Preserving U.S. competitiveness – It’s more than science, engineering and math degrees

“US companies have long played the guru, developing and disseminating many widely adopted management and workforce practices. The time has come for the guru to learn from one of its disciples: India.” – Vivek Wadhwa

Editor’s note: Vivek Wadhwa is a fellow with the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School and executive in residence/adjunct professor at the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University. He is a serial entrepreneur, including the founding of Cary-based Relativity Technologies.

DURHAM, N.C. - I joined academia exactly three years ago. I’ve finally come to the conclusion that like many academics, business leaders and policy makers, I’ve been chasing a red-herring.

I bought the common notion that engineering and science degrees were crucial to U.S. competitiveness. I’m talking about the constant drumbeat from The National Academies, The Conference Board, Department of Education, etc., etc. Craig Barrett and others say “America's economic future lies with its next generation of workers and its ability to develop new technologies and products. This means we must strengthen math and science education.”

I agree we need to keep improving education. And engineering and science degrees provide great advantages. But we can’t wait for our children to graduate and make the country more competitive. It is very easy to blame our kids for not being interested science and engineering jobs when these don’t pay as well as other professions, and aren’t cool.

My obsession for the last year has been to figure out how India is succeeding despite its weak education system. The vast majority of its engineering and science graduates are poorly educated. Maybe they crammed a lot of math when they were young, but this doesn’t provide much advantage in the real world. But India is building an R&D capability in several industries which rivals what it achieved in IT. As a tech CEO, I was one of the first to outsource R&D to India and I watched their IT industry develop. This is happening twice as fast. But how?

The Kauffman Foundation is releasing a new report today, which tries to solve this puzzle.

(Editor’s note: In the report, Wadhwa discusses innovation in several key areas:

• Recruitment

• New employee training

• Continual employee development

• Managerial development

• Performance management

• Workforce retention

• Education upgrades

(Wadhwa wrote articles in BusinessWeek Online and the Wall Street Journal to discuss the report’s findings. He also wrote a summary for the Harvard International Review.

(“Our conclusion is that the United States needs to respond to globalization by learning from India and upgrading its workforce,” he wrote in the Harvard summary.

(“U.S. companies have long played the guru, developing and disseminating many widely adopted management and workforce practice,” he added. “The time has come for the guru to learn from one of its disciples: India.”)