states, nowhere near large enough to challenge the major North American, European and Australasian countries in a serious way. But then came the rise of China as a world center of manufacturing and of India as a leading software services supplier and operator of call centers. Suddenly, we were told that China was producing 600,000 engineers a year and India was producing 400,000 more, a total of one million engineers a year to our 60,000. Both countries had mastered nuclear technology and other advanced technologies and both were sending school children to the United States who were testing at two or three years ahead of their middle school and high school peers in some of America’s leading school systems. To everyone’s surprise, and seemingly overnight, these countries had succeeded in producing large numbers of workers who could claim to be among the best educated in the world. As if we needed proof, some of our leading multinationals began to locate advanced research laboratories in those countries. Not only were these countries developing large numbers of young people with world class skills and knowledge, but these young people were entering their economy willing to work for a small fraction of the wages commanded by similarly educated Americans. The analysis made only 16 years ago by our Commission was no longer valid. It was still true that those who left our high schools with low skills could confidently look forward to ever lower wages. But now it was also true that those who left with high skills could not be confident that they would be earning high wages. Could it be true that we are all looking forward to a low-wage future, no matter what we do? So the National Center on Education and the Economy decided to create another commission, to revisit the issues addressed by the first one in the light of what had happened in the intervening period and report to the American people. Our first task was to try to assess the character and extent of the competitive challenge from Asia, especially China and India, and to analyze the implications for American policies and practices in education and training. This paper is a preliminary report on that research. National Center on Education and the Economy, 2006
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