It took me back to the 80s hearing Intel chairman Craig Barrett bemoaning US educational standards earlier this week.
In the 80s, the doomed UK electronics majors - GEC, Plessey, STC, Ferranti - routinely bemoaned the quality of UK education. The reason for their downbeat assessment of UK educational standards, turned out to derive not from the standard of the education, but from the fact that the brightest graduates didn't join the UK majors.
Back in the 80s, if you were an ambitious UK graduate, you wanted to work for American companies because that was where the pioneering, interesting work was being done. The UK companies had a reputation for being innovation-averse, bad payers and heavily authoritarian.
I don't know much about pay-levels at Intel, but anyone who's had their briefcase searched by Intel security may find the authoritarian side overdone, while, innovation-wise, Intel has languished in the doldrums for years.
So, Craig, your problem may be that it's not the US education system that has got worse, but because bright US graduates don't join Intel any more.
I can certainly remember my great disappointment when I arrived at Marconi Space and Defence Stanmore in 1984 on a thick sandwich course. The recruitment brochures from BAe, Racal, GEC etc were certainly swish - reality was very different.
But I don't think your take on Intel is accurate, necessarily. I'm just back from IDF, where I talked to a lot of engineers and some researchers who are involved in Intel's reasonably extensive collaboration programme with universities and other places. Admittedly, you're only going to get the good 'uns at IDF - but the company's comfortable enough to let packs of raving journalists wander around a place full of company and client engineers. The execs are guarded by phalanxes of PRs (although there are plenty of opportunities to nab them at social events), but the foot soldiers are fair game.
Talking to these people, they seemed enthusiastic, full of beans and keen to talk about what was often some fairly fundamental research. Judging by the quantity and quality of peer-reviewed papers that Intel either produces or collaborates on in a wide range of areas, they're certainly getting something right.
Mind you, I did hear some tales of Intel culture a few years back. That seemed somewhat different.
R
Thanks Rupert, that's interesting. But if I was a US graduate with job offers from Intel and Google, it would be a no-brainer.
The UK problem may have preceded the 80s. In 1962, I needed a job, and interviewed at Pye Radio in Cambridge and TI in Bedford. At Pye, I had lunch in a nice fancy space, but the interviewer warned me I would not be eligible to eat there if I joined the company. At TI, there was one big cafeteria where everyone ate, from the head honchos to the cleaners. TI offered me slightly more money, to work on ICs, than Pye, to work on radios, so I took that one. Three years later, the IC design boss at TI was offered a job by Plessey, but TI offered him a better job in Dallas Texas, and four of us ended going there with him. It seemed clear to us that the US companies in the business were doing more interesting work than the old-line UK companies, and we were right!
Very interesting indeed Peter, and all the time the UK companies were wondering where all the bright guys were and blaming the UK educational system for not producing enough of them!
It seems once managements get too finance driven and authoritarian they forget who creates their wealth.