Engineering - Jobs that Japanese won't do

Engineering -- Jobs that Japanese and Americans won't do.

We need foreigners because we have become lazy and soft. This article is typical in that it takes the industry line 100% even as it lays out the basic facts behind the entirely rational decisions that are being made by college students.

Interesting that the reporter doesn't pursue these obvious facts. He mentions that college students are pursuing more lucrative careers like finance and medicine that may require less rigorous studies and may require less work hours than these engineering jobs .

So these young people, just like those in the U.S., are making rational decisions. The foreign workers are also making the exact same rational decision... in their countries (India,Russia,China) an engineering degree means a much higher level of compensation. As the article mentions in this quote from a Chinese engineer working in Japan:

One of the first it hired was He Xifen, a 27-year-old mechanical engineer from Qingdao University of Science and Technology who joined Altech two and a half years ago. She said her friends back home envy her because she works with advanced Japanese technology, and earns three or four times more than she would in China.

In America, Central Americans are also said to be doing jobs that 'Americans wont do' , but they are getting 5-10 times more for those same jobs than they could earn back in their native countries, while Americans have alternative options for higher-paying positions here.

If they truly want to entice people to become engineers then make it a more competitive with compensation of finance and medicine fields, and with some job stability, where the option of off-shoring the work is too strong for employers to ignore.

Instead the article lays the blame on the students as being basically lazier than the previous generation.

May 17, 2008

High-Tech Japanese, Running Out of Engineers

By MARTIN FACKLER

TOKYO — Japan is running out of engineers.

After years of fretting over coming shortages, the country is actually facing a dwindling number of young people entering engineering and technology-related fields.

Universities call it “rikei banare,” or “flight from science.” The decline is growing so drastic that industry has begun advertising campaigns intended to make engineering look sexy and cool, and companies are slowly starting to import foreign workers, or sending jobs to where the engineers are, in Vietnam and India.

It was engineering prowess that lifted this nation from postwar defeat to economic superpower. But according to educators, executives and young Japanese themselves, the young here are behaving more like Americans: choosing better-paying fields like finance and medicine, or more purely creative careers, like the arts, rather than following their salaryman fathers into the unglamorous world of manufacturing.

The problem did not catch Japan by surprise. The first signs of declining interest among the young in science and engineering appeared almost two decades ago, after Japan reached first-world living standards, and in recent years there has been a steady decline in the number of science and engineering students. But only now are Japanese companies starting to feel the real pinch.

By one ministry of internal affairs estimate, the digital technology industry here is already short almost half a million engineers.

Headhunters have begun poaching engineers midcareer with fat signing bonuses, a predatory practice once unheard-of in Japan’s less-cutthroat version of capitalism.

The problem is likely to worsen because Japan has one of the lowest birthrates in the world. “Japan is sitting on a demographic time bomb,” said Kazuhiro Asakawa, a professor of business at Keio University. “An explosion is going to take place. They see it coming, but no one is doing enough about it.”

The shortage is causing rising anxiety about Japan’s competitiveness. China turns out some 400,000 engineers every year, hoping to usurp Japan’s place one day as Asia’s greatest economic power.

Afraid of a hollowing-out of its vaunted technology industries, Japan has been scrambling to entice more of its younger citizens back into the sciences and engineering. But labor experts say the belated measures are limited and unlikely to fix the problem.

In the meantime, the country has slowly begun to accept more foreign engineers, but nowhere near the number that industry needs.

While ingrained xenophobia is partly to blame, companies say Japan’s language and closed corporate culture also create barriers so high that many foreign engineers simply refuse to come, even when they are recruited.

As a result, some companies are moving research jobs to India and Vietnam because they say it is easier than bringing non-Japanese employees here.

Japan’s biggest problem may be the attitudes of affluence. Some young Japanese, products of a rich society, unfamiliar with the postwar hardships many of their parents and grandparents knew, do not see the value in slaving over plans and numbers when they could make money, have more contact with other people or have more fun.

Since 1999, the number of undergraduates majoring in sciences and engineering has fallen 10 percent to 503,026, according to the education ministry. (Just 1.1 percent of those students were foreign students.) The number of students majoring in creative arts and health-related fields rose during that time, the ministry said.

Applications to the engineering program at Utsunomiya University, an hour north of Tokyo, have fallen one-third since 1999. Starting last year, the school has tried to attract students by adding practical instruction to its theory-laden curriculum. One addition was a class in making camera lenses, offered in partnership with Canon, which drew 70 students, twice the expected turnout, said Toyohiko Yatagai, head of the university’s center for optics research.

But engineering students see themselves as a vanishing breed. Masafumi Hikita, a 24-year-old electric engineering senior, said most of his former high school classmates chose college majors in economics to pursue “easier money” in finance and banking. In fact, friends and neighbors were surprised he picked a difficult field like engineering, he said, with a reputation for long hours.

Mr. Hikita and other engineering students say their dwindling numbers offer one benefit: they are a hot commodity among corporate recruiters. A labor ministry survey last year showed there were 4.5 job openings for every graduate specializing in fields like electronic machinery.

