Immigrants and the spirit of entrepreneurship
Immigrants tend to be self-starters and risk-takers—it takes guts and initiative to pick up and move to another country to pursue opportunities.
So here is an anecdote: I taught my Logic course last time to sixteen students. Of the sixteen, ten were American born-and-raised kids and six were from a variety of foreign countries: South Korea, Bulgaria, Serbia, Pakistan, Italy, and France.
Partway through the semester I offered an extra, optional test on syllogisms. Six students chose to take the test. All of them were foreign students. Not one of the Americans took me up on the offer.
That is only an anecdotal piece of evidence. But it is striking, and it fits with this point from The Economist (October 11, 2006):
“[H]alf the Americans who won Nobel prizes in physics in the past seven years were born abroad. More than half the people with Ph.D.s working in America are immigrants. A quarter of Silicon Valley companies were started by Indians and Chinese. Intel, Sun Microsystems and Google were all founded or co-founded by immigrants.”
American business success depends on individuals who are self-starting go-getters, who enjoy going the extra mile, those committed to achievement and excellence.
In the next generation, where are those individuals going to come from?
I too am an immigrant (from the True North Strong and Free), and I am an educator, so I get excited by questions like the following:
1. Does American culture generally encourage young people to seek success in business (and life more broadly)?
2. Does the average American family structure develop the habits and outlooks necessary?
3. Does American formal education produce young adults with the right mix of talents and traits?
4. How attractive is America generally to go-getting people in other countries?
5. How attractive are American colleges to smart young people in foreign countries?
6. What percentage of foreign students in American colleges decide to stay in the United States once they have graduated?
7. What percentage of new businesses are started by immigrants?
8. What percentage of new millionaires each year are immigrants?
9. How would an effective immigration policy sort good from bad immigrants?
Please feel welcome to comment (link to the right) and especially to point me to data that are relevant to answering the questions.
Tags: Immigration
If you want some insights into what has gone wrong with US education since WW2 check out Jacques Barzun’s books on education - Teacher in America (1946, 1983), The House of Intellect (1959), Science: The Glorious Entertainment (1963) and The American University (1968).
This is the 1983 Preface to Teacher in America. http://www.the-rathouse.com/JacquesBarzunPreface.html
It starts:
“To those who follow the news about education, the present state of American schools and colleges must seem vastly different from that described in this book. Thirty-five years have passed, true; but the normal drift of things will not account for the great chasm. The once proud and efficient public-school system of the United States, especially its unique free high school for all—has turned into a wasteland where violence and vice share the time with ignorance and idleness, besides serving as battleground for vested interests, social, political, and economic. The new product of that debased system, the functional illiterate, is numbered in millions, while various forms of deceit have become accented as inevitable—”social promotion” or for those who fail the “minimum competency” test; and most lately, “bilingual education,” by which the rudiments are supposedly taught in over ninety languages other than English. The old plan and purpose of teaching the young what they truly need to know survives only in the private sector, itself hard-pressed and shrinking in size.”
“Meantime, colleges and universities have undergone a comparable devastation…”
For more on Barzun’s career. http://www.the-rathouse.com/JBarzun_essRC.html
Incidentally, he turned 101 last November!
So you are from Canada Stephen! Congratulations.
Did you know that the first international cricket matches were played between Canada and the US?
If you are looking at the circumstances that encourage scholarship, it was interesting when a group of Rhodes Scholars were talking in Oxford and they realised that they were all the sons of clergymen. That was a long time ago, maybe in the 1930s or 1940s.
I don’t think the anecdote shows that Americans are lazy or low on initiative or uninterested in working hard to do better.
People who immigrate to America is a biased group of people. They are specifically some of the most motivated people from other countries. Saying Americans are lazy *compared to the people who are motivated enough to come to America* doesn’t really mean anything. If that is true, it’s still perfectly consistent with Americans being the least lazy people in the world by a large margin.
What did the Americans do with their time instead of taking the test? We don’t know. Maybe they read books in areas of interest and learned more than they would have by taking the test. Maybe one of them is busy starting a business. They may be doing more valuable activities instead.
Is taking a test your teacher offers a demonstration of initiative? It sounds like going with the flow and taking what’s offered. It takes more initiative to find your own activities than to do whatever your school recommends.
Tests are unpleasant. Maybe the Americans considered the test to have negative value. And if so, maybe they were right. It could be they didn’t take the test because they are more familiar with the American educational system and more confident they won’t miss anything important.
Given tests are unpleasant, why would someone take one? They would have to be under pressure of some kind (possibly self-imposed). Maybe Americans are under less such pressure; maybe they are more free to pursue their own happiness. If so, then their decision not to do something they didn’t want to is a good thing. People often say that to get anywhere in life you have to suffer and pay your dues; whether they have a point or not, *some* unpleasantness can be avoided, including optional tests, and people who vigilantly watch out for opportunities to improve their lives should be applauded.
Maybe Americans have less respect for school. If so, this is to their credit. School is a place that does things to students, as decided by an authority, whether the students like it or not, and declares this is for their own good. It isn’t. Schools ought to be run like real businesses, which respect their paying customers, and offer what the customer wants.
What is the purpose of tests, anyway? It’s not for learning; the learning takes place during lectures, and study sessions, and so on. The purpose of the test is to let the teacher judge if the student is doing what the teacher told him to do. Tests are a tool for measuring the obedience of the student. Why is it any of the teacher’s business if the student is keeping up with the class? The teacher is (or should be) paid to give lectures and answer questions, not to pressure the student to listen. Why would someone want to volunteer to have his progress monitored? The only benefit to the student of being tested and graded is if he wants to present the grades to someone in the future as evidence he has certain skills. Taking this extra logic test will not make any significant contribution in that regard.
Thanks, Elliot. The anecdote does say something about both foreign and American students. In my post I used the anecdote to make some implications about the character of my foreign students, immigrants, and their impact on our economy. I didn’t, however, make any implications about the American students. That would make a good follow-up post: I leave only a list of unanswered questions at the end, and, as you suggest in your comment, there are a number of very interesting issues and possibilities to explore there.
Im from Canada too ( Montreal ) I am an entrepreneur ( i own my small consulting firm ) and I am scholar ( doing my PhD part time basis right now ).
This is not scientifical but my opinion is that in the states, the notion of education is not the same than in other countries. In France 4 example, higher education is exetremely respected, people judge you by the number of degress u have. In the states I think that people value more what u can do. Americans tend to be more action oriented ( actions, results, operations ) rather that theoritical. Its the two opposite : Practice VS Theory
Im not sayiong that this is good or bad but I think that Americans still represent the number one culture of entrepreneurship, i dont think any other culture value that much the business side
Interesting piece. Do you have anything on wealthy kids vs poor kids?