Universities must address priorities

Motorola's announcement of the opening of its new Beijing R&D complex housing 3,000 employees including 2,000 engineers is not only instructive, but also representative of what U.S. companies must do to survive.

Also, for many years an increasing number of America's front-line colleges and universities have been working to enhance far and middle eastern higher education. Engineering education is no exception. It is difficult to see how, in the long run, America's own schools can provide a proportional advantage to its engineering graduates that offset substantial wage differentials and so arrest offshoring of engineering functions.

In the face of rapid globalization, efforts to focus America's engineering schools on innovation and entrepreneurship, though a worthwhile goal, will likely provide a short-term fix at best. Information technology has already changed the way business is done worldwide and will keep on changing it -- smoothing out differentials along the way.

In the meantime, it seems that the American public is quite content with not really knowing what's going on so long as it is being entertained. Apparently the public does not care that the most important products from its big-time colleges and universities are professional football and men's basketball players -- representing the output of alternative educational systems engineered at Academic Support (Eligibility) Centers that are absolute marvels of ingenuity, innovation, deceit, and deception.

We need to get priorities right at our nation's universities. Members of top-ranked BCS football teams and the NCAA's Final-Four basketball teams will not likely be eligible to play in this global game.

Frank G. Splitt

Mount Prospect