For years Friedman was crowing about STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) career paths. He loudly bemoaned the loss of American students in these fields while he beat the drums for loosening H1-B visa rules for foreign nationals. Friedman never bothered to connect the dots between the flood of foreign scientists and the massive glut of Ph.D.'s in America. Had he ever stepped foot into a real lab, I'm sure he would have heard an earful.
While Friedman was wringing his hands about how lazy Americans were unwilling to undertake arduous 8 - year Ph.D. programs - academia was busy cannibalizing itself by creating a glut of graduate students and post-docs from foreign countries. This helped investigators write more grants and get more public funding through RO-1 grants and the like. But no one thought ahead to the day when these graduate students and post-docs would start applying for "real jobs." Thus the post-doctoral log-jam was born - aided and abetted by the likes of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs who were both constantly beseeching Congress to raise the limits on yet MORE H1-B's. The situation is so bad that scientists are spending 10-15 years in the limbo as post-docs. Post-docs generally earn less than $40k a year and work an average of 70 hours a week. Indentured servitude at best, a high-tech sweatshop is closer to the mark.
Mr. Friedman - please understand the topic before making sweeping judgments. Students were avoiding these fields not because they were lazy or stupid but because they weren't STABLE.
Now Tom Friedman is at it again....the good news is that he appears to have finally given up on Ph.D.'s as a hedge against unemployment. Now he is suggesting.....drumroll....entrepreneurship! OH!!! Now there's a plan for the nearly 9.2% of unemployed Americans! I hope Mr. Friedman doesn't think that the Ph.D. programs he was touting in the past will be of any value in this regard - because they won't. He then goes on to sing the praises of Facebook and Twitter as amazing "innovations". There is so much wrong with this that I don't know where to begin....
1. Education and entrepreneurship are two different things. Innovators are seldom good business people...they are too busy innovating for that - and I'm not being trite. Put simply, they are different skill sets. A Ph.D. is taught critical thinking and although they obtain a vast array of technical skills, it is the ability to disseminate information and draw valid conclusions that the most valued trait of the Ph.D. But this has little to do with starting and running your own business. Invention and innovation is far harder than running a business - but not nearly as lucrative.
2. Entrepreneurship is RISKY!!! For every success - there are a thousand failures. It's a high risk, high reward endeavor - but in this economy where VC is drum-tight the chances of making it are despairingly small.
3. Facebook is not cutting-edge technology...Mr. Friedman fails to understand that things like FB and Twitter - though fun are hardly breakthrough technologies in their own right. The INTERNET itself was a major invention. FB and Twitter simply exploit that existing technology. True discovery and invention get their start in the public sector. It is simply too expensive for an industry that is public traded on the stock exchange. In short, iPhone apps are a far cry from curing cancer.
Mr. Friedman needs to stick to topics he understands...
©2011 - RMGHicks - http://www.therobberbaroneconomy.com
Friedman has been wrong on almost everything he says, but the right keep quoting him. Oh well, I guess they need a patron saint of inaccurate economic theory.
ReplyDeleteVery well said. Friedman often sounds like a self-help snake oil salesman to me. How many innovators does he think are on the planet at a time? "Yeah, Mildred, Terrence will grow up to be an innovator just like his old man and, if that don't work out, he'll be an entrepeneur for sure."
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