America’s ship is sinking. But not because of what you think – the financial crisis, the $700 b. (5 % of US GDP), Lehman Bros. etc.

The real reason lies elsewhere, I believe.

Data in the American Psychological Association MONITOR (June 2008, p. 11) shows that for in the U.S., 311,600 undergraduate degrees were conferred on business majors; second was social sciences and history, then education, then psychology. Engineering was a very distant 7th, with only 78,600 graduates.  

Who will be America’s innovators in the future? The business majors, who invent such winning ideas as mortgage-backed securities, credit default swaps, auction based securities and contractual debt obligations?

Or the engineers, who combine empathetic insights into social needs with technology skills?

China’s top three universities alone match America’s total output of engineers. And India is a close second.  

NYT Columnist Tom Friedman says we have had too much American intervention in the world, which was bad, and now, in the future, we will have too little, which will be equally bad. I think America’s future is endangered less by its financial mess than by its inability to interest young people in technology. Remember Kennedy’s Aug. 1963 challenge: “We shall go the moon by the end of the decade”? The vision pulled many thousands of young people into science and engineering, whatever else the moon shot accomplished. 

Nothing parallel exists today. I think this is the real long-term threat to America.