“We don’t need to find jobs,” said Kenta Yaegashi, 24, another electrical engineering senior. “They find us.” He said his father, also an engineer, was envious of the current sellers’ market, much less crowded than the packed field he faced 30 years ago. Even top manufacturers, who once had their pick of elite universities, say they now have to court talent. This means companies must adapt their recruiting pitches to appeal to changing social attitudes.

So, Nissan tells students they can advance their careers more quickly there than at more traditional Japanese companies. The carmaker emphasizes that it offers faster promotions, bigger pay raises and even “career coaches” to help young talent ascend the corporate ladder.

“Students today are more demanding and individualistic, like Westerners,” said Hitoshi Kawaguchi, senior vice president in charge of human resources at Nissan.

On the more offbeat side, an ad for the steel industry features a long-haired guitarist in spandex pants shouting, “Metal rocks!”

One source Japan has not yet fully tapped is foreign workers — unlike Silicon Valley, filled with specialists in information technology, or IT, from developing nations like India and China.

According to government statistics, Japan had 157,719 foreigners working in highly skilled professions in 2006, twice as many as a decade ago, but still a far cry from the 7.8 million in the United States. Britain has also been aggressively recruiting foreign engineers, as have Singapore and South Korea, labor experts say.

“Japan is losing out in the global market for top IT engineers,” said Anthony D’Costa, a professor at Copenhagen Business School, who has studied the migration of Indian engineers.

Companies are scrambling to change tactics now.

For instance, Kizou Tagomori, director of recruitment at Fujitsu, said the computer maker and its affiliates routinely fell about 10 percent shy of their annual hiring goal of 2,000 new employees. Fearing chronic shortages, the company has begun hiring foreigners to work in Japan.

Starting in 2003, Fujitsu began hiring about 30 foreigners a year, mostly other Asians who had graduated from Japanese universities. Initially, many managers were reluctant to accept them. Mr. Tagomori said they are now gaining acceptance.

Fujitsu’s 10 Indian employees in Japan won over some of their co-workers by organizing a cricket team, he said.

But Fujitsu remains an exception. In an economic ministry survey last year, 79 percent of Japanese companies say they either have no plans to hire foreign engineers or are undecided. The ministry said most managers still feared that foreigners would not be able to adapt to Japan’s language or corporate culture.

To combat these attitudes, the ministry began the Asian Talent Fund, a $30 million-a-year effort to offer Asian students Japanese language training and internships in order to help them find work here.

“If these students do well, they can change Japanese attitudes drastically,” said Go Takizawa, deputy director of the ministry’s human resource policy division.

Nonetheless, labor experts warn Japan may be doing too little, too late. They say the country has already gained a negative reputation as discriminating against foreign employees, with weak job guarantees and glass ceilings. Experts say Indian and other engineers will often opt for more open markets like the United States.

Indeed, a growing number of Japanese companies are having more success by building new research and development centers in countries with surpluses of engineers. Toyo Engineering, which designs chemical factories, said it and its affiliates now employ more engineers abroad — 3,000, mostly in India, Thailand and Malaysia — than in Japan, where they have 2,500 workers.

With corporate Japan still reluctant to accept foreigners, a half-dozen staffing companies have stepped into the breach by hiring Chinese and South Korean engineers to send to Japanese companies on a temporary basis. One of the biggest is Altech, which has set up training centers at two Chinese universities to recruit engineering students and train them in Japanese language and business customs. Of Altech’s roughly 2,400 engineers, 138 are Chinese, and the company plans to hire more at a rate of 200 per year.

One of the first it hired was He Xifen, a 27-year-old mechanical engineer from Qingdao University of Science and Technology who joined Altech two and a half years ago. She said her friends back home envy her because she works with advanced Japanese technology, and earns three or four times more than she would in China.

While Japanese clients appear uncertain at first about how to deal with foreigners, she said, they quickly catch on and she usually feels welcome.

“Foreign engineers are becoming accepted,” said Shigetaka Wako, a spokesman for Altech. “Japan is slowly realizing that its economy cannot continue without them.”

Revenge of the Nerds

Revenge of the Nerds ?

I thought the stereotype was that nerds craved female companionship. Here Nerds have morphed into a combination of the worst qualities of Corporate Execs , Jocks and construction workers. Hey, men are men , nerds or not !

I find this hard to believe, as far as it being a pervasive problem .

It seems to be exactly the opposite today, companies and workers go out of their way to encourage females in science.

Interesting their interpretation of things changing for science women at 35-40 years of age . Up until this point they get better appraisals (probably meaning more money/promotions) than the men, according to the article. This pre-40 time period is very good news but they don't dwell on it, they prefer to continue to view women as victims of rampant sexism in the science workplace.

It would seem to me that this is a typical pattern for ALL women who pursue careers and thereby usually put off having children .... this is the age of 'last chance' so they may be having babies at this age and then they come back and opt for work that is less demanding of their time, i.e. Work/life balance.

They contrast this exodus as being higher than for women in Law or Investment Banking ... well, duh ! Law and Investment Banking jobs pay several times the pay-rate of a 'science' career, so women in these fields more often choose to go childless because of the 'financial incentives' in their careers.



