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Post by mtntigger on May 22, 2011 13:54:54 GMT -5
So, the only way that people can steal the intellectual property are to come to the U.S., work at our jobs, and then take it back to their countries?
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phil5185
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Post by phil5185 on May 22, 2011 14:00:03 GMT -5
svwashout ![](http://us.social.s-msn.com/s/images/emoticons/thumbs_up.gif) But don't you think it's a concern that there are so many foreign born people on your staff? Nope. People in other countries work their butts off to get here and get jobs. That has been my experience also. A great coworker was a phd engineer from Korea, had a rough accent, but it was definitely worth listening to. He had to maintain nearly a 4 point in school to avoid being pulled back to Korea. He held several of the patents in our dept. We worked on the Space programs and Missiles, Smart Bombs, etc, we had Secret clearance plus Black clearances for special jobs. The Feds did on-site checks of my grade school, HS, college, neighbors, employers, all law enforcement agencies - fairly rigorous. He apparently cleared. The technology shortage that I see is at the HS level, not college. Forty or 50 yrs ago we hired HS grads to for technology jobs and for apprentice machinists. We had 100s of mech and elec technicians who were capable of taking an engineer's schematic and making a bread board from it. And mech techs who could build prototype enclosures for breadboards, then do field tests/flight tests. And we had a machine shop with about 50 skilled machinists wearing aprons and building precision prototype parts - they trained apprentices, did the math (sine, cosine, yada). And we had jillions of workers in White Jumps & Masks working on wafers in Clean Rooms. If you want to ruin your day in 2011, run an ad for recent HS Grads to learn/fill these jobs. You will see why we have to go off-shore to find people to fill our technical jobs. Or you will see why most ads now say 'college degree reqd'.
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svwashout
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Post by svwashout on May 22, 2011 14:13:28 GMT -5
It's been many years so I'll share my secret on how I got through it.
During college I was one of the enforcers for our curriculum's main sink-or-swim course (Physics 3 and 4). The professor hired on his top three students from the prior year to grade his excruciating exams. He prided himself on maintaining a fixed and rigorous standard that some years resulted in a 1/3 failure rate.
I survived the previous year by joining a study group that was well-connected, meaning that its members had friends and relatives who had taken this same course during various earlier years. This professor tended to recycle minor variants of his favorite problems, so piecing together a complete archive was golden. What I brought to the table was the ability to (slowly) solve the stumpers. If I hadn't joined that group there's no way I would have been able to finish those exams in the time allotted. While I've always preferred to work independently, I learned an extremely valuable lesson about teamwork, namely, everyone has something to offer, and great leaders are the ones who can fit all the pieces together. Also a good engineer knows that swimming isn't the only way to keep one's head above water.
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Sum Dum Gai
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Post by Sum Dum Gai on May 22, 2011 14:13:37 GMT -5
So, the only way that people can steal the intellectual property are to come to the U.S., work at our jobs, and then take it back to their countries? Of course not. Hell US companies are trying to steal from each other all the time. However, there's a reason that I don't work with all that many foreign nationals. We do a lot of DoD and other agency contracts, most of which require secret and top secret clearance. Foreign nationals can get cleared, but it's much harder, because they pose a bigger risk. Even if I stole the name and location of every single US citizen with a top secret clearance, which would include spies and such all over the world, I'd have no friggin idea how to contact somebody to buy it from me. When your uncle works for the Chinese or Pakistani government, you already have an in if you decided to do the same.
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Post by mtntigger on May 22, 2011 14:14:52 GMT -5
You've already gotten an idea. Let's recap, steadily increasing expectations for study hours without credits granted, ...The assumption that all students will work for love or art rather than for a reasonable salary, This isn't different in the sciences than any other career IMO, so I disagree with your premise. I was spoon-fed and my work has been reviewed by at least one other person throughout my career. I disagree with this point too. We don't have the right. The U.S. is very lucky right now to be the greatest country in the world. Others WANT to be here and fight to be here. I agree with you on the need to develop our own brains, which is why school should be HARDER not easier as you have pointed out. <shrug> I was able to understand all my instructors. Mich pointed out that if you paid attention, you could learn to understand the accents. So, we have been talking about you then? Let's see, I'm a consultant. I see lots of proprietary information and have not yet felt the need to try to take advantage of it. I have managed people who claim things on their resume, but have been found out to be less than truthful. My ex was one of those foreign-born scientists, who despite what he thought, did not advance farther than I did and despite what you think, did not go back to his country to see intellectual property. But DANG, did he work his butt off! I already mentioned that the only large lectures that I had in college where the introductory chemistry and physics classes; most of my classes were less than 30 people.
