Top: Looking down the Charles River toward Boston.

Middle: Harvard will probably never have a problem drawing top notch international students to its graduate programs. Neither will the Massaschusetts Institute of Technology, also in Cambridge. The number of international students attending U.S. graduate schools dropped off significantly since 9/11, but has been slowly rising in recent years. Traditionally, many of the advanced degrees in engineering were awarded to foreign studies. Fortunately, many of those students stayed in the U.S. and played a major role in helping develop the cutting edge technology that has made the U.S. so competitive. Now, many foreign graduate students are returning home. Also, the quality of colleges and universities in many developing coutries has substantially improved. Several years ago I was talking to a senior manager at Lockheed Martin about knowledge management. He said that within ten years, seventy percent of the engineers in his company will be eligible for retirement, and that because of demographic, educational, and social trends, the U.S. pipeline of engineering graduates was projected to be insufficient to meet the company's needs. Consequently, their strategic plan calls for outsourcing much of their engineering expertise to places like India and China.

Bottom: Life below Harvard Square seems subpar compared to the upscale shops and restaurants of Cambridge.