Excellent article. By the way government grants also empower students with funding for projects that sharpen their engineering skills with real life projects. The super charged engineering talent benefits US business with world class talent. Add to that talent pool immigration of international top talent and you have a super strong resource for engineering and science.

One additional program , a 8 week crash course on starting a business with NSF grant and program, NSF I corps, to move university research into a successful startups. The participants must interview 100 potential customers and discover critical, non technical, information required for success. Travel is funded and each team meets every week to present results and feedback from mentors and other teams.