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Post by The Walk of the Penguin Mich on May 22, 2011 14:16:19 GMT -5
But don't you think it's a concern that there are so many forigin born people on your staff? Aren't you concerned about these people stealing your company's intellectual property and taking it back to China, Russia, the middle east ect?
Not really. Intellectual property works both ways and some of the foreign born people have helped us immeasurably. In my field, collaborations are everything.
In our lab, we have people from India, Greece, Columbia and Russia right now. All are either citizens or hold green cards. I've worked with people from China, Turkey, Australia, Israel, Lebanon, Syria (yeah, that made for some interesting political conversations at work) and more countries than I can remember.
Many were only here for a short period of time, to take what they learned back to their country. However, what they learned wasn't a 'state secret'. It was additional education that they got (at their expense and our advantage) The others emigrated here and are currently working in the field.
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Post by mtntigger on May 22, 2011 14:22:48 GMT -5
Hmmm.... I guess you aren't able to read either. Sorry. Speaking of books, maybe you should read Looking Backwards. It shows an utopia of where everyone discovers his/her dream job and betters society. Nobody is held back in school while the teachers have to spend time explaining things to the less-gifted students and others do not feel that they failed in a certain aspect if they don't understand a subject.
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Post by The Walk of the Penguin Mich on May 22, 2011 14:27:54 GMT -5
So why is learning something from foreign born so horrible? Are you so US-centric that you cannot see that collaborations are worldwide?
IME, the Chinese speak English and write it even better. I think that the US is falling behind on the language ball and it would have benefitted us if there was more of an emphasis placed on learning a second language in primary school, like there is in the rest of the world.
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Post by illinicheme on May 22, 2011 14:30:43 GMT -5
I'm not saying that the situation is fine as it is. I'm saying that making it easier on the students is not the way to go. I would prefer to work with intelligent people from other places in the world than to work with U.S. born citizens who have to be lead through solving problems. ![](http://us.social.s-msn.com/s/images/emoticons/thumbs_up.gif)
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Post by mtntigger on May 22, 2011 14:33:18 GMT -5
Jeremy Bentham, inventor of the Panopticon. Might be worth taking a read at that. However, skill at deciphering mushmouth is not the same as skill calculating wind-load on a building. Maybe we can get mushmouth to remove the marbles so the students can concentrate on actually learning the calculus and physics. You're right. Skill at deciphering "mushmouth" as you call it is a far more valuable skill to have, especially in the global society we have now.
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rovo
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Post by rovo on May 22, 2011 14:45:11 GMT -5
Wow. What a fun thread. I'm late to the party, as usual, but I am enjoying the debate. I might even throw my two cents in at some point. ![;)](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/wink.png)
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steff
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Post by steff on May 22, 2011 14:54:01 GMT -5
I'm just reading and now wondering what my kiddo is gonna face since he's decided Agricultural Engineering is what he wants to do (I didn't even know there was such a thing). I will add that he's a slight jump ahead than most students by attending a Math, Science, & Tech charter school. This summer he'll start his courses at a local Tech college tied with his charter school. He'll have a drafting & welding certificates when he graduates high school.
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Mad Dawg Wiccan
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Post by Mad Dawg Wiccan on May 22, 2011 15:09:19 GMT -5
One of the best electronics instructors I had was from Thailand. He spoke excellent English, but was very self-conscious about what he thought was a lack of language skills. What made him such a good teacher was that if someone didn't understand something, he would explain it again with a whole different approach.
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svwashout
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Post by svwashout on May 22, 2011 15:22:31 GMT -5
Where I work the crown jewels are tightly ringfenced and only a very small inner circle has access. We can see prints only to a level that is enough to be able to do our job. Pretty much everything that any one of us may know would not be of value to someone trying to reverse-engineer one of our systems ground up. The greatest value in our skills is at competing companies (most but not all of which are American) who sell similar but not identical systems. Also out of the dozens of non-native engineers I've worked with, I can't recall anyone who has returned to their country of birth. Those who leave our company usually go to competitors, customers or suppliers, plus a few to academia. So as far as I know they're all Americans now. My impression from talking to those who haven't reached PR is that they are extremely motivated to stay in the US. On the topic of preparation for college-level math and science, maybe we need more of this? www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_22/b4230072816925.htm(sorry if already posted)
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on May 22, 2011 16:03:37 GMT -5
toughtimes, I am intrigued that you are using French literature to make some sort of point on the glories of the English language.
I've read Candide. It's hilarious. It's also a fine example of the brilliant ideas developed in other cultures. Your xenophobia is a strange interpretation of the text.
I'm not sure why you believe the best ideas will always originate in the United States or why we need to protect them.
