IP: The Digital Brain Drain -- So Many Computers, So Little Interest in Hard Science

[David Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

> From: "the terminal of Geoff Goodfellow" <geoff () iconia com>
> To: "Dave e-mail pamphleteer Farber" <farber () cis upenn edu>
> \
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/09/biztech/articles/02chem.html
>
> The Digital Brain Drain
> So Many Computers, So Little Interest in Hard Science
> By CLAUDIA H. DEUTSCH
> The New York Times
>
> Jim Ivy fears that his son Jonathan, a freshman business major at Pennsylvania
> State University, will graduate from college without ever having taken a
> chemistry course. Montville High School, the New Jersey school he 
> attended, did
> not require chemistry, and his adviser at Penn State says he can 
> skip it there,
> too -- provided that he signs on for more computer science courses.
>
> "Everyone says computer sciences are mandatory for him, but no one has ever
> recommended that he even look at chemistry," said Ivy, the chief executive of
> the Savin Corporation, a copier company in Stamford, Conn. "It's 
> truly sad that
> kids can graduate today without getting exposure to the fun of physical
> sciences."
>
> No one questions the need to emphasize computers in education these days. Nor
> do they deny the plethora of high-paying jobs that the computer world offers,
> from the mundane tasks of fixing computers to the mind-stretching ones of
> designing digital code. Few suggest that basic sciences are disappearing from
> the classroom.
>
> <snip>
>
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