May 15, 2008
Life’s Work
Diversity Isn’t Rocket Science, Is It?
By LISA BELKIN
BACK in the bad old days, the workplace was a battleground, where sexist jokes and assumptions were the norm.

Women were shut off from promotion by an old boys’ network that favored its own. They went to meetings and were often the only women in the room.

All that has changed in the last three decades, except where it has not. In the worlds of science, engineering and technology, it seems, the past is still very much present.

“It’s almost a time warp,” said Sylvia Ann Hewlett, the founder of the Center for Work-Life Policy, a nonprofit organization that studies women and work. “All the predatory and demeaning and discriminatory stuff that went on in workplaces 20, 30 years ago is alive and well in these professions.”

That is the conclusion of the center’s latest study, which will be published in the Harvard Business Review in June.

Based on data from 2,493 workers (1,493 women and 1,000 men) polled from March 2006 through October 2007 and hundreds more interviewed in focus groups, the report paints a portrait of a macho culture where women are very much outsiders, and where those who do enter are likely to eventually leave.

The study was conceived in response to the highly criticized assertion three years ago, by the then-president of Harvard, that women were not well represented in the science because they lacked what it took to excel there.

The purpose of the work-life center’s survey was to measure the size of the gender gap and to decipher why women leave the science, engineering and technology professions in disproportionate numbers.

The problem isn’t that women aren’t making strides in education in the hard sciences. According to a National Science Foundation report in 2006, 46 percent of Ph.D. degrees in the biological sciences are awarded to women (compared with 31 percent two decades ago); 31 percent of the Ph.D. degrees in chemistry go to women, compared with 18 percent 20 years ago.
And, women enter science engineering and technology (known as the SET professions) in sizable numbers. In fact, 41 percent of workers on the earliest rungs of SET career ladder are women, the study found, with the highest representation in scientific and medical research (66 percent) and the lowest in engineering (21 percent).

They also do well at the start, with 75 percent of women age 25 to 29 being described as “superb,” “excellent” or “outstanding” on their performance reviews, words used for 61 percent of men in the same age group.

An exodus occurs around age 35 to 40. Fifty-two percent drop out, the report warned, with some leaving for “softer” jobs in the sciences human resources rather than lab bench work, for instance, and others for different work entirely. That is twice the rate of men in the SET industries, and higher than the attrition rate of women in law or investment banking.
The reasons pinpointed in the report are many, but they all have their roots in what the authors describe as a pervasive macho culture.

Engineers have their “hard hat culture,” while biological and chemical scientists find themselves in the “lab coat” culture and computer experts inhabit a “geek culture.” What they all have in common is that they are “at best unsupportive and at worst downright hostile to women,” the study said.

The 147-page report (which was sponsored by Alcoa, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, Pfizer and Cisco) is filled with tales of sexual harassment (63 percent of women say they experienced harassment on the job); and dismissive attitudes of male colleagues (53 percent said in order to succeed in their careers they had to “act like a man”); and a lack of mentors (51 percent of engineers say they lack one); and hours that suit men with wives at home but not working mothers (41 percent of technology workers says they need to be available “24/7”).
Josephine, a computer programmer whose boss at a start-up a decade ago nicknamed her Finn, stands out among the accounts.

“It turned out to be really useful to allow some of my colleagues to imagine I was a man,” the worker is quoted as saying. The e-mail messages Finn received were strikingly different than those received by Josephine. Not only did they contain “brutal locker room stuff, that was hard to take,” but also important information shared by colleagues who wanted to keep each other in the loop. Josephine got none of that, making the advantage of being a man in a male world quite clear.

Her advice? “Get yourself a Finn,” Josephine said. “He’s as necessary today as he was in 1997. Back then I thought that Finn would outgrow his usefulness, that there would come a day when Josephine was in the know. It’s sad, but that day hasn’t happened.”

This portrait of a male-dominated culture comes as no surprise to Carol B. Muller, the chief executive and founder of MentorNet, an online network for women and minorities in engineering and science.

The reason the “hard sciences” are “so much worse than other fields,” she said, is multifaceted and rooted in the societal perception that women simply are not as good in math and science as men are.

This notion persists despite the dozens of studies that show the abilities of boys and girls are equal well into high school.

“Most people just don’t look at a woman and see an engineer,” Ms. Muller said.
The result, she said has been a work environment that dismisses women. Female employees come up against “the kind of culture that evolves when women are in the extreme minority,” she said. (Think “Lord of the Flies.”) The ideal worker in this realm is “the hacker who goes into his cubicle and doesn’t emerge for a week, having not showered or eaten anything but pizza. Those people exist and they are seen as heroes.”

THERE is a new spotlight being pointed at these testosterone-soaked corners lately, a result of the fact that even in a faltering economy, the technology and science industries need workers.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that job opportunities in these fields will grow five times faster than in other industries. Demand for information technology workers, for instance, is projected to increase by 25 percent over the next 30 years, while the number of available workers is expected to shrink over the same period.

Wouldn’t it make financial sense, the study concludes, for these employers to find a way to halt the exodus? And will that incentive be sufficient to transform a culture that has been resistant to calls for change?

