THE REAL SCIENCE GAP: “It’s not insufficient schooling or a shortage of scientists. It’s a lack of job opportunities. Americans need the reasonable hope that spending their youth preparing to do science will provide a satisfactory career.”

UPDATE: A reader emails:

I work for a very large high tech company. I presently manage a research team in the corporate lab. The problem is that there is no encouragement for American non-minority males to go into science and engineering because we will almost never hire them. Instead we are being forced to look for technical females and under-represented minorities. Since very few American females choose engineering, we end up hiring Chinese and Indian women. The universities that I work with tell me that they find it almost impossible to recruit American males to PhD programs. I believe within less than a generation we will be in deep trouble, technically, in this country, and we’ll be without the means and capability to maintain the highly sophisticated civilization that we’ve constructed.

Ouch.

MORE: Another reader emails:

Name MUST be withheld.

This diversity stuff has become a religion even more than climate change. I also work for a high tech company. We are being required by our HR professionals/social engineers, which I am one now in organization but not beliefs. I have a BS physical sciences, MS engineering degree; but recently moved into HR. One of our Senior VP’s recently told a Sr. Manager that we have too many Asians. We focus on goals for hiring “under represented minorities” with minimal qualifications vs. hiring the best. We are killing our future.

It’s a sad truth.

Sad, indeed.