Discussion on:

Science scholarships help Hispanic students overcome barriers

Do it! I've visited high school campuses near where I work encouraging science minded students. Many of them are from minority groups. The desire is there. But the opportunities are few.

No nation ever led itself to prosperity by limiting the opportunities of its citizens. Only by encouraging everyone to be the best they can be does a nation prosper. Lets unleash the potential of all of the next generation and let them provide the stable and prosperous society they need to grow, and we need to retire.

Don't waste money pursuing a science degree. Congress is undermining your efforts with the H1-B and student visa programs. You won't get a job because Congress is importing 75,000 people per MONTH. They are importing people from India who get their bachelors degree at public expense. That means that while you will have loans to repay, you'll be competing with people who don't. But you won't have to compete for long. Because they'll get grants and loans to pursue Masters and PhDs. Then they'll be your boss, sucker.

You're not likely to become a millionaire as a scientist.

Follow Lil Wayne and Snoop Dog. Become a thug. Commit your crimes before you're 18. You'll have street cred. The liberal media will glorify you and help you get rich.

You'll expend tremendous effort and money pursuing an education and yu won't be rewarded anywhere nearly as well as Lil Wayne.

Crime DOES pay, if you're smart as Lil Wayne or Snoop Dog.

Don't be a chump.

Why does it have to be about minorities, hispanic or african/american?? We need our business/govt agencies to support higher education and disadvantaged persons. It use to be the norm for business' to grant student internships, you do not hear about that any more. WHY??

if mexican students want role models, there are a few. first dr. molina, winner of the nobel prize. secondly, though the students in the u.s. cannot see them, all the very good scientists working in mexico doing important and good work. the country is loaded with them. mexican students in the u.s. might consider coming back to mexico and attending college there where it is far cheaper. grad school is available and most of that will be paid for by scholarship or fellowship. there are many first class universities and med schools and a number of great grad schools. best of all, if the students remember any of their , or their parents' language, they will have an advantage for as they go on to do research they have to write their publishable papers in English.

and where did the earlier poster get the number of foreign scientists coming to the u.s. to work; 75000/month. he must have had a bad dream to make up the number.

Get special and favorable treatment at everyone else's expense!

You too can be the Victim of Choice by highlighting how much more unfair life is to you because of who you are than it is for the rest of us.

Yeah, right - with companies cutting R and D at an increasing rate, or off-shoring, soon scientists in the US will be making the same wage with 6 - 8 of college as someone who works at a fast food joint (don't laugh - my kid, with a two year degree, actually makes more in bonuses, real and percentage wise, than I'll ever see with a doctorate).

The US had a great run, but it's over now folks - deal with it.

Why just minorities? We should encourage and assist all science oriented students.

And this is not an anti-minority bias, I'm mostly of northern European decent, my son-in-law is hispanic, and no, he isn't playing white for his in-laws. He would agree fully with my thoughts.

He does happen to be nearing his doctorate in physical chemistry - and if you talk math & science he could care less what your skin color or cultural background might be. And that seems to be true of ALL hard science types.

Thats nice and all but the jobs are going to India. Will they be
willing to relocate to a global cesspit to make 40 cents an hour doing
PhD level work

The majority of repliers are right. Natural sciences are absolutely disadvantageous group to professionalize into if you live in the USA. USA has been social sciences county since early 1980's. Marketing, psychology and languages will bring you much further. Services are continuously growing as percentage of GDP (now over 70%). And the largest part of service is product delivery (i.e. marketing, purchase, negotiations) Natural science is on the product creation side. It is continuously in decline (from 50% in 1979 to lower than 30% today) in terms of GDP. The work force market pressure increases there; funding contracts, i.e. bosses are looking whom to fire while everybody is happy with pay check shrinking.

Helping minorities to get natural science education is actually a move legitimizing and hammering in stone the fact that minorities are and will be a disadvantageous group.

One other thing - do you remeber the AIG vice preseident who publicly resigned because of the bonus issue - Jake Desantis? Well, his degree was from MIT - in Materials Science. His Linked in profile is here

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/jake-desantis/a/401/b8b

It's him alright - the employment history matches correctly. So this is what he did with his Physical Scince degree - banking. That says it all.

There were several comments about why choose just minorities. This is a good point in that we should be working to move away from using minority status for special programs.

It is not just the Hispanics who have large numbers of low income; this covers many minorities as well. The goal should be to encourage those who are both interested and have the aptitude to study science who have insufficient funding to afford this education.

In reference to the comments about offshoring and importing educated people; this will change when the costs of offshoring and importing knowledge becomes greater than the cost of local resources. The costs are more than the money spent, it is also related to quality. The US used to be known for "Yankee ingenuity"; solving problems that other countries could not solve (like the Panama Canal). Talent is still here in the US if it is encouraged.