A handful of companies are trying. The report highlights 14 pilot programs, many of them implemented by the report’s sponsors, that are designed to retain and promote women.
At Cisco, for instance, where only 16 percent of employees are women, the company’s Executive Talent Insertion Program aims to add about a dozen senior women to its management ranks within an 18-month period ending this year.

This would provide mentors and role models as well as alter the gender landscape. The program at Johnson & Johnson, called “Crossing the Finish Line,” tutors women in leadership skills.
Reducing the current attrition rate by 25 percent would add 220,000 SET workers to the economy, Ms. Hewlett said.

And that just might be a figure that even the unshowered geek in the cubicle can respect. “Cultures only change because they have to,” she said. “Maybe it’s finally time.”

Change in US Corporate Culture to layoffs

This article expresses a new trend in US Corporate Culture .... 'layoff strategies' .

This article is about the Banking industry but I/T workers can all relate to a lot of the 'process' and the subsequent morale issues, since the I/T industry has been handling their 'resource' issues exactly this way for the last couple of years now.

I use the new definitions from the latest Corporate Euphemisms dictionary :

'resources' = US workers with some years of experience and seniority, i.e. expensive workers ; a 'cost' , not 'asset' for the company.

'talent' = foreign workers or new college hires, i.e. cheaper workers who have not yet proven their incompetence so are hopefully 'talented'. Reminds me of Obama's campaign and his message of 'The Audacity of Hope' ... this message resonates to college age people who are supporting him , i.e. our home-grown 'talent'.

Some quotes from the article :

This time, companies are making many small cuts over the course of weeks or even months. Some people who have lost jobs, and many more struggling to hold them, say banks are keeping employees in the dark about the size and timing of layoffs.

The idea that banks will slowly wield the knife again and again unnerves many employees. People know the cuts are coming — they just don’t know when or where.

And this one refers to replacements but doesn't specify if they are 1) new (cheaper), younger hires 2) global resourcing replacements 3) people gained thru 'mergers/acquistions' who take over jobs of current employees , i.e. redundancies .... although it implies college-hires since 'they' are coming 'this summer' :

All told, Goldman is axing about 8 percent of its work force, although incoming employees this summer will make up for some of that loss.

And for the survivors:

The steady drumbeat of bad news on Wall Street is sapping morale. Wendi S. Lazar, a partner at the employment law firm of Outten & Golden, said companies are usually better off being open about cutting jobs.

“You’re seeing a very, very inconsistent message to employees,” Ms. Lazar said. “It’s, ‘I don’t know when it’s going to happen, it may be tomorrow, it may be next month; we may be able to keep you, we may not.’ ”

And the idea of the cutting going beyond just the 'fat':

Already, the industry cuts have moved beyond low performers to people for whom the future looked bright just months ago. Analysts say the reductions announced so far will not be enough and that more may come later in the year, before employees are scheduled to collect bonuses.

“People will try to delay them for as long as possible,” Meredith Whitney, the banking analyst at Oppenheimer & Company, said of the layoffs, which she thinks are far from over. “It cuts to the bone.”


May 16, 2008
For Wall Street Workers, Ax Falls Quietly
By LOUISE STORY and ERIC DASH
People on Wall Street seem to be vanishing overnight.
Thousands are losing their jobs as hard-pressed banks cut deep. But while layoffs are nothing new in the financial industry (they come with almost every downturn), this round seems different: it is eerily quiet.

So quiet, in fact, that people refer to these cuts as stealth layoffs. Some bosses hardly say a word after people are fired. At Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, for example, the first clue that someone is gone can be e-mail messages that are returned to senders from a former colleague’s inactivated corporate address.

While the financial markets have found a bit of a footing lately, banks are pushing ahead with plans for some of the deepest job reductions in years. Since last summer, banks worldwide have announced plans to cut 65,000 employees.

But exactly how many jobs have been or will be eliminated is unclear. In the past, banks typically made sharp reductions all at once. After the 1987 stock market crash, for example, employees were herded into conference rooms and dismissed en masse.

This time, companies are making many small cuts over the course of weeks or even months. Some people who have lost jobs, and many more struggling to hold them, say banks are keeping employees in the dark about the size and timing of layoffs.

Citigroup, for example, said last year that it would eliminate 17,000 jobs, or about 5 percent of its work force. Then in January, Citi said it would dismiss 4,200 more people. In April, it said an additional 8,700 would go.

By contrast, after the financial upheaval of 1998, when many Wall Street banks pared payrolls, Citigroup eliminated 10,600 jobs, or about 6 percent of its work force at the time.

The idea that banks will slowly wield the knife again and again unnerves many employees. People know the cuts are coming — they just don’t know when or where.

“Nobody knows who is coming in; nobody knows who is going out,” said JoAnne Kennedy, who was laid off by JPMorgan Chase this year. “They want to keep it all as quiet as possible.”
To some bank workers, one round of layoffs seems to blur into the next. At Goldman Sachs, low performers were dismissed from January through March. A few weeks later, the bank quietly began letting more people go. All told, Goldman is axing about 8 percent of its work force, although incoming employees this summer will make up for some of that loss.

