These ratings are pretty subjective, but it certainly should be a matter of concern when Missouri, which is a predominantly urban state, is in the same “technology and science” category as predominantly rural and/or southern states such as Iowa, Nebraska, Montana, Idaho, Tennessee and Alabama (see the state rankings in the above link).

It should be intuitively obvious that there is a connection between the quality and “outreach” of the technological programs of a state’s universities, and the performance of its public and (especially) private economic sectors. But Missouri just doesn’t have this connection to the same level of effectiveness as more politically and intellectually advanced states.

Missouri’s primary technological university is the U. of Missouri at the nondescript Ozark town of Rolla — hardly a magnet for the “best and the brightest” of either faculty or students.

And then there is the U. of Missouri at Columbia, where students are a lot more likely to hone their skills of socializing with the opposite sex than their technical skills. And then Washington U,. where its small engineering program is sort of a bastard child to its more “politically correct” curricula in the “humanities.”

The last I heard, there was a cooperative program in engineering between the U. of Missouri — St. Louis, UM Rolla, and Washington U. that enabled students in St. Louis to receive competent instruction at an affordable price. Good idea. But an even better idea would be to convert the Rolla campus to a regional community college, and transfer its high level science and engineering capabilities to the U. of Missouri’s campuses at St. Louis and Kansas City.

Of course, that is too “radical” an idea for conservative ‘ol Missouri to accept. And conservative ‘ol Missouri will remain below the national average in wealth creation based on science and technology as the result.

Without digging too deep into the Index, you will quickly note that all the first tier states have huge military presences, including construction yards, military acadamies, and training bases. The difference between second and third tier states is very small. Alabama has a huge NASA presence in that state, mostly in the Huntsville area with the International Space Station command, rocket manufacturing and research, and so forth. The fact that Missouri is at that level is not embarrassing.

As usual they don’t tell you WHAT job fields and areas of research are tracked, so the bio-medical field here in St. Louis could be ignored all together. It’s not possible to make an educated deduction on this information without knowing the background from which it is derived.

Lastly, Missouri may be fairly urban but it’s major cities (St Louis and KC) are still heavily involved in agribusiness and distribution of agricultural products. We are still in the center of the breadbasket and that is always going to be a major part of the business that goes on around here. Again, that is nothing to apologize for.

It’s not worth getting upset about…

our latest technological advance was how to use a nine millimeter. now if we would just advance to how to use a condom or other birth control