Science Education, Science Funding, and World Domination

The National Science Foundation (about) is a federal organization with the following mission statement: "To promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; and to secure the national defense."   Although its website refers to it as an independent agency, it is run by a board of 24 members, all appointed by POTUS. 

On May 4, 2004, the NSF issued a report entitled Science and Engineering (S&E) Indicators 2004.  This  article starts with excerpts from the NSF press release, then includes excerpts from news articles written in response to the press release, tosses in some related articles, then concludes with my own comments about science education in the USA, and about the priorities for research funding.  I mix in some comments about the slants evident in the news reports. 

The NSF  press release begins as follows:

United States Still Leads in Science and Engineering, But Uncertainties Complicate Outlook
National Science Board highlights workforce issues in its release of S&E Indicators 2004

ARLINGTON, Va.-- The United States remains the world's leading producer of and a net exporter of high-technology products and ranks among the global leaders in research and development (R&D) spending. However, ongoing economic and workforce changes make the outlook for the future uncertain, according to Science and Engineering (S&E) Indicators 2004, a biennial report of the National Science Board (NSB) to the president.

"The United States is in a long-distance race to retain its essential global advantage in S&E human resources and sustain our world leadership in science and technology," said NSB Chair Warren M. Washington. "For many years we have benefited from minimal competition in the global S&E labor market, but attractive and competitive alternatives are now expanding around the world. We must develop more fully our native talent."

Report: U.S. losing ground in science education
Thursday, May 6, 2004 Posted: 3:07 PM EDT (1907 GMT)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The United States could lose its prominence in the fields of science and technology because of rising competition for foreign talent, a National Science Foundation report says.

"For many years we have benefited from minimal competition in the global science and engineering labor market, but attractive and competitive alternatives are now expanding around the world," said National Science Board Chairman Warren Washington.

The report, released Tuesday, said more and more foreign-born scientists and engineers joined American scientific work force in the 1990s. Immigrants made up 38 percent of science and engineering employees with doctorate degrees in 2000, while immigrants made up 29 percent of those with master's degrees.

The science board said America risks losing the foreign scientists it relies on to fill technology jobs because of unclear immigration demands since the September 11, 2001, terror attacks and because more countries are developing programs to keep their highly-educated citizens.

America also lags other nations in the number of students majoring in science and engineering at colleges and universities, according to the board.

Twenty-four nations in 2000 awarded a higher percentage of science and engineering degrees to students than the United States. The United States awarded 5.7 science degrees per 100 24-year-olds, compared with a ratio of 13.2 to 100 in Finland, which awarded the highest proportion, the report said.

The board warned that a loss in the number of foreign-born scientists who want to work in the United States would hurt the technology sector at a time when many of its most-educated employees are nearing retirement. [...]





May 3, 2004

U.S. Is Losing Its Dominance in the Sciences
WILLIAM J. BROAD

The United States has started to lose its worldwide dominance in critical areas of science and innovation, according to federal and private experts who point to strong evidence like prizes awarded to Americans and the number of papers in major professional journals.

Foreign advances in basic science now often rival or even exceed America's, apparently with little public awareness of the trend or its implications for jobs, industry, national security or the vigor of the nation's intellectual and cultural life.

"The rest of the world is catching up," said John E. Jankowski, a senior analyst at the National Science Foundation, the federal agency that tracks science trends. "Science excellence is no longer the domain of just the U.S."

Even analysts worried by the trend concede that an expansion of the world's brain trust, with new approaches, could invigorate the fight against disease, develop new sources of energy and wrestle with knotty environmental problems. But profits from the breakthroughs are likely to stay overseas, and this country will face competition for things like hiring scientific talent and getting space to showcase its work in top journals.

One area of international competition involves patents. Americans still win large numbers of them, but the percentage is falling as foreigners, especially Asians, have become more active and in some fields have seized the innovation lead. The United States' share of its own industrial patents has fallen steadily over the decades and now stands at 52 percent.

A Talk with Bush's Science Czar
SPECIAL REPORT: AMERICA'S TECH MIGHT: SLIPPING?

MARCH 16, 2004
John Marburger points to the Administration's spending in R&D, innovation, education, and space, and says "We still are a leader"


When President Bush needs to talk science, he turns to John Marburger, director of the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy. A physicist who previously held the top spot at Brookhaven National Laboratory, Marburger plays a key role in setting both funding and research priorities for the federal government, the largest research funding institution on earth. [...]

