President Obama recently announced the ‘Educate to innovate’ programme that strives to facilitate cooperation between government agencies, businesses and the academic world, improving the quantity and quality of education in the fields of science, maths, engineering and technology. The US’s aim is to be more competitive on the global education market and prepare for future challenges.    

More than 120 American public higher education institutions announced they will participate under their umbrella programme working to increase the country’s capacity in the above mentioned fields. On a yearly basis, more than 40 public universities will double the number of science and maths teachers trained. This means a 30 percent growth in the total number of annually graduated teachers reaching 10 000 per year by 2015.

Behind the scenes the justification of President Obama’s urgent developments in these “hard sciences” seems to be a high level of their marketability. Investing in resources should always be a profitable business. In addition, science and technology are essential components of every segment of human activity and specifically valuable goods for the global economy.

The White House