Gates and PhD's

Is the reason that 59% of all PhD's awarded in the US is to temporary residents is that these are A students from India and China or is it that students in US do not want to do a PhD. India and China produce far more graduates than US does. Now suppose 10% of all graduates want to to a PhD. In the US these students will end up in the top 15 colleges - MIT and such. That leaves all the other colleges with seats to fill. They then get people from India and China. Then the A students from these countries go to the top 15-30 colleges, the rest 30-60 colleges being filled by the rest of the students.

The NSF study says that 1 % of the students in PhD programs in Comp Science are in those jobs. I don't know whether they considered that innovation in comp science still comes mainly from the universities rather than from the industry (i am talking of algorithms and such, not software) which is where a PhD is required. Day to day S/W work, I believe, can be done by a high school graduate (and probably better).

US is a country that leads the world in innovation. A lot of this innovation comes, now a days at least, from highly educated people working for large firms which survive on innovation - Intel, Merck etc. These firms are light years ahead of your run of the mill company. They are the future of America and they need these highly trained professionals.

Offshorization is inevitable. After all the guy in India or China who can do the job for $500 is difficult to compete with for a guy in the US asking for $50,000. But then this guy can now do a more valuable thing. His contribution should become more value adding than checking accounts. That is the way US should move towards. Leave the accounting work, the data entry work etc. to the Indians. After all that is hardly value adding. What is so value adding in making parts for cars when you should be designing new cars.