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Post by The Walk of the Penguin Mich on May 22, 2011 16:40:18 GMT -5
I also wonder why we would want to be so dependent on people from third world countries who can disappear home taking their brains and their knowledge with them.
The thing is, they do NOT take their brains home with them. In my experience, the vast majority of those that come over to the US stay here and become citizens and continue to be productive.
Come to think of it, the last time I trained a scientist who returned to their home country was in 1995. That scientist continues to collaborate with us from Istanbul (and I've continued to maintain a friendship with her).
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Sum Dum Gai
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Post by Sum Dum Gai on May 22, 2011 16:44:15 GMT -5
The thing is, they do NOT take their brains home with them. In my experience, the vast majority of those that come over to the US stay here and become citizens and continue to be productive. Great, but I dont pay taxes so that we can skip educating our own kids and import brains from other countries. I just don't. It's practically a crime that we as a society are OK with that.
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Post by The Walk of the Penguin Mich on May 22, 2011 16:49:25 GMT -5
If I suggested that teaching is a craft and that lousy teachers are often to blame instead of stupid students, would that make me Xenophobic?
So you think that speaking less than perfect English makes them a lousy teacher? I disagree. My microbiology professor was Czech and he mangled English. Yet he was a marvelous microbiology professor who probably forgot more than I could ever know. My calculus professors were Chinese, yet I managed to learn it, despite my frustrations with it. I had a physics professor that was Indian - yet I still managed to do well in his course despite him mangling English.
IMO, it's not teachers, it's not stupid students....it's lazy students. Many want to be spoonfed everything and I see it from my undergrads on up to the MDs/DDSs/PhDs that I teach.
I have a DDS that is coming into the lab that I get to teach for the next 3 months. Despite the fact that she was given the info on what we were doing last January, she has yet to read any of the material and asks questions that demonstrate that she's not read the material. She's going to come into work, whether she's read the info or not, so I'm going to have to forcefeed her the science behind the technical aspects of what I'll be teaching her. IME, THIS has become the norm.
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Mad Dawg Wiccan
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Post by Mad Dawg Wiccan on May 22, 2011 16:50:13 GMT -5
The trick is getting our kids to WANT to go into technical fields. When I started college in 1980, there was a two year waiting list to declare your major in most of the tech schools. I don't know what's happened to make that drop.
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phil5185
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Post by phil5185 on May 22, 2011 16:52:59 GMT -5
Do you imagine that expecting people to go 5 or 6 years without making a dime while expecting them to bear greater financial burdens will not encourage them to seek other majors? I doubt that premise. I knew that I was going to be an engineer - and it took 5 or 6 years. And my wife knew in Grade school that she was going to be a Nurse. That was 50 yrs ago, the K-12 system provided order, discipline, and direction, pointed out where our skills lie, and counseled us. Modern K-12 systems provide little discipline and order, permissiveness and esteem based learning is the norm. So the 18 yr olds have no boundaries, no direction, no knowledge of how to earn a living, and no help with making a life decision. Except that they are told that "college is mandatory and follow your dream". The result is BA's in Pysc, Women's Studies, yada, along with no jobs and a $75k student loan. It's not our universities that are failing - and it's not the fault of foreign students/teachers. We are doing this to ourselves before our kids get to their 18th birthdays.
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Post by mtntigger on May 22, 2011 16:56:35 GMT -5
![](http://us.social.s-msn.com/s/images/emoticons/thumbs_up.gif) That's why there are so many dropping out, they can't take the work load. Some thrive off learning thermodynamics and the various oxidation pathways; others don't and if they don't have the persistence to make themselves learn it, they move on. This is not speaking about their intelligence, it just shows that they are more equipped for another field. Do you really want students who aren't willing to work to design the next World Trade Center or operate on you?
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Post by The Walk of the Penguin Mich on May 22, 2011 17:00:10 GMT -5
I find the example of a student who does not read assignments strange and atypical.
Toughtimes.....when was the last time you taught a college student? Students not reading assignments is not strange and atypical - but sadly becoming the norm.
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Post by mtntigger on May 22, 2011 17:03:00 GMT -5
It's pretty lazy to not work on your accent if you are an education professional, so I think the "lazy" label belongs elsewhere. In the meantime, I never saw anyone take hard sciences or mathematics for an easy "A" so unless standards have gone to hell on a sled in the last generation, I find the example of a student who does not read assignments strange and atypical. Professors have to wear more than one hat, especially those that are in certain universities that do depend on doing research (to support their graduate students) and getting grants. It's not just about teaching kids any more. Like I said earlier, you need to figure out what you want in an university and go find it. Really, you don't know of students who don't read assignments or do work beforehand strange?
