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US Can’t Lose Its Tech Edge

Everyone knows how to get a TiVo programmed. Just look for an eight-year-old.

The popular assumption is that tech know-how decreases with age. The younger you are, the more you inherently know in that realm.

It’s true that teens easily incorporate digital gadgets into nearly every aspect of their lives. They communicate by cellphone, download music via computers, entertain themselves with video games, and express their feelings in personal online blogs.

The skills needed to use technology aren’t as challenging as those needed to create it. Not everyone who drives a car knows how to design one.

Apparently young Americans want to be users, but not makers, of technology. The number of incoming college freshmen who chose computer science as a major fell more than 60 percent between 2000 and 2004, says a report from the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA earlier this year. In addition, fewer high schoolers are bothering to take the Advanced Placement computer science test for college. Especially alarming is the sharp drop in the number of women entering the field. First-year women interested in studying computer science fell 80 percent between 1998 and 2004, the report says, returning to levels not seen since the 1970s.

Yet computer-software engineers will be among the jobs most in demand through 2012, say estimates from the US Department of Labor.

What gives?

The Monitor’s View

Full Opinion: http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0815/p08s01-comv.html?s=hns

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