The beginning of the end of US dominance in engineering?

[sakky]

<p>

Both Sakky and harvardfan miss a crucial reason for US dominance in science and engineering: Funding. Please imagine such scenario: If Bush like presidents sit in the oval office for 2 more decades, and the funding for science and engineering goes down 20% from the current level.

</p>

<p>Uh, actually, total Federal research funding actually increased both in absolute terms and as a percentage of GDP measured from the beginning of the G.W. Bush administration to its end. Federal R&D funding represented 1% of GDP in 2009, compared to 0.9% in 2001. Funding would have increased still more had Bush had his way, as Bush actually proposed doubling the funding of the NSF over ten years - but was rebuffed during budget negotiations. Federal funding, as a percentage of GDP, dropped precipitously under the Clinton Administration - dropping from 1.15% in 1993 to 0.9% in 2001, and also to a slight extent the G.H.W. Bush Administration, dropping from 1.2% to 1.15%. </p>

<p>What I think you are talking about is the redirection - and possible politicization - of science funding under Bush, which is a different matter entirely. </p>

<p>*Federal funding for R&D has not declined overall – it has, in fact, increased. But since the early 1990s, funding has been more and more focused on the short-term needs of government. *</p>

<p>[U.S</a>. innovation: On the skids](<a href=“http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=printArticleBasic&taxonomyName=Government&articleId=9117299&taxonomyId=13]U.S”>http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=printArticleBasic&taxonomyName=Government&articleId=9117299&taxonomyId=13)</p>

<p>But putting that issue aside, I think you’ve missed my central point, which is that I don’t think university research funding is only a relatively minor component of the entire innovation infrastructure. Most innovation occurs in private companies, which include not only large corporate R&D centers, but also small entrepreneurial startups. I believe I read somewhere where for every $1 spent on basic research to make an initial discovery, another $5-10 is then required to successfully commercialize that discovery. Like I said, history is replete with examples of nations making initial discoveries, usually within university or government labs, only for some other nation to actually commercialize that discovery. For example, British inventors at the Royal Institute, probably invented the first working incandescent light bulb, and other Europeans and Canadians made follow-on improvements, but it was the American Thomas Edison who successfully commercialized it.</p>

<p>

You receive a phone call from Tsinghua University the next day that Tsinghua invites you to join them with 5 million dollars start-up fund, and 20% higher salary than you earn in MIT, and of course, freedom to pursue your science as far as you can obtain your own funding later from China Natural Science Foundation. What will you do?

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<p>Here’s the counterexample. You’re a tenured professor at Tsinghua University. A Silicon Valley venture capital firm is wants to bankroll one of your inventions, but only if the startup firm is located in Silicon Valley, as a highly disproportionate fraction of the world’s high-tech startups are. Note, you can maintain your position at Tsinghua, and you yourself don’t even need to relocate to Silicon Valley and just have to be available via videoconference or whatnot, but the headquarters of the company itself, and the accompanying great bulk of the employees, must be located in the Valley (as the VC firm wants to keep an eye on it). What do you do?</p>

[JHS]

<p>^ Re your counterexample: Wherever the professor is located – Tsinghua, MIT, Stanford – the Venture Capital Firm may specify that headquarters/marketing be located somewhere in the Bay Area, but heavy engineering functions are likely to be located in China, Malaysia, India.</p>

<p>I had a client who founded an engineering-centric company in his Palo Alto garage. When it went public, 100% of its employees were in the U.S., and worked in Sunnyvale. Three or four years later, it had hardly any engineers working in the U.S. My client was very, very impressed with the quality of Chinese engineers, and loved working with them. He even moved to Singapore for several years to be closer to the company’s technology development.</p>

[Not_quite_old]

<p>I am amused that anyone thinks a mere 20% raise (plus research funding) would be enough to move a tenured professor from MIT. That little is often not enough to move someone to a slightly lower tiered university in the same region of the USA, let alone abroad. [You should look at what Singapore universities had to offer to get a few prominent researchers from places like Wharton.]</p>

<p>Having said that, I think China is making serious improvements in their university research system but it is still too bureaucratic and still too focused on counting papers without regard to independent assessments of quality. You’ll know they’re challenging the US when large numbers of non-Chinese (i.e. no family or ethnic connections to the Far East) professors are routinely lured away from top 25 US departments to anywhere in China.</p>

[sakky]

<p>

^ Re your counterexample: Wherever the professor is located – Tsinghua, MIT, Stanford – the Venture Capital Firm may specify that headquarters/marketing be located somewhere in the Bay Area, but heavy engineering functions are likely to be located in China, Malaysia, India.

</p>

<p>And? The salient point is that the headquarters - where the high level product design and corporate strategy is performed - is still in the United States. Farming specified engineering tasks is not a loss of innovation, at least in my book. </p>

<p>Besides, even if you would argue that that is a loss of innovation, that’s an entirely different issue than what is on the table. What harvardguy and straighttalk have asserted is that the rise of Chinese university research departments that challenges their US counterparts will result in a loss of US innovation jobs. The issue that you (JHS) are raising is a different matter, having to do with general engineering outsourcing. Even if Chinese universities did not develop prominent research departments, outsourcing would still take place. After all, Malaysia does not have a world-class research university comparable to MIT or Tsinghua, yet as you pointed out, US firms are still outsourcing engineering jobs to Malaysia.</p>