At Merrill Lynch, 1,100 people were laid off early this year, mostly in mortgage-related businesses. But in April, the firm announced 2,900 more cuts.

JPMorgan Chase said last fall that it would lay off 100 people in its fixed-income division and then followed up with several smaller rounds of cuts in other parts of the bank. The casualties will keep mounting as JPMorgan melds with Bear Stearns, the troubled investment bank it is buying.

Starting at the top, JPMorgan executives are eliminating jobs at their own bank, redeploying some people to other divisions and replacing others with Bear Stearns workers. As many as 5,500 Bear Stearns employees and 4,000 JPMorgan workers could lose their jobs before it is over.

The steady drumbeat of bad news on Wall Street is sapping morale. Wendi S. Lazar, a partner at the employment law firm of Outten & Golden, said companies are usually better off being open about cutting jobs.

“You’re seeing a very, very inconsistent message to employees,” Ms. Lazar said. “It’s, ‘I don’t know when it’s going to happen, it may be tomorrow, it may be next month; we may be able to keep you, we may not.’ ”

Layoffs are always difficult, but some of the recent cutbacks have been messier than usual. Some JPMorgan employees learned that people from Bear Stearns would get their jobs before the bosses said anything. JPMorgan clients told them first.

Some Lehman Brothers investment bankers found out their jobs were in peril when they saw cardboard boxes and dumpster bins in the hallways in March.

And when Bank of America dismissed some bankers recently, it told them that their annual bonuses had been almost wiped out and that their personal belongings would arrive in the mail. The bank announced many of the layoffs on Feb. 13, two days before many employees would be able to start cashing out stock options.

In January, when Ms. Kennedy was temporarily out of the office at JPMorgan because of surgery, her boss called to say her job had been eliminated. She did not return to her office and ended up asking the bank to send her the photos of her son that she kept on her desk.

“You don’t get to say goodbye to people,” Ms. Kennedy said. “It’s demoralizing.”
At some banks like Bank of America, many laid-off employees are not allowed to return to their desks, because the banks fear departing employees will try to take valuable colleagues or clients with them.

Officials at all of the Wall Street firms declined to comment.

At Credit Suisse, people who were laid off recently were allowed to say goodbye to colleagues. But those who stayed responded with a combination of relief and fear — relief that it wasn’t them, and fear that it might be soon. Many people say they are too worried about keeping their jobs to help friends who are out of work.

“There were mixed emotions because this clearly isn’t the last round,” said an associate who was laid off by Credit Suisse last month. “Banks really aren’t making any money right now, and they haven’t been for a while. There’s only so long you can go and not lay off more people.”

Already, the industry cuts have moved beyond low performers to people for whom the future looked bright just months ago. Analysts say the reductions announced so far will not be enough and that more may come later in the year, before employees are scheduled to collect bonuses.

“People will try to delay them for as long as possible,” Meredith Whitney, the banking analyst at Oppenheimer & Company, said of the layoffs, which she thinks are far from over. “It cuts to the bone.”

Banks and brokerage firms generally pay out about 50 percent of their revenue to employees as salaries and bonuses. Last year that percentage leapt to 70 percent, even as business began to dry up. Ms. Whitney estimates that on average banks announced plans to reduce their work forces by 5 to 8 percent. They probably will have to cut at least twice that amount, she said.

Executives have spent months developing layoff strategies, negotiating severance packages, and carefully penning scripts. Many hire outside consultants, dispatch cost-cutting czars and establish centralized restructuring offices and career placement centers. For Wall Street employees, the most dangerous days are Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Those are the favored days to fire people, so employees do not have the weekend to stew about it.

Euphemisms for layoffs are making the rounds too. Banks do not just fire people anymore. They engage in “head count reduction,” “reduction in force” and “redundancies.”

And gallows humor is rampant. One joke: A banker calls a colleague and asks, “Are you busy? Or are you lying?”

Grads at top schools flood Teach for America !

A couple of things hit me about this short article:

- Instead of saying 'Joe Shmoe founded Teach for America', they give the credit to the University (Prestigious Princeton!!) , i.e. 'Founded by a Princeton Graduate' ... a nameless graduate ! Saying 'Princeton' give the program the imprimatur for it's success .. the actual founder's effort seems secondary .

- They give no reason for the 'surge' in applications , so there is an implied undercurrent in the article that many graduates of top schools are 'giving back' and acting altruistically. My take is that a number of them are probably trying to get their college debt reduced by working 2 years for the program. Also many may have found the job market less than attractive for their particular major. The reporter didn't ask one question about 'why the upsurge in interest' ? He simply implies that the answer is probably positive, whereas the real reason may be more mundane and pessimistic, i.e. Humanities and social science grads , from top schools no less , laden with heavy debt, are being forced to work in the most crime-ridden and impoverished schools in America in a stagnating economy.

It may not be as dismal a picture as I've painted here but these could be significant reasons for the 'popularity' of the program .

- They don't indicate how many people who are placed by the program wind up completing their 1st year . Or go on to try a 2nd year , or more . How many take up teaching as a career? Outside of this program the dropout rate for new teachers is phenomenally high in cities like NY, especially in the toughest schools.

