http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,118029,00.asp

Microsoft founder also tells college students outsourcing jobs is not
a 'zero-sum game.'

Joris Evers, IDG News Service
Friday, October 01, 2004
It wasn't "Plastics" as Dustin Hoffman was advised in the movie The
Graduate, but computers that Bill Gates told a college audience would
be the ticket to a good career in the near future. "You can't go wrong
in computer science," the Microsoft chairman and chief software
architect advised students at the University of California at Berkeley
during a Friday appearance.

Some UC-Berkeley students, however, were unhappy with the way Gates
responded to questions about increasing competition for jobs from
China and India. "It is a little scary for me to see people thinking
of this as a zero-sum game. It is not like a war where you have one
winner and one loser," Gates told the students during his appearance.
"China and India are the big change engines for the years ahead, and
as we embrace that and understand our new role in that, that's the
path forward."

Outsourcing Concerns
But while Gates' regular university visits are meant to evangelize the
field of computer science, several students felt Gates did not address
their concerns about outsourcing and the growing number of engineers
in lower-wage countries like China and India.

"Gates sort of glossed that over. As chairman of a corporation, does
he care where he hires his employees?" wondered Anatoly Smolkin, an
electrical engineering and computer science student at the university.
Jobs will move overseas and salaries for computer scientists and
engineers will fall as a result of competition with countries such as
India and China, he said.

Another student, Ali El-Annan, said Gates' comments made him a bit
anxious. "I was sort of surprised. They can't really create jobs there
while leaving jobs here," he said of outsourcing. "There is a lot of
concern about that among students."

The United States will have to compete with China and India on the
merits and not through protectionism, Gates said. Universities play a
major role in that competition and funding for universities will need
to be protected, he added. "I believe that the university system is
the number one thing that has allowed us to be at the center of
innovation," he said.

Double Major
Gates was interviewed at Berkeley by Richard Newton, dean of the
university's College of Engineering. Talking about computer science,
Gates said there is plenty of work that still needs to be done. He
also pitched a double major of computer science and biology as a
ticket for a great future career.

"If we look at the PC today, it is certainly a glass half-full in
terms of the ease of use," Gates said. Advances in storing data and in
user interfaces, such as unified storage and speech, will make PCs
better in the future. Also, artificial intelligence and graphics are
major areas of innovation, Gates said.

Looking ahead, Gates sees biology as a "sister science" to computer
science. "I think a lot of the breakthroughs will be made by people
who were trained in biology and computer science," he said.

Last February, Gates went on a week-long tour to visit five top
universities in the U.S. At Berkeley, he also faced some tough
questions from students about the effect of the PC industry on the
environment and on Microsoft's anticompetitive behavior.