Sure, we’re all plugged in and online 24/7. But fewer American kids are growing up to be bona fide computer geeks. And that poses a serious security risk for the country, according to the Defense Department.

The Pentagon’s far-out research arm Darpa is soliciting proposals for initiatives that would attract teens to careers in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), with an emphasis on computing. According to the Computer Research Association, computer science enrollment dropped 43 percent between 2003 and 2006.

Darpa’s worried that America’s “ability to compete in the increasingly internationalized stage will be hindered without college graduates with the ability to understand and innovate cutting edge technologies in the decades to come…. Finding the right people with increasingly specialized talent is becoming more difficult and will continue to add risk to a wide range of DoD [Department of Defense] systems that include software development.”




  1. Bill says:

    NO JOBS NO JOBS NO JOBS NO JOBS NO JOBS NO JOBS NO JOBS NO JOBS NO JOBS NO JOBS NO JOBS NO JOBS NO JOBS NO JOBS NO JOBS NO JOBS!

    Get it?

    #6 has it right.

  2. Angel H. Wong says:

    They can always import nerds from India.

  3. qb says:

    I work in custom software development and our US office just had it’s best year ever. It’s $150 billion/year market in the US and lots of companies are making money. Trying to compete on pure cost is stupid, and you really don’t want that work anyways. Competing on quality, talent, and results still wins.

    If you’re not making money in IT, you only have yourself to blame.

  4. JimD says:

    The M$ Monopoly on PC Software keeps Venture (Vulture) Capital out of the Software Industry !!! No one will bet against M$, and the Industry suffers !!! Open Source is the Revenge of the Nerds, but makes only small advances against the EVIL EMPIRE !!! Too bad Bush and the Repukes killed the M$ anti-trust action !!!
    We reap as we sow !!!

  5. Uncle Patso says:

    # 23 OvenMaster:
    “The only way to stop the outsourcing is to compete with China, India, etc. But that won’t happen as long as there are so many health, environmental, insurance, safety, workplace, wage, and possibly health mandates being handed down from every level of government.”

    Aha! So that’s the culprit? Health, environment, insurance, workplace safety and wages? Well, then, all we have to do is get rid of all of those and America will be strong again!!! (If you count millions of sick, cancerous, injured workers who can’t afford to buy medicine, see a doctor or nurse, or to buy food or pay rent strong. Then _we_ might as well all move to China or India; after all, it’s where our jobs went…

    – – – – –

    # 11 AreYouKidding?:
    “… Make the pay and job security in engineering like it is for Wall Street bankers and notice how the trends change! …”

    Wait until the banking and finance jobs start getting outsourced to India — can’t be long now…


0

Bad Behavior has blocked 9391 access attempts in the last 7 days.