Why H 1 B Visas Matter for US Education
The Tuesday, 4-3-2007 Marketplace® broadcast noted that the applications for H 1 B Visas (not credit cards) had run out in two days. Last year, it took two months before the applications were gone. The H 1 B Visa is a permit that allows foreign (high tech) workers to accept employment in the US.
The Marketplace® story went on to say that the 65,000 available visas will be assigned by a lottery.
(Note: 150,000 applications were received, the two offices were "swamped," and they had to just stop accepting them.
Link to the Marketplace® article…
Why should this be important to American education?
Lots of reasons…
First, American companies cannot hire enough local high tech workers (engineers, programmers, etc.) because we don't graduate enough of them. And, as the report noted, our students are studying other things besides science and math.
If our students are not studying science and math, what are they studying?
Aren't school districts eliminating art, music, even Physical Education (PE) to…
- Save money?
- Teach a high-stakes test curriculum?
If we're not teaching science and math, and if we're not teaching art, music, PE; What's left besides "Teaching to the Test?"
And, aren't employers unhappy with the quality of workforce candidates that our schools are graduating? (See our newsletter article, Workforce Readiness: The Tripe Behind the Hype
Actually, the answer is "self-evident." As teaching to the high-stakes test squeezes out the rest of the curriculum, test scores rise incrementally, but learning takes a precipitous "nose dive."
And since employers have no need to employ test takers, disenchantment with the competency of our schools increases among employers.
An analogy to this situation would be that as we stomp on the gas, our car's engine races, our gas mileage decreases, and wear on the engine (stress) climbs. But, instead of going faster, our car slows down and can't carry as many people.
Scenarios?
Transitioning from an industrial economy to a service economy to an information economy seems to require planning and a roadmap. Otherwise we we may end up in a place that we don't want to be.
Here are some scenarios that seem possible if we continue to under fund our schools using the "do it as cheaply as possible," mass-production, factory model…
- India and China become the dominant world economies in the next ten years
- India and China become the dominant forces of innovation in the next 20 years
- High-Tech companies such as Cisco™, Intel™ Microsoft™, Oracle™ will relocate to countries with adequately trained high tech workers so that they can remain competitive, just as Levi Strauss did in the textile and garment industries
- Chinese companies will take over administration of US Health Care and Foreign Guest Worker Industries, just as they have taken over the administration of the Panama Canal
- Admission to the Test Prep Academies (formerly the public schools) will be by political appointment
- A lottery will be held to choose which students will be able to enroll in India and China as foreign exchange students, and India and China will try to increase the number that can enroll each year as part of their foreign aid package to the US
Far Fetched?
Well, just consider "The Law of Numbers" in the Game of War. For example, you can play "War" with coins or cards.
Sidebar
With cards, each player reveals their next card, and the player with the highest card takes both. If the next play results in a tie, the players reveal the next card and the highest card takes all the ties, plus the current play.
With coins, one player chooses "even or odd" and the other player gets the opposite. Two coins are shown during a play. If both coins show "heads" or if both coins show "tails," the player who called "even" wins and takes both coins." If the coins show dissimilar, the "odds" player takes both. (You cannot have a tie in the coins version of the War game.
In the Game of War, the person who starts out with the most coins or cards usually wins all the coins or cards after multiple iterations of the game.
In the case of world competition, the country wins that trains the most scientists, engineers, mathematicians, technologists and innovative managers.
So, continue focusing on improving high-stakes test scores instead of improving what students learn. Continue driving creative and motivated teachers out of the profession with bureaucratic inefficiencies, with a lack of support, and with a "No Can Do" attitude toward funding hands-on, real-world experiences for our students.
Continue replacing experienced teachers with brand-new teachers (because they are cheaper), and keep on complaining that our teachers are not instructing as well as they should.
Continue approaching access and use of technology as though it was a "budget-buster", and squeeze a few extra years out of the equipment because that is cost-effective.
In short, continue, business-as-usual, and watch other countries that don't have our resources out-compete our country. Why? Because other countries have a vision for success and follow-up, while we want to deliver as much as we possibly can with minimal cost and with minimal sacrifice.
Our country has to commit to education on a higher level and with a greater passion. Otherwise, Chinese is destined to become the dominant world language.
