[bluedanieru]

>I hope there are enough intelligent people who are uncomfortable about making the leap of faith from 'US students have bad science grades' to 'the US will experience a shortage of scientifically-qualified people'.

How about the leap of faith from "there are heaps of scientific and technical jobs for which no qualified candidates can be found" to "science education in the US sucks?" And also the fact of increasing reliance on immigrants to fill those roles when a suitable local (i.e. native) doesn't appear?

Seems falsifiable to me.

edit: basically what I was getting at is that your original statement: "As things stand, to me it seems that there are tens, if not hundreds, of qualified people for every possible job opening" is false afaik.