ANYDAY NOW THE SOVIETS WILL SURPASS US...:

A Phony Science Gap? (Robert J. Samuelson, February 22, 2006, Washington Post)

[I]t's emphatically not true, as much of the alarmist commentary on America's "competitiveness" implies, that the United States now faces crippling shortages in its technological elites.

Here are some facts:

· In 2004 American colleges and universities awarded a record 233,492 undergraduate S&E degrees, reports the National Science Foundation (NSF). That was up 38 percent from 169,726 in 1990. Within that total, some fields have expanded rapidly. Computer science degrees have doubled since 1990, to 57,405. Other fields have stagnated. Engineering degrees, 64,675 in 2004, have been roughly the same since 1990. (Note: These figures exclude psychology and social sciences, such as economics, that are often counted in S&E totals.)

· Graduate science and engineering enrollments hit 327,352 in 2003, another record. They've jumped 22 percent since their recent low in 1998. Computer science graduate students have increased 60 percent, to 56,678, since their low point in 1995, and engineering graduate students are up 27 percent, to 127,375, since their low in 1998. It's true that for these higher degrees, especially doctorates, foreign-born students have represented a growing share of the total. But that's also changing because -- after years of declines -- enrollment of native-born Americans and permanent residents for graduate work has increased 13 percent since 2000.

· Judged realistically, China and India aren't yet out-producing the United States in engineers. Widely publicized figures have them graduating 600,000 and 350,000 engineers a year respectively, from six to 10 times the U.S. level. But researchers at Duke University found the Chinese and Indian figures misleading. They include graduates with two- or three-year degrees -- similar to "associate degrees" from U.S. community colleges. And the American figures excluded computer science graduates. Adjusted for these differences, the U.S. degrees jump to 222,335. Per million people, the United States graduates slightly more engineers with four-year degrees than China and three times as many as India. The U.S. leads are greater for lesser degrees.