India Has More Skills than the U.S.

The head of Wipro, the Indian firm specializing in taking outsourced jobs from the U.S. said that the U.S. faces more shortages of technology skills than does India.   Azim Premji said the problem was the U.S. educational system abetted by the strict immigration policies.  The Financial Times reported he said “Engineering is not growing talent and that is a cause for concern.”

The U.S. produces about 70,000 engineers a year, compared to 400,000 in India, the Financial Times reported.

Commenting on the report in the Times, the head of the International Center for Leadership in Education, said:  “The problem is not that our schools aren’t what they used to be; the problem is that our schools are what they used to be.”  Willard Daggett is the President of the ICLE.

Bill Gates of Microsoft fame has been warning about the “evaporation of interest in computer science” for two years.  The head of GE, Jeffrey Immelt said that the “U.S. is on its way to become the massage capital of the world” with more students graduating in sports sciences than in electrical engineering, reported the Financial Times.