Reply #3: My nephew is studying for a career in materials physics research.

[Xithras]

For his foreign language credits, he's going with Mandarin. Apparently every mentor he's spoken with has told him that non Mandarin-speaking researchers will be unemployable in another 15-20 years.

The United States is the new Britain. We'll always be an advanced and powerful country, but the glory days we spent as one of the worlds power centers are rapidly ending.