- The surge may be explained more by the economy being not so good at the moment (depending on your major to some extent) than altruism. So some people are looking at teaching as a stable job with good benefits and lots of time off and they have few alternatives.

If some of this is true then the value of a college degree, even at the best colleges, may be less than advertised . This is not something that the colleges want known, as another round of college freshman line up to pay close to $50K/year for their sheepskin.



May 14, 2008
Teach for America Sees Surge in Popularity
By SAM DILLON
Teach for America, the program that recruits top college graduates to teach for two years in public schools that are difficult to staff, has experienced a year of prodigious growth and will place 3,700 new teachers this fall, up from 2,900 last year, a 28 percent increase.

That growth was outpaced, however, by a surge in applications from college seniors. About 24,700 applied this spring to be teachers, up from 18,000 last year, a 37 percent increase, according to figures released by the organization on Wednesday.

The nonprofit program sent its first 500 recruits into American public school classrooms in 1990. It has a large recruiting staff that visits campuses, contacting top prospects and recruiting aggressively. Founded by a Princeton graduate, it has always carefully sifted through applicants’ grade-point averages and other data in recruiting. But with the numbers of applicants increasing faster than the number of teachers placed, it was even more selective this year than before, the organization said.

About 11 percent of the graduating class at Yale applied, 10 percent at Georgetown and 9 percent at Harvard, said Amy Rabinowitz, a spokeswoman.
It was the No. 1 employer on many campuses, including at Duke, Emory, George Washington, Georgetown, New York University, and Spelman, Ms. Rabinowitz said. The campuses with the largest number of recruits, however, were large, prestigious public universities. About 90 recruits are from the University of Michigan, and about 60 from the University of Illinois, while Wisconsin, Berkeley and the University of Texas are each sending 50 recruits, Ms. Rabinowitz said.

The program will place teachers in 29 locations this fall. Those include many of the nation’s biggest cities and some largely rural states, like South Dakota, where about 50 recruits work on Indian reservations. About 1,000 recruits teach in New York City schools.
Teach for America’s budget is $110 million, up from $40 million in 2005.

Globalization and security 101

Globalization is a wonderful thing .

Let the countries that can most cheaply produce the product do it and just forego competition with them.

Let free markets reign.

So what's this guy's concern ? Get with the program buddy ! A former Clintonite no less.

“There are enormous vulnerabilities in our defense and national security infrastructure,” said Peter Levin, a former Clinton administration official who is chief executive of DAFCA, a Framingham, Mass., company that designs systems to prevent malicious tampering with computer chips. “We outsource the manufacturing of computer integrated circuits to places that can manufacture these devices cheaply.”

Loss of control? Just relax and let the market handle it.


May 9, 2008
F.B.I. Says the Military Had Bogus Computer Gear
By JOHN MARKOFF
SAN FRANCISCO — Counterfeit products are a routine threat for the electronics industry. However, the more sinister specter of an electronic Trojan horse, lurking in the circuitry of a computer or a network router and allowing attackers clandestine access or control, was raised again recently by the F.B.I. and the Pentagon.
The new law enforcement and national security concerns were prompted by Operation Cisco Raider, which has led to 15 criminal cases involving counterfeit products bought in part by military agencies, military contractors and electric power companies in the United States. Over the two-year operation, 36 search warrants have been executed, resulting in the discovery of 3,500 counterfeit Cisco network components with an estimated retail value of more than $3.5 million, the F.B.I. said in a statement.
The F.B.I. is still not certain whether the ring’s actions were for profit or part of a state-sponsored intelligence effort. The potential threat, according to the F.B.I. agents who gave a briefing at the Office of Management and Budget on Jan. 11, includes the remote jamming of supposedly secure computer networks and gaining access to supposedly highly secure systems. Contents of the briefing were contained in a PowerPoint presentation leaked to a Web site, Above Top Secret.
A Cisco spokesman said that the company had investigated the counterfeit gear seized by law enforcement agencies and had not found any secret back door.
“We did not find any evidence of re-engineering in the manner that was described in the F.B.I. presentation,” said John Noh, a Cisco spokesman. He added that the company believed the counterfeiters were interested in copying high volume products to make a quick profit. “We know what these counterfeiters are about.”
An F.B.I. spokeswoman, Catherine L. Milhoan, said the agency was not suggesting that the Chinese government was involved in the counterfeiting ring. “We worked very closely with the Chinese government,” she said. Arrests have been made in China as part of the investigation, she said. “The existence of this document shows that the cyber division of the F.B.I. has growing concerns about the production and distribution of counterfeit network hardware.”
Despite Cisco’s reassurance, a number of industry executives and technologists said that the threat of secretly added circuitry intended to subvert computer and network gear is real.
“There are enormous vulnerabilities in our defense and national security infrastructure,” said Peter Levin, a former Clinton administration official who is chief executive of DAFCA, a Framingham, Mass., company that designs systems to prevent malicious tampering with computer chips. “We outsource the manufacturing of computer integrated circuits to places that can manufacture these devices cheaply.”
Last month, the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency began distributing chips with hidden Trojan horse circuitry to military contractors who are participating in the agency’s Trusted Integrated Circuits program. The goal is to test forensic techniques for finding hidden electronic trap doors, which can be maddeningly elusive. The agency is not yet ready to announce the results of the test, according to Jan Walker, a spokeswoman for the agency.
The threat was demonstrated in April when a team of computer scientists from the University of Illinois presented a paper at a technical conference in San Francisco detailing how they had modified a Sun Microsystems SPARC microprocessor by altering the data file on a chip with nearly 1.8 million circuits used in automated manufacturing equipment.
The researchers were able to create a stealth system that would allow them to automatically log in to a computer and steal passwords. The danger of such hidden circuitry is that it could potentially undermine the strongest computer security protections by essentially giving an attacker a secret key to gain access to a network or a computer.
“It’s very difficult to detect and discover these issues,” said Ted Vucurevich, the chief technology officer of Cadence Design Systems, a company that provides design tools for chip makers. “That was one of the reasons” for the testing program.
Modern integrated circuits have billions of components, he said: “Adding a small number that do particular functions in particular cases is incredibly hard to detect.”
The potential threat of secret hardware-based backdoors or kill switches has been discussed for several decades. For example, the issue came up during the 1980s with a Swiss cryptography company, Crypto, which has been under suspicion of having installed back doors in its systems to give the National Security Agency access to encoded messages.
The issue was raised again during the first Iraq war and more recently in the Israeli bombing of a suspected Syrian nuclear plant. In both cases there has been speculation that booby-trapped antiaircraft equipment had been remotely turned off.

