America Beaten in Brain Game

Prepare to be shocked: America was just skunked in a world computer-programming contest. This is worse news for a prosperous and powerful America than it may first appear.

In April, whiz kids from across the globe gathered at the Hilton Palacio del Rio in San Antonio, Tex., for the 2006 annual acm International Collegiate Programming contest, sponsored by ibm. According to the Baylor University website dedicated to the event, “The contest pits teams of three university students against eight or more complex, real-world problems, with a grueling five-hour deadline. Huddled around a single computer, competitors race against the clock in a battle of logic, strategy and mental endurance.

“Teammates collaborate to rank the difficulty of the problems, deduce the requirements, design test beds, and build software systems that solve the problems under the intense scrutiny of expert judges. For a well-versed computer science student, some of the problems require precision only. Others require a knowledge and understanding of advanced algorithms. Still others are simply too hard to solve—except, of course, for the world’s brightest problem-solvers” (ibid.).

The “world’s brightest problem-solvers” included university students from all around the world. In fact, 83 teams were selected from 5,606 teams representing 1,733 universities from 84 countries. Some prestigious American universities were among the 83, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (mit), Princeton, DePaul University, California Institute of Technology, and Duke University.

How did the American universities fair at this battle of the brainiest?

“We’re the worst of the best of the best,” answered Matt Edwards in response to Duke coach Owen Astrachan’s attempts to encourage the team after its dismal honorable-mention finish (Business Week,May 1).

Worst of the best of the best?

Edwards is right. Except for mit, ranking eighth place, only four other American teams made the top 50. The top-10 was dominated by teams from Russia, Eastern Europe and Asia. In fact, Russia had five top-place finishers.

“Until the late 1990s, U.S. teams dominated these contests,” wrote Business Week in its May 1 commentary about America’s poor showing at the contest. “But the tide has turned. Last year not one was in the top dozen” (emphasis ours throughout). The tide they are referring to is Eastern European and Asian schools dominating the global tech industry. “China and India, the new global tech powerhouses, are fueled by 900,000 engineering graduates of all types each year, more than triple the number of U.S. grads” (ibid.).

This, then, is the harbinger: “‘If our talent base weakens, our lead in technology, business, and economics will fade faster than any of us can imagine,’ warns Richard Florida, a professor at George Mason University and author of The Flight of the Creative Class” (ibid.).

As Business Week aptly points out, software programmers are the roots of a modern information-based economy. But to get those roots, you need to plant some seeds, and this is where America is falling well short. The Labor Department forecasts that “computer/math scientist” jobs will increase 40 percent, from 2.5 million in 2002 to 3.5 million in 2012, but universities are not keeping up with demand. According to Business Week, a 2005 survey of freshmen showed that just 1.1 percent planned to major in computer sciences, down from a paltry 3.7 percent in 2000.

This complacency has left America teetering on the precipice of becoming last-place finishers among the elite of the world. How did Matt Edwards put it? “The worst of the best of the best.”

Can America turn the tide of this complacency? Of course, the answer is yes. But the other question that must be asked is, will America turn the tide of this complacency? The answer to this question is much more unsettling.

While the U.S. export of information technology is still growing, the leadership position is gone—and it isn’t coming back. In accordance with biblical prophecy, the United States is losing its superpower status in one area after another, continually being overtaken by Russia, China and the European Union. The trouble is, America thinks being good is good enough. It’s not. Good is the enemy of great.

Russia’s Saratov State University won this year’s competition on the anniversary date of Yuri Gagarin’s historic 1961 voyage into space. It was this feat of science that Business Week suggests touched off America’s quest for scientific dominance, dominance it held for almost 50 years. “Gagarin’s rocket ride shocked Americans out of their postwar complacency, sparking a national quest for tech superiority that led to such breakthroughs as the moon landing and the microchip. A trouncing in a programming contest doesn’t inspire the same kind of response today. Truthfully, Americans just don‘t feel threatened enough to exert the effort” (ibid.).

It is clear that America’s technology leadership position is gone. And as Richard Florida stated, this an indication of the direction in which America’s economy and way of life is going. It is an issue, if not solved, that has the potential to touch all of our lives.