Originally Posted by Villages Kahuna

Maybe the best suggestion on quickly upgrading our inventory of highly-educated people in engineering, math and science came from Tom Friedman of the New York Times in one of his articles last year. He had just returned from attending his daughter's commencement ceremony at an Ivy League college. A part of the commencement was the "robing" of all the newly-minted Phd's. He observed that among the dozens of candidates being awarded new doctors's degrees in science, math, engineering or medicine there was not one single American (their names and the location of their residence was listed in the commencement program). All were from either Asian countries or India and had come here for advanced education before returning to their homelands.

At the same time he noted that Bill Gates had made a speech recently wherein he said that Microsoft was going to have to begin recruiting for advanced technical people overseas, incurring the time and expense of getting the new employees green cards and moving them to the U.S. He said that Microsoft simply couldn't come close to meeting its needs for technical graduates recruiting only here in the U.S.

Friedman's suggestion was pretty simple. Have a representative of the U.S. State Department on hand at the commencement ceremonies of all the top U.S. technical schools -- MIT, Cal Tech, etc. etc. Then as the newly-minted Phds come off the stage with their degrees and colorful capes, hand them a U.S. Passport. Make them citizens on the spot. No waiting, no fees, no tests, no nothing. Of course, many of them still would not stay in the U.S. But Friedman proposed that enough would and that would begin a flow of technical brainpower to the U.S. that our economy desperately needs but our school systems have not been able to provide.

Pretty easy and practical recommendation, I thought.