U.S. is losing education race with China

As the Olympics open on Friday, Americans will turn our gaze to China and gear up for some competition. But even if the American team brings home more gold medals, when it comes to our Asian economic rival, we may have already lost.

This loss is not taking place on any athletic field. It's happening in our colleges and universities and in our ability to produce skilled workers.

Three decades ago, 30 percent of the world's college students were from the United States. Today, that figure is just 14 percent. We produce 70,000 engineers a year. Official records say that China produces 650,000. American experts don't necessarily believe that, but even their revised figure, 350,000, shows a huge difference.

The Centre for International Governance Innovation, a global think tank based in Canada, says that China will have more engineers and scientists with doctorates than the United States by 2010. They also estimate that within four years, 90 percent of all scientists and engineers with doctorates in the world will be Asians living in Asia.

When it comes to cultivating technological talent, the United States is losing ground that we may not be able to make up, and as a result, we're falling behind on the inventiveness necessary to be successful in a hyper-charged 21st-century economy. Measured by the number of new patents awarded, the percentage of the population working in idea-generating occupations, and the ability to adapt to changing conditions, today's American workers are less successful than past generations.

So how do we change course?

The answer involves tapping into underutilized potential. In recent years, China has revamped its higher education strategy to focus on getting more people from poor families into college and graduate school.

The Chinese government has prioritized keeping university fees and housing costs low. It also encourages master's and doctorate programs to drop the fees associated with postgraduate study.

In concentrating on cutting college costs, Chinese authorities recognize that low-income and working-class communities are the source of the nation's future human capital. Making college more affordable means accessing untapped potential. The Chinese get it. We don't.

More Americans are going to college than ever before, but there are still worrying differences between who participates in higher education and what they do there. These differences fall along income lines.

The richer your parents are, the more likely it is you will go to college, the better school you'll attend, and the more likely you are to complete your degree and perhaps go on to even more advanced education.

Each year about 400,000 college-qualified high school graduates from lower-income families (those earning less than $50,000 a year) do not enroll in a four-year college. More than 150,000 don't enroll in any college at all.

Imagine the possibilities if we could use a combination of private scholarships and federal funds to steer some of these 550,000 students into studying science or gaining other skills that will augment America's technical prowess. We'd be well on our way to catching up to China's engineering, science and doctorate production.

While the United States has made gains recently in increasing the federal financial aid available to many of these students, we still have a long way to go.

Last week Congress moved to reauthorize the Higher Education Act. Critics and pundits say that the new bill takes small to midsize steps to control college costs and direct more aid to students at the lower end of the income spectrum. While these intentions are an encouraging sign, fiscal conservatives are balking at the additional cost.

Only time will tell if more money makes it into the right hands in a way that actually constitutes a solid investment in the nation's human capital and ability to develop scientific talent.

But it would be unwise to put all of the eggs for enhancing educational attainment and the acquisition of technical skills among lower-income students into the federal basket. The private sector can and must play a role. A report released last week by the Institute for Higher Education Policy says that corporate interest in philanthropy related to higher education is incredibly strong. According to the report, nine out of 10 Fortune 100 companies have set education as a high priority for their philanthropic efforts. If some of these efforts were coordinated around the shared goal of targeting lower-income students to increase our scientific talent, the long-term results would be worth far more than the initial investment.

We have good opportunities on the table for increasing our ability to compete with China. The question is how well we can coordinate public and private efforts to rally around the cause of moving untapped potential where it is needed most.