak into the US to work, but you don't see desperately poor Americans trying to sneak into China to work. But the point is, the gap is narrowing considerably every year, which means there is less incentive for the best minds of China to leave to go to the US. There still is incentive, but not as much as there used to be. </p>
<p>Couple that with the fact that China is still largely virgin business territory. While it is clearly easier to have a comfortable lifestyle in the US than it is in China, it is probably also true that if you have the right skills and talent, you can probably get filthy rich quicker in China than in the US. For example, I know many Chinese-Americans who have opted to go back to China to set up and start their own company, becaue if they are successful, they can become rich very quickly - more quickly than if they just stayed in the US. </p>
<p>Obviously for right now, the US is still a better place to be than China, but it may not stay that way for very long if things continue as they are. There used to be a time when Americans were clearly the most entrepreneurial, the most flexible, the hardest-working, and the most civic-minded people in the world, and that's what made America strong. Now, I'm not so sure about that. While the US still has great competitive strengths, it also has competitive weaknesses. One obvious weakness is the utter dominance of pop-culture on America's youths. A lot of American kids would rather try to become the next Lebron James or the next Britney Spears rather than study hard. It's "cooler" to dunk a basketball than to read a book. </p>
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publics were better represented in engineering because of the capital needed for engineering labs, and the economies' need for them, which would motivate politicians to attempt to produce more, via the public universities.
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<p>A lot of it has to do with the Morrill Land Grant Act that secured funding for public universities that taught engineering because, as you said, engineering was viewed as more beneficial to the development of the economy of the nation than the liberal arts. It is certainly true that a guy with an electrical engineering degree is probably going to be better off, on average, than a guy with a degree in Folklore from Harvard. Engineering was viewed (and still can be viewed) as a way of lifting a poor rural farmer into a solidly middle-class lifestyle.</p>