I like George Will’s writing and his insight. I watch the ABC Sunday news commentary show to see him make pithy comments containing more wisdom that the rest of the commentary combined. His column this week is an example of his insights.
Deborah Wince-Smith of the Council on Competitiveness says: “Talent will be the oil of the 21st century.” And the talent that matters most is the cream of the elite. The late Nobel laureate Julius Axelrod said, “Ninety-nine percent of the discoveries are made by 1 percent of the scientists.”
With populism rampant, this is not a propitious moment to defend elites, even scientific ones. Nevertheless, the nation depends on nourishing them and the institutions that sustain them.
U.S. undergraduate institutions award 16 percent of their degrees in the natural sciences or engineering; South Korea and China award 38 percent and 47 percent, respectively. America ranks 27th among developed nations in the proportion of students receiving undergraduate degrees in science or engineering.
He goes on to recommend support of the “elite universities,” by which I suppose the Ivy League. I think there is another point of view that should be considered.
There’s a lot of work ahead to enable the United States to meet the coming challenges. I’m reasonably confident that we remain the best placed large society on earth to make the right moves. Our culture of enterprise and risk-taking is still strong; a critical mass of Americans still have the values and the characteristics that helped us overcome the challenges of the last two hundred years.
But when I look at the problems we face, I worry. It’s not just that some of our cultural strengths are eroding as both the financial and intellectual elites rush to shed many of the values that made the country great. And it’s not the deficit: we can and will deal with that if we get our policies and politics right. And it’s certainly not the international competition: our geopolitical advantages remain overwhelming and China, India and the EU all face challenges even more daunting than ours and they lack our long tradition of successful, radical but peaceful reform and renewal.
No, what worries me most today is the state of the people who should be the natural leaders of the next American transformation: our intellectuals and professionals. Not all of them, I hasten to say: the United States is still rich in great scholars and daring thinkers. A few of them even blog.
The number of hard science and engineering students at major and/or “elite” universities is a small fraction of the total enrollment. Harvard, for example, only recently revised its engineering curriculum.
The A.B. in engineering degree teaches students how to solve problems and builds confidence doing so, explains Cherry Murray, dean of Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. The degree is a good bridge to further education such as business, law, government, architecture, and medical schools, she says, and draws people who might not normally be interested in more narrow engineering subjects. Another benefit of the broader curriculum: Murray says 38% of the A.B. enrollees at Harvard are women, almost double the national average in regular engineering programs.”
I’m sorry to say that doesn’t sound like a rigorous engineering program. What about MIT ? The list of majors is reassuring, although I don’t know why anyone would major in Theater Arts at MIT.
My own personal favorite is Cal Tech. In 1956 I was accepted and even had my dorm room assigned but my father refused to provide any financial information so I was not able to get a scholarship and there were very few loans in those days. It’s one of two missed chances that I cannot forget. Cal Tech is serious science and engineering education. I’m sorry to have missed it.
There are many excellent state university engineering programs so the emphasis on “elite” universities is an example of provincialism on Will’s part. Stanford is considered elite these days and has excellent engineering programs. The University of Southern California, where I was a student, has good engineering programs, especially chemical and petroleum engineering. In the days I attended it was an inferior program but I had a scholarship so that’s where I went. I eventually switched to medicine and that was excellent for the times.
The biggest problem, and one hinted at by critics of the “Education Bubble,” is the plethora of weak majors, like the “studies” programs, which enroll students with weak scholarly skills and produce graduates with large student loans who cannot find a job. A recent book by Charles Murray, of Bell Curve fame, makes the point that too many students are attending college today under the fallacious impression that all are equally entitled to a college degree. His theory is that there is a minimum IQ below which a college education is probably a poor choice. There are many trades that can provide a good stable income and real pleasure in performing tasks that suit one’s ability. The role of vocational education has been minimized the past 40 years and there are few vocational high schools anymore that teach the basics of manual trades. This may suggest that the smaller number of male college students, compared to female, may in fact be the result of better choices on the part of the young men.
Women fill the classes in weak majors like Women’s Studies and Sociology. Many undergraduates in big universities are expected to digest a steady diet of leftist politics before they can get to the serious part of their major field of study.
There is something to be said for limiting student loans to certain fields of study. Engineering and hard science should be eligible for loans without restriction. For other majors, especially the weak ones, the loans should be limited to those with high grades. If a student wants to continue in a weak major, they or their parents should be responsible. Limits on student loans might even bring tuition inflation under control.
I like this.
There is a great lack of leadership and critical thinking in most nations. All we have now is popularism and the cult of celebrity.
Sadly i think it will take a major war or fincial catastrophy to cause the next lot of leaders to stand up and lead.
Till then it will just be more of the same. Garbage In Garbage Out.
I grew up practically in the shadow of Cal Tech, so that was the gold standard for me too. I never had a chance to get in, but I learned later that my father had hopes that my brothers would. One ended up at Cal Poly Pomona as an engineering major, but switched to math.
Circa 1960, young guys were SO serious..we’ve really lost something vital since then.
I could have been more serious and probably would have been if I had gone to Cal Tech instead of USC.
Thanks for your tremendous insight and wisdom in so many areas, Dr. Kennedy! From history and politics to medicine and science. I’ve been reading your weblog and finding it extremely informative. I recently ordered your book on the history of medicine, too. I can’t wait to read it!
As for me, I’m a young med student still trying to figure out what to do in medicine and would like to ask you a question please: Knowing what you now know, would you have gone into vascular surgery? Or would you have done a different specialty? I wanted to get your perspective because I think it’s valuable and might help me as well. I love the hands-on, “fix it” aspect of surgery, helping treat a patient so directly. I like working hard and doing the best I can do, and don’t mind long hours. But surgeons these days seem to be more about going into surgery for the money (not that there’s anything wrong with making money but it sometimes seems the sole motivation for many surgeons in my experience), and gaining prestige or status over their peers. Much of surgery seems to have a very competitive and even aggressive culture that turns me off. Any thoughts?
Thank you, Dr. Kennedy, in advance.
doc2be, vascular surgery is a dying specialty. The introduction of invasive radiology, especially in vascular disease, has hollowed out the specialty. Some vascular surgeons have learned the invasive techniques, as I was doing when my back finally gave out. Most vascular surgeons I know, like doing the traditional procedures but there will be fewer of them to do.
I wanted to do cardiac surgery but, at the time I was in training, most cardiac surgery and especially the pediatric field was very slow. I didn’t mind doing coronary bypasses but was kind of bored by that procedure. The cardiologists did all the preop and postop care so the surgeon really was a plumber.
Today, many surgery residents are motivated not so much by money because the money is less than it was, but by time off and shift work. That is one reason why trauma surgery is popular. You work 12 hour shifts and go home. I liked trauma and organized the trauma center at Mission Hospital in Orange County. Still, when I was 50 I had one month where I worked two 40 hour stretches in one month. I would catch sleep on a gurney between cases. I decided I was too old.