Female Hispanic engineers forced to work as cleaning ladies

This article has a curious quote in it, at the very end . Even more curious is why the reporter did not pursue this unusual and possibly major story:

Lisa Melendez, a community-college librarian from Long Island, said she attended the Union Square rally to advocate legalization for her students, many of whom are Mexican or Ecuadorean.

“For young women, it’s especially difficult, because you study so hard to get an engineering degree and then you end up having to baby sit or clean houses,” Ms. Melendez said as she stood by five students who had come with her.

So, illegal immigrant women are studying engineering ?

And when they get their degrees they still wind up cleaning homes ?

Many of the cleaning ladies we see everyday are engineers ?

Curious that many can barely speak english ... if they got their engineering degrees in the US it would be hard to do so without a good command of the English language, although perhaps the language of math and engineering is universal .

And if they got their engineering degrees back in their home countries and then decided to illegally immigrate here because of the lack of opportunities for engineers there and the lure of high-paying house-cleaning jobs here , then this is a major new phenomenon that has gone unreported .

OK economists ... what say you to this? That cleaning ladies in the US do better financially than engineers in Latin/South America?

Why should American students study math/science/engineering if cleaning services is the more lucrative field of work?



May 2, 2008
Crowds Are Smaller at Protests by Immigrants
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
LOS ANGELES — Thousands of immigrants and their supporters marched in several cities on Thursday to demand civil rights at a time when crackdowns against illegal immigrants are rising.
The May Day demonstrations were significantly smaller than in previous years, and gone were calls for a nationwide boycott of businesses and work, as protest leaders had urged last year. The Spanish-language D.J.’s who had heavily promoted previous marches stuck largely to their regular programming. And disagreements among advocates over the best approach to winning legal status for illegal immigrants had diminished organizing firepower, with many groups turning their attention to voter registration and citizenship drives.
In many cities, including New York, Chicago, Houston and Los Angeles, crowds were a small fraction of those in previous years, with few people outside protest areas even aware that marches were under way.
Some supporters said they had lost a rallying cry in the stalled effort in Congress to revamp immigration law. At the same time, with the government stepping up border and immigration enforcement, a cloud of fear has settled over immigrants who were worried that the rallies would lead to more sweeps.
Milwaukee had one of the more robust turnouts, with thousands of people gathering, as they did last year. Protesters called on the presidential candidates, each of whom has supported Congressional efforts to allow a way for certain illegal immigrants to gain legal status, to make immigration issues a priority.
“We want a commitment from the three presidential candidates to pass humane immigration reform in the first 100 days in office,” said Christine Neumann-Ortiz, director of Voces de la Frontera, the main organization behind the Milwaukee march.
In Los Angeles, where riot police officers beat and shoved demonstrators and journalists last year, some marchers were concerned about trouble, though across the nation the marches were largely peaceful.
“Today the police didn’t bring their batons,” Jorge Reyes called out in Spanish from a truck in downtown Los Angeles. “Today they came in peace to help us legalize the 12 million immigrants in this country.”
Messages on T-shirts and signs and protest leaders with bullhorns demanded an end to immigration raids that have led to an increasing number of deportations. The United States deported 280,000 people last year, a 44 percent increase over the previous year.
Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa of Los Angeles, who has called on the Department of Homeland Security to halt most workplace raids, joined business and labor leaders on Wednesday to announce the results of a study that found the raids harmful to the economy. The study said 50 percent or more of workers in some local industries were in the country illegally, and it projected great harm to the region if businesses closed or moved because of the immigration sweeps.
Supporters of tighter controls on immigration said the rallies had done little but energize their backers. Leaders of NumbersUSA, one of the larger groups advocating a clampdown on illegal immigration, urged its members to call members of Congress and use the rallies to help make their case.
“The marchers say suspend the rule of law and reward illegality,” said Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA, which says its membership has swelled to more than 600,000 from 112,000 three years ago.
“Our callers say what your constituents really want is enforcement,” Mr. Beck added. “We want to take away the jobs magnet and basically create an inhospitable environment for immigration law breakers so more and more will decide to go home or not come.”
Counterdemonstrators appeared at some rallies, including in Boston, where the police had to separate demonstrators who became embroiled in profanity-laced exchanges.
Though meager, the crowds were often festive and melded a variety of causes. A rally in Union Square Park in Manhattan drew several hundred people invoking socialism, police violence and Sept. 11 conspiracy theories, in addition to immigrant rights.
Lisa Melendez, a community-college librarian from Long Island, said she attended the Union Square rally to advocate legalization for her students, many of whom are Mexican or Ecuadorean.
“For young women, it’s especially difficult, because you study so hard to get an engineering degree and then you end up having to baby sit or clean houses,” Ms. Melendez said as she stood by five students who had come with her.

