Sunday Opinion article in the Oregonian "Higher ed's tsunami: Oregon's a backwater as a huge wave of investment sweeps Pacific Rim colleges to ensure they withstand the forces reshaping competition and opportunities" by David Sarasohn:
In various bowels of the state Capitol last week, the Oregon Legislature began to focus on the higher education budget.
The Legislature being what it is, it was not only looking at the wrong budget, it was in the wrong place.
It should have been in Hangzhou, China, where the Association of Pacific Rim Universities met last week. Not only would the garden spot of China have been a more pleasant place than the Ways and Means Committee room, but legislators would have heard some interesting things.
They'd have heard Paul Chu, president of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, talk about a 25 percent to 30 percent budget increase and plans to become a global leader in technology and strategic planning.
The president of National Taiwan University explained that universities in his country were working with higher education budget increases of $1.5 billion a year over the next five years.
They could have heard presidents of the National University of Singapore and Seoul National University -- located in what's already the most wired country in the world -- explain their plans to become the international leaders in computer technology and stem cell research.
The president of Zhejiang University, one of China's foremost, outlined his university's plans for a massive increase in capacity. It's part of a national expansion that within a decade could mean a higher proportion of college-educated young people in China than in Oregon (where the percentage has been dropping).
Seeking some reassurance in English, legislators could have heard Mark Emmert, president of the University of Washington, express optimism about his university's best budget in decades.
In other words, Oregon legislators might have learned that there is a world outside the Capitol's Democratic and Republican caucus rooms. At Hangzhou, University of Oregon President Dave Frohnmayer saw a world where "the pace of new building for higher education is just astonishing. The rapidity of change is breathtaking."
Something nobody has ever said about Salem.
Of course, without ever leaving the borders of this state, people have been trying to explain this to Oregonians for a while.
"We've been beating this drum for a long time," says Jim Craven, public and legislative affairs director for the Oregon branch of the American Electronics Association. "The message is, you've got to get serious. There are no laurels left to rest on. The United States needs to get serious about global competition.
"Ten years ago, people said (about foreign high tech), 'Well, maybe they can produce chips, but they can't write code.' Nobody says that any more. A lot of people are bulking up all around the world."
Earlier this year, the national AEA published a report, "We Are Still Losing the Competive Advantage," finding that South Korea now graduates more engineers every year than the United States and that the European Union graduates three times as many we do.
China produces six times as many, and since 1998, its state financing of higher education has doubled and is still rising. Last year, China announced a 15-year plan to boost its technological capacity.
Long-term thinking is vital to build a higher education system, especially when it's in a long-term hole. Gov. Ted Kulongoski sent the Legislature a proposal to begin a 10-year plan to rebuild the Oregon system, but the legislators are tripping over the first step.
Over the past decade, the state's high-tech capacity has made some progress, notably with the Engineering and Technology Industry Council, a joint university-private effort that brings in almost twice as many private dollars as public ones. The $34 million requested for ETIC by the Oregon State Board of Higher Education was projected to bring in $60 million in private support. So far, the governor and Legislature have pared that $34 million down to $7 million -- and Craven thinks technology is actually doing better than the rest of the university system.
"You can't just build engineering and let the entire infrastructure erode around you," says the American Engineering Association executive. "The trend lines don't look good. At the macro level, we're not stepping up."
Oregon's only Fortune 500 company, Nike, runs a long course through the global market. Don Blair, chief financial officer of Nike, is on the state's board of higher education and tries to connect what he sees in the two places.
"Not only have many manufacturing jobs already left, but we're losing service jobs," Blair says. "Companies are looking for engineering in Eastern Europe. There's an educated labor pool in a lot of places."
To Blair, the issue isn't just a matter of fueling Oregon businesses. There's a saying at Nike, he says: "You can import Ph.D.s, M.B.A.s, anything else you need from other countries or states.
"What we want is the opportunity for our own children to be in that group."
Craven agrees, partly.
"The Intels and Nikes will spend whatever they need to bring in whatever they need. For smaller companies, the local resource is important."
Smaller companies, of course, are where job growth comes from.
"I think the key," says Craven, "is what kind of opportunities we want to give our Oregon kids."
And whether that consists mostly of handling errands for the graduates of Berkeley and Beijing, Seattle and Seoul.
The news of the kind of world we now live in has spread all around the Pacific, to the universities of Chile, Sydney and Tokyo. For almost two years, it's spread to the millions of readers of Thomas L. Friedman's best-seller "The World Is Flat." It's seeped into Washington, where Congress looks for ways to restimulate American innovation and basic research, and Wall Street, where investment capital swiftly follows jobs offshore.
Any session now, the news might reach Salem.
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