From abroad, challenges to US role as top innovator

Ramped-up R&D in China and India blunts economic edge of US.

By Mark Trumbull | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

For decades, America was the preeminent destination for the world's innovators. Scientists of all kinds left their homelands to learn the ropes at top-flight US universities - and often stayed put to earn high salaries. Many countries struggled to stop this brain drain to the US.

But today, the giant sucking sound may be flowing in the other direction. Just this year, 325,000 Chinese earned engineering degrees. The US, by contrast, gave out just 60,000 - fewer than it did a decade ago. And international enrollment at US campuses has been falling.