http://news.thomasnet.com/IMT/archiv...ina_india.html

Originally heard this on NPR this morning. This link provides a link to the actual study if you feel like boring yourself to death.
Essentially, the US is not at this point as behind in engineer-graduation as we are accustomed to hearing. India is so confused by its rapid growth that it can't figure out numbers and estimates high. China just pretty much manipulates data to match its own expectations (what a shock!).
Truth is US graduates as many engineers as India and about half as many as China (which has 4 times the population) and our average engineers are better educated.
The problem is that the reporting we always hear may lead fewer students to pursue engineering in the future due to expectations of outsourcing.
And I must call attention to the high proportion of engineers graduating here who are immigrants or children of immigrants. It's positive that most of them will stay in the country rather than going back to China and India. These people are very helpful to our country's stability.
The problem that this indicates to me for down the road is that most of our homegrowns are not pursuing engineering degrees and we are dependent on immigrants to keep the numbers up. That means that if at any time other countries do begin to offer opportunities to immigrating engineers that match ours, we may see our engineering workforce shrink.
Thankfully we do have programs aimed at trying to encourage engineering, including a big one to get women into engineering.

Looks like everything's going to be alright for us. Now we can quit worrying that our economy is going to die at the hand of Asian giants and think more about what our real place is in the global economy.

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"Man lives in the sunlit world of that which he believes to be reality. But unseen by most is an underworld, a place that is just as real... but not as brightly lit... A DARK SIDE!"
-opening from Tales From the Darkside