another irritating one is the way they quote 900K engineers out of China and India without considering the way the US/India/China define "engineer". I did math as an undergrad followed by an MS in engineering, and I don't think I'd be counted (certainly if I'd done a grad degree in a math department - studying the same material, I wouldn't be counted). Meanwhile, it sounds like a 3-year trade degree in China would count as an engineer.
Again, there are reasonable interpretations of these numbers - I'm not saying the writer has to take my point of view. But to just chuck them out there as fact without any discussion is at best lazy journalism (again, it's such a loud omission that I start to wonder if it is deliberate).
Engineering is one of the better defined/controlled degrees in India. Any accredited engineering degree is a 4 year degree and the core curriculum includes as much Math as a US engineering degree.
However, very few of these schools and professors are anywhere close to the good schools and professors in the US.
I'm not at all surprised to hear that there are organizations in India that take a more restrictive definition of engineer. The problem, I think, is that we're comparing a lenient count in India and China with a very restrictive count in the US. When you count more similarly, the gap vanishes - and actually looks more favorable for the US on a per-capita basis.
Again, there are reasonable interpretations of these numbers - I'm not saying the writer has to take my point of view. But to just chuck them out there as fact without any discussion is at best lazy journalism (again, it's such a loud omission that I start to wonder if it is deliberate).