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Sum Dum Gai
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Post by Sum Dum Gai on May 22, 2011 17:06:57 GMT -5
The trick is getting our kids to WANT to go into technical fields. I don't see why they wouldn't; much harder path to getting your foot in the door, crappy wages, tons of competition from countries where PhD's are happy to work for less than you'd have to pay a burger jockey here, what's not to love? Everyone goes into business and finance because that's where the money is. Companies started outsourcing everything except the corporate office, and finance, so all the whiz kids went into those majors. Why work your ass off to get through school just to compete for mediocre wages with the unwashed masses of China and India? Screw that racket, get an MBA and be the guy who sends the jobs overseas and picks the winners between underpaid Americans, Chinese, and Indians. He's the one with job security, a fat paycheck, and he's more respected by society than engineers are anyway.
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Post by mtntigger on May 22, 2011 17:11:49 GMT -5
Dark, when I went to school, everyone was getting an MBA and there was competition out of the wazoo for associated jobs. Maybe it's cyclical. ![](http://syonidv.hodginsmedia.com/vsmileys/idunno.gif) I agree... if you head into the science fields, unless it can be applied (e.g., doctor), you are getting pretty crappy wages. As an engineer, however, my wages haven't been stellar, but they are far from crappy.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on May 22, 2011 17:22:46 GMT -5
toughtimes, I'm not trying to start a flame war (okay, maybe I am) but you have been railing against the idea of having "lazy" "mush mouth" instructors from "third world" nations who speak in "Pig Latin" with "marbles" and/or a "roll of paper towels" in their mouth. Apparently, these graduate students and professors are here for a "few shekels" and "grains of rice" before they "steal their intellectual property" (and, oh yes, the "blueprints"!) and return to their home country.
Your reading tutor Singh, and other professors from India are most likely native English speakers. In China, students begin studying English in primary school. They speak English with an accent. Would you have the same objection to an instructor with an Australian, English or Scottish accent in a U.S. college?
As a communications major, I would expect you to know that words have meanings. And a lot of the words you have chosen make you sound like a bigot. Maybe that isn't who you are in real life. But would you have posted half of these things if you were signing your real name to them?
There are valid criticisms to be made about our educational system - heck, you may even have made some of them - but it is hard to see past the hostility of your words.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on May 22, 2011 17:35:34 GMT -5
There are standards. Most colleges and universities requires instructors to take the TOEFL. Or were you volunteering to be the judge of intelligibility?
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zibazinski
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Post by zibazinski on May 22, 2011 17:39:00 GMT -5
I took science classes in college. Everyone had to take a year. Right off the bat I was in Freshman Biology. The professor was Chinese, I couldn't understand a word he said BUT there was a lab and there was discussion which was part of the class requirement and both of those were taught by English speaking people, probably TA's, so I could figure out what was being said. I'm no math or science whiz but I did well by going to discussion and lab. The TA's knew students couldn't understand the professor. If you make an effort, you can figure things out. Now, granted, if I had someone I couldn't understand for a non-technical class, I'd be lost but it seems as though there are plenty of English speakers for those kind of classes.
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Post by The Walk of the Penguin Mich on May 22, 2011 17:41:17 GMT -5
Yes, I do find it strange that SCIENCE or MATH majors are that lazy, but I was a Bronx Science nerd where only 1 in 6 got into the school and you intentionally put yourself in for work. I never met a science major who was not serious about study. Some of my friends even suicided when they no longer got "As". I tell that one as a cautionary tale. There is something to be said for not being brittle.
When I took biology it was famously the path to pre-med (I wanted research). I heard no end of light-bulb jokes about cutthroat competition, but never saw laziness.
I got my undergrad in 1981 and it was not like that then. However, it IS like this now. I remember when I got my MS, in 1991 and I saw it back then with my classmates, but not as bad as it is now.
I think you have a past view of students. That's not to say that all of them are like this, but a fair proportion are. And when I encounter them at the level at which I teach, then it is a concern for me.
And quite frankly, the lazy students are far more of a concern than professors that speak less than perfect English. They're more of a concern than foreign scientists who come to the US (for the most part, for a better life) and work their asses off and are most definitely NOT lazy.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on May 22, 2011 17:42:47 GMT -5
I have firsthand knowledge of it. I heard these jokers. Even growing up in a household with a pop speaking a thick West of Ireland brogue did not prepare me for it. Many of my neighbors were blue-collar Greeks and Southern Italians straight off the boat. They still were easier to understand and they were no college professors. So you are the judge. And European accents you grew up with are okay, but anyone else is a joker? Got it. (Did you seriously just say "straight off the boat"?)
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