As I shared last week in the first of this 2-part series, the real work for President Donald John Trump as the 45th president of the United States now begins. So far he has made some swift, bold and decisive staffing decisions that confirm he is a hiring executive who knows how to recruit the right talent (e.g. recently recruiting Sen. Jeff Sessions for the Attorney General and Rep Mike Pompeo for the director of the Central Intelligence Agency job vacancies). Now he needs to focus on technical development and jobs to make our country great again.
To that end, President Trump, I would like to share my expertise as an R&D (Research and Development), scientific, technical, engineering, IT (Information Technology) and manufacturing recruiter to augment your recruiting decisions and help our country significantly increase jobs and technology. During this final installment, I will focus on two steps that will help you accelerate U.S. technical innovation and jobs creation.
Technology Long The Live Blood Of Our Country
Our country has historically invested in major, basic research, technology projects. These have created many commercial triumphs and industries. For example, the Apollo moon project, launched by President Kennedy, led to the creation of the microchip or integrated circuit (IC). IC technology was needed for the information technology (IT) essential for the moon mission. None existed so necessity was the mother of invention.
Created from this microchip basic research was an entire IC industry. In the 1980’s this catapulted the U.S. to world prominence. Companies like Intel, Advanced Micro Devices and Texas Instruments grew exponentially, creating many jobs and recruiting countless workers including engineers, scientists and technology professionals to grow their companies.
Artificial Intelligence Is The New IC Revolution!
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the new technical frontier. Like microchips in the 1980’s it has the potential to catapult our country into world prominence again. As I shared in a recent TV interview, AI and related areas like robotics and IoT (Internet of Things) are already creating many new jobs and technology breakthroughs.
Unfortunately, we are already loosing the AI battle. Singapore, not the U.S., was the first to commercially launch a driverless car. Additionally, China is now considered the world’s leader in AI technology.
Two Things Needed For Technology Success
The past success of the microchip industry provides a historical blueprint on two important steps needed for technical triumph. Huge investments in both basic research and robust STEM education are a must for technology success.
Basic research projects like NASA’s Apollo are not profitable enough for private sector companies to undertake alone. Therefore, it is essential for government to get involved. Without the Apollo moon project, the microchip may not have been developed.
Second and equally important are strong STEM education programs. Guiding and cultivating young minds into becoming the engineering, scientific and technical talent of the future is also essential for technology success.
Unfortunately, Both Are In Need Of Overhaul!
Though the U.S. is still the world’s largest spender on research and development, others are catching up fast. For example, China has now become the 2nd largest worldwide spender on R&D. This will add to their already formable manufacturing strength.
Additionally, America’s schools are doing very poorly. For example, a recent study in Illinois showed that 23.5% of teachers have been absent more than 10 days during the school year. If teachers are not in school, they cannot educate our future engineers, scientists and technology professionals.
Furthermore, current U.S. STEM programs are woefully lacking. This leads to substandard scores for science, technology, engineering and math. Better teachers need to be recruited and stronger STEM training programs need to be created.
In Summary: Technical Breakthroughs Are The Key!
President Trump you need to focus on technology to make our country a leader again. This will create countless jobs and the innovation to catapult us to greatness again. Along those lines, you need to launch at least one major, basic research project like the Apollo moon program to focus U.S. technology efforts. Additionally, you need to vastly improve our school systems especially the STEM education programs in order to fuel technology efforts with more scientists, engineers and technical talent.
5 Responses
I agree that the US has led the way in technology; and obviously, the space project is a prime example. I keep hearing politicians talk about the green economy as the next frontier, but there seems to be a disconnect between inventors and the pot of gold that awaits them. I’m a Web guy; and I keep scanning the digital horizon for signs of hope. Technology, applied to Valuing Mother Earth seems like a great combination to me. Let’s go people. 🙂
I think the crisis is the poor job our schools are doing to prepare Americans for the jobs…not of tomorrow…but of today. American companies are gobbling up the limited number of skilled foreign workers (limited by an annual cap on visas) for jobs that are going begging…yet we have a still too-high unemployment rate. The problem is compounded by our culture that doesn’t value education as Asian countries to (China and India mostly) and no matter how good the schools might be, if the society and families don’t encourage kids to strive, we’re going to remain behind.
I think the crisis is the poor job our schools are doing to prepare Americans for the jobs…not of tomorrow…but of today. American companies are gobbling up the limited number of skilled foreign workers (limited by an annual cap on visas) for jobs that are going begging…yet we have a still too-high unemployment rate. The problem is compounded by our culture that doesn’t value education as Asian countries to (China and India mostly) and no matter how good the schools might be, if the society and families don’t encourage kids to strive, we’re going to remain behind.
Thanks for sharing this, Scott. STEM education — yes, both challenging and important. As I see it, the challenge is two-fold. First, students need to be captivated by STEM fields early and, second, college-level STEM education needs to be strong and robust here.
Regarding the latter, there’s a lack of real engineering education in the US. Many engineering graduates don’t learn the craft of engineering required to practice real engineering. And that’s because many of the faculty (especially those in large research universities) aren’t real engineers themselves.
Investment in K-12 STEM and reform of college-level STEM are both required to turn things around.
As important as STEM is, I believe that technician-level training is equally important to support the actual construction of new products that come from STEM. Students need more than the theory that they can learn in classrooms. They also need hands-on building and operating experience to create the physical structures that flow from STEM training. Whether that happens at a university level or through community colleges remains to be seen. I would like to see more partnerships between industry and educational institutions to facilitate this training.
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