Rising Sun: A Novel by Michael Crichton

Author:Michael Crichton [Crichton, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Tags: Fiction, General, Mystery & Detective, Thrillers, Psychological
ISBN: 9780307763068
Google: QwJJghkMkmUC
Amazon: B007UH4D86
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Published: 2012-05-14T05:00:00+00:00

I waited at the top of the lecture hall while Phillip Sanders finished his lecture. He stood in front of a blackboard covered with complex formulas. There were about thirty students in the room, most of them seated down near the front. I could see the backs of their heads.

Dr. Sanders was about forty years old, one of those energetic types, in constant motion, pacing back and forth, tapping the equations on the blackboard in short emphatic jabs with his chalk as he pointed to the “signal covariant ratio determination” and the “factorial delta bandwidth noise.” I couldn’t even guess what subject he was teaching. Finally I concluded it must be electrical engineering.

When the bell rang on the hour, the class stood and packed up their bags. I was startled: nearly everyone in the class was Asian, both men and women. Those that weren’t Asian were Indian or Pakistani. Out of thirty students only three were white.

“That’s right,” Sanders said to me later, as we walked down the hallway toward his laboratory. “A class like Physics 101 doesn’t attract Americans. It’s been that way for years. Industry can’t find them, either. We would be up shit creek if we didn’t have the Asians and Indians who come here to get doctorates in math and engineering, and then work for American companies.”

We continued down some stairs, and turned left. We were in a basement passageway. Sanders walked quickly.

“But the trouble is, it’s changing,” he continued. “My Asian students are starting to go home. Koreans are going back to Korea. Taiwanese the same. Even Indians are returning home. The standard of living is going up in their countries, and there’s more opportunity back home now. Some of these foreign countries have large numbers of well-trained people.” He led me briskly down a flight of stairs. “Do you know what city has the highest number of Ph.D.’s per capita in the world?”

“Boston?”

“Seoul, Korea. Think about that as we rocket into the twenty-first centuty.”

Now we were going down another corridor. Then briefly outside, into sunlight, down a covered walkway, and back into another building. Sanders kept glancing back over his shoulder, as if he was afraid of losing me. But he never stopped talking.

“And with foreign students going home, we don’t have enough engineers to do American research. To create new American technology. It’s a simple balance sheet. Not enough trained people. Even big companies like IBM are starting to have trouble. Trained people simply don’t exist. Watch the door.”

The door swung back toward me. I went through. I said, “But if there are all these high-tech job opportunities, won’t they begin to attract students?”

“Not like investment banking. Or law.” Sanders laughed. “America may lack engineers and scientists, but we lead the world in the production of lawyers. America has half the lawyers in the entire world. Think of that.” He shook his head.

“We have four percent of the world population. We have eighteen percent of the world economy. But we have fifty percent of the lawyers.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.