Competing in the global economy

Hi there CK,

I didn't follow the link yet, but I thought I'd comment on your post here. I've attended two engineering schools in the USA, and one of them was a pretty darn good school. At both, I would have to say about 80%+ of the graduate students were foreign. Now, I don't have the actual facts and figures, that was just my observation. I may be way off, but I don't think I am.

Also, I'd like to mention that about 80% of my professors were foreign (Indian, or Chinese)... So while we may have some awful good schools here, we're being taught by people from what you called turd-world countries.

Most American students don't want to go any further than a 4-year degree. I don't blame them. Who wants to keep scraping by when you can go out and get a real job, a nice car and a house right out of college? Not to mention we just can't afford it anymore. I'm working full time at a "real" job as an SMT process guy and machine programmer, and trying to dump as much as I can into my 401k, and I'm finding it hard to pay for my part-time schooling.

I think we do have an education problem in this country, the cost of schooling is skyrocketing and it's just going to become more difficult for students to make the sacrifice.

That is all.

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A few more facts:

1) China has between 100-160 cities with populations of over 1 million. America has 9 and all of Europe has 36.

2) China will produce 325,000 engineers this year....5 times as many as the United States. 40% of all American students who enter US universities on the engineering track change their mind.

3) Mentioned somewhat in the video.....in America there are only 50,000 students learning Chinese as a second language. In China there are as many people learning English as a second language as there are people who speak English as a first language in the United States, Canada and Great Britain COMBINED!

4) Brazil is the 15th largest economy in the world. If China took all of the dollars they have in reserve and decided to spend them, they could buy in one DAY what Brazil buys in one YEAR with those dollars.

It's why I always say.....in the best case scenario the US becomes Great Britain....in the worst case China will destroy us.

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I'm not a protectionist (yet), but I can surely know a trend in my industry when I see one.

In the past 10 years we were looking to outsource precision machined goods to Asia. Although the quality wasn't there, the cost incentives made up for it even with the problems we were having. Now a few years later we find ourselves outsourcing precision macnining not because of price but because it's hard to find machine shops with capacity that can do precision tooling in production quntities.

When I talk to these domestic shop owners they all say the same thing. While CNC machining is as cost competitive as ever; the best tool and die makers are retiring and there is no second generation kids to take the place.

The emergency apprenticeship programs implemented in the 80's to recruit new machinists failed because the process to train a new machinist is long and costly. Very few trainees can wait it out. Also I commonly hear that the next generation doesn't have the skills, education or patience to learn non-CNC and more labor intensive techniques such as finishing, grinding, honing and polishing.

Yet now the work we get out of Singapore and Thailand and Malaysia are as good now as the work we used to be able find back in the 80's. The reasons? Because these shops were painstakingly trained by American companies who needed support for the semiconductor and disk drive markets that were exported wholesale in the 80's.

Now that those industries have moved to China, these shops are specializing in other more lucrative work including the once uniquely American elite jobs of machining for things like aerospace components and precision assemblies.

I'm worried that the talents that we once took for granted are getting harder and harder to find without reaching out overseas. On that same note however it's interesting that China has yet to master those skills and although they can do specialized work such as mold making, stamping dies and the like their are very few precision toolmakers at this point. Like anything though, I suppose they will acquire those skills too in the not too distant future.

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