[tlug] OT: interesting NY times article:High-Tech Japanese, Running Out of Engineers

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

steven smith writes:

 > I thought you guys might be interested in this.  It's an NY
 > Times article about problems with the Japanese recruiting
 > and training engineers from within Japan.
 > http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/17/business/worldbusiness/17engineers.html?ref=business

*chortle* I read that article in about 1978, I guess they just dusted
it off and did s/US/Japan/.

One thing they missed is Monkey-Show's current pet brain fart:
one-year PhDs.  They've paid my department at least 5000-man-en
(probably twice that since they renewed the contract while I've been
away) to do three things:

(1) tell them the obvious: nobody else in the world does anything like
    this (the closest in the U.S. are "fast-track education
    management" PhDs that require only one year in residence (but are
    expected to take 6 years calendar time because classes and
    seminars are taken concurrent with full-time work---"life
    experience" does not count)

(2) tell them that it is OK to do it (retired senior engineers from
    Toyota and Hitachi were asked "and how do you plan to deal with
    the reputation hit you'll take when foreigners find out about
    these degrees?" replied "rikai shinakereba naranai" and "wakatte
    morawanai to ikenai" = "they'll have to understand (our special
    situation)" and "we'll have to make them understand" (our special
    situation)") and

(3) to help coordinate introduction of these "life experience" PhDs
    for mid-career engineers in first rank Japanese universities.

Needless to say non-Japanese researchers here at Stanford are amused
by the prospect, but the Japanese who have kicked ass to achieve a
foreign sabbatical are aghast at the idea.  They understand very well
what this is going to do to their personal status, as well as the
overseas reputation of Japanese science and engineering.

Very sad.