Study: U.S.-Asian Engineering Gap Overstated

Business leaders and politicians in the United States could be scaring away high school students from pursuing math- and science-related careers by focusing on the large numbers of engineers produced by China and India and the loss of such U.S. jobs to outsourcing, a report says.

The report, released last month by Duke University, points to widely cited figures showing that in 2004 the United States produced 70,000 engineers, compared with 600,000 for China and 350,000 for India. But those comparisons are inappropriate, the authors argue, because the U.S. engineering graduates have completed four-year degrees from accredited institutions, while the numbers from China and India include engineers who have completed three-year programs or diplomas.

Moreover, China and India include computer science and information technology graduates in their counts—something the United...