One of the underlying themes of anything Gov. Jim Hunt does, and
this week’s Emerging Issues Forum was no exception, is keeping North
Carolina competitive. He often mentioned the need to spend more on
education so “we can go toe-to-toe” with Singapore, China, and India as
well as Virginia and New Mexico. A venture capitalist even spoke about
the need to get more seed money into university-based ventures.
Sebastian Mallaby on Monday wrote in the Washington Post that the
concern over our lack of engineers and scientists is misplaced.
Harvard’s Richard Freeman, an economist who has studied the market for
scientific talent, recounts a conversation with a physicist who’d
collaborated with foreigners. “Ah, so you are helping them to catch up
with us,” Freeman commented. “No, they are helping us keep ahead of
them,” came back the answer: Because of the superior U.S. business
environment, the research was being turned into a company in the United
States.