Immigrant labor is no threat to 'educated'

It's very unclear whether they include illegal immigration when they say:

Economists attribute the lower unemployment rate for immigrants to several factors.

Perhaps the biggest one: Immigrant workers are willing to work for lower wages in low-skill jobs.

Illegal immigrants will work for far less money than legal immigrants since they have no legal safeguards.

And how many legal immigrants are allowed into the US who are low-wage workers? Virtually none outside of special programs for seasonal and transient workers. So they are really using the term 'immigrant' to mean 'illegal immigrant' .

Brusca said the higher unemployment rate for college-educated immigrants may be due to their inability to get the work visa they need to get a job

work visa? they are already here via H1-b program. They cannot stay here if they are not working.

Immigrants and jobs: A closer look

Foreign-born unskilled workers are less likely to be out of work than their U.S.-born counterparts, but educated Americans have an edge on foreign-born.

By Chris Isidore, CNNMoney.com senior writer

Last Updated: May 1, 2008: 2:43 PM EDT

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- As the U.S. economy sheds jobs, concern is growing over competition between native-born and foreign-born workers.

That will come into clear focus this week. Thursday has been declared "Immigration Day" by groups seeking reforms of laws to allow a path for citizenship for many illegal immigrants. And on Friday the government is expected to announce more woes for the labor market.

Economists surveyed by Briefing.com forecast that the report will show employers shaved 75,000 jobs from U.S. payrolls in April. If they're right, it would be the fourth-straight monthly decline. The economy lost a total of 232,000 jobs in the first quarter.

The unemployment rate is also forecast to climb to 5.2% from 5.1%, which would mark a three-year high.

The Labor Department's monthly report does not distinguish between immigrant and native-born workers. But its latest annual reading on the issue shows that while the unemployment rate rose for foreign-born workers in 2007 - to 4.3% from 4.0% in 2006 - it was still lower than for native-born workers (4.7% in each year).

Low wages for lower-skill jobs

Economists attribute the lower unemployment rate for immigrants to several factors.

Perhaps the biggest one: Immigrant workers are willing to work for lower wages in low-skill jobs.

"It's pretty clear that low-skill [workers] are hurt by the availability of immigrant labor," said Daniel Hamermesh, an economics professor at the University of Texas.

On the other hand, Hamermesh said most educated Americans see limited competition for jobs from immigrants. "For most high-skill workers, there's little if any impact," he said.

For U.S.-born workers aged 25 and older with a high school degree or less, the unemployment rate was 5.2% last year, while the rate for foreign-born workers with the same characteristics is only 4.6%. Among educated workers, however, the unemployment pattern was reversed: 1.9% for the native born and 2.5% for immigrants.

Economist Robert Brusca of FAO Economics said it makes sense that immigrant workers are more willing to accept low wages associated with low-skill jobs.

"If you come from the country with a standard of living that's a lot lower, it looks like a great opportunity," said Brusca.

Brusca said the higher unemployment rate for college-educated immigrants may be due to their inability to get the work visa they need to get a job.

"Employers with unskilled positions may be willing to accept a made-up social security number or let someone work off the books," said Brusca. "The more you move up the food chain, the more likely you're going to be asked for a green card."

Staying on the job

Another reason the unemployment rate for unskilled immigrants is lower is because they may be more willing to move to find a job. And in just about any market, there is a greater availability of minimum wage jobs, said Brusca.

"If you're a minimum wage immigrant, you're going to find another job unless you've done something egregious to get fired," he said.

In addition, the lower unemployment rate for immigrants is driven by the fact that American workers can receive unemployment benefits and other government assistance when they lose their jobs. Illegal immigrants are not eligible for such help.

"The immigrants have no choice but to work," said Abraham Mosisa, an economist with the Bureau of Labor Statistics. "That's the big difference. If you are native born, you can get welfare, unemployment."