However, this has become severely distorted as countries have gone on a major [insert perjorative anatomy] measuring contest to create PhDs, and have pumped effort and money into increasing STEM for its own sake.
IF indeed that is true (I may be being overly cynical), then the "reason why we have education" has shifted from "so people can stand on the shoulders of prior giants" to "because it makes our country look good". How does that affect your analysis?
