It's interesting to note that one of the ways in which America is attempting to educate young people in the engineering and technological fields is to import people from abroad. Why then, are we educating foreigners when we know, "Many of these jobs are reserved for American citizens, because of national security concerns?" I find this strange to follow up an assertion that will we bring people in from abroad to be educated as a solution, yet many of these students will not be able to work within our country. It seems to me, that if we need Americans to retain these skills and implement them domestically, we should focus on Americans retaining these skills above all.
We need to help ourselves before we can help others. We're continually inviting foreigners into our schools, educating them, and then having them go back home to use what they've just learned from us. In this process, we deny American students a chance to retain the same information that they could use to help us domestically. We hurt ourselves twice in this sense. I understand the need for diversity and the American ideology of saving the rest of the world, but a soccer player with an broken leg isn't going to be scoring any points. We're already behind in numbers and there is a significant percentage of our number that is inhabitant by people we can't use for the sake of knowledge that we provide.
In this "flat world" the author speaks of, it will not be long until former American university students go back home, accumulate, and then establish institutions providing educations that are on par with the ones they acquired here in the U.S. At this point, they will be more active competitors and starting at an upper hand, while the America will be left in a position where we need to catch up. Eventually, they will be thriving and have little need to send students here, while we will be left with a good portion of our S&E schools empty.
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