Meantime China, with four times America's population, graduates one point four million engineers a year, versus less than three hundred thousand in America. Even Russia, with barely half America's population, trains almost twice as many engineers as the US. 

For now, American companies profit by manufacturing in low-wage countries such as China, India and Bangladesh, while selling at high prices in Europe and North America. But for how much longer? Already Chinese automobile manufacturers are selling their own cheaply manufactured products in the US and other Western nations. For American manufacturing to remain viable, there will have to be a drastic devaluation of the US dollar and other Western currencies, versus the currencies of the Asian manufacturing economies. But first most of the West's manufacturing base will be crushed out of existence by low-wage Third World competition. 

And with devaluation of the dollar will come an end to America's ability to finance wars to extend its control throughout the world. Then America will have a choice: to become an economic basket case, or revert to the mores and educational standards of the early post-WW2 era when America led the world in scientific research and technological innovation. 

But whatever the US does now will not restore the country to the position of industrial dominance that it held in the 1950's. It will merely save the United States from becoming poorer than India, poorer than Bangladesh, and poorer even, perhaps than Nigeria, which by the end of the present century will have a .larger population than the US.