Q: Everyone is talking about outsourcing in the software field undermining U.S. superiority in that key area. Is the threat overblown?
A: I think it is somewhat overblown. We have fairly complicated markets in software. When it comes to new products and software that's at the edge of capabilities, the U.S. is a major player. We still are a leader, and it's going to be a long time before we lose that position. [...]

Q: What can America do to make sure foreign grad students continue to come to the U.S. to study?
A: U.S. institutions of higher education are the gold standard around the world. You have a higher-value-added degree from a U.S. institution than from anywhere else. It's true that China is producing many more students with advanced degrees, but the U.S. continues to attract the best talent.

I've participated in a number of conferences with other countries, and Europe is concerned about its brain drain to the U.S. Even China sends students to us. There has been a fall-off in foreign student applications, which isn't surprising in view of the changes in the visa process. But the numbers are still high, and there's every indication we will continue to attract large numbers of foreign graduate students. [...]

Q: An increasing percentage of breakthroughs are coming from research institutions outside the U.S. Does this indicate the U.S. is losing ground?
A: We see rates of publication in journals and patents filed increasing for other countries, but I don't see significant weakness in our numbers. We still are the world leader in innovation. Basic science has always been an international phenomenon. The trick is to take advantage of the basic research done around the world and turn it into products that keep us on the leading edge. [...]

Q: A lot of the most important figures in the technology business are concerned that the percentage of U.S. gross domestic product going to fund basic science research has fallen significantly over time.
A: For 40 years, the percentage of the domestic discretionary budget devoted to nondefense R&D has been about 11%. It's at 13.7% right now, and that's about a 20-year high. For the total budget including military R&D, we're at the highest level in 37 years as a percentage of the domestic discretionary budget.




Recession's silver lining? More top students head to grad school
New data track high GRE scorers
16-Feb-2004
The economy's recent slump prompted growing numbers of top U.S. college graduates to hunker down in graduate school, new data shows, sharply reversing course from the late 1990s when more of the brightest young Americans headed for quicker-payoff careers in business and health.

By 2001, with fewer high-tech jobs beckoning, the share of top U.S. citizen scorers (above 750) on the Graduate Record Exam quantitative scale heading to graduate school in the natural sciences and engineering increased by about 31 percent compared to 1998, after having declined by 21 percent in the previous six years, according to William Zumeta of the University of Washington.

This recent increase is comparable to the 29 percent gain in the number of all score levels of examinees who intended to enroll in graduate school in the sciences or engineering. And the total number of GRE examinees increased by 9 percent between 1998 and 2001, suggesting that more students in a variety of fields were preparing for graduate school. [...]

Zumeta's concerns about the nation's scientific future have grown over years of watching America's highest-achieving college students – the top 5-to-7 percent of scorers on the Graduate Record Exam (those who score 750 or higher) – drift away from careers in advanced research.

He and Raveling also examined the plans of senior science majors from a group of elite private colleges – members of the Consortium on Financing Higher Education – and found that the proportion who planned to enroll in graduate school the following fall had plummeted from 47 percent of the 1984 graduates to 28 percent in 1998. The decline among students with A averages was even steeper. The proportion of all the graduates who said they had no plans for graduate school at any time in the future more than doubled.

Foreign students continued to pump intellectual energy into U.S. graduate science and engineering programs during the early 1990s. But America's own homegrown college graduates – the highest-achieving ones – increasingly turned to relatively short postgraduate programs in business and health fields such as physical therapy, speech pathology and public health, according to results published last year by Zumeta and Joyce Raveling.

And in the late '90s, Zumeta and Raveling found that even foreign students were coming to American graduate programs in smaller numbers – an unprecedented reversal that could further diminish the quality of U.S. graduate study. This downtrend turned around for a few years around the turn of the century but threatens to reappear with the current barriers facing would-be immigrants to the United States.

Shunning science were elite science majors – both American and foreign – who might relish advanced study but were turned off by the decade-plus apprenticeships in low-paid doctoral and postdoctoral programs, followed by bitter struggles for the few faculty posts in a logjammed academic market. The result was that from 1992-2000, the number of top-scoring U.S. GRE-takers headed for graduate study in mathematics fell by 19 percent and engineering by 25 percent.

If you look at the NSF press release, and the Business Week interview with Bush's Science Czar (John Marburger), you see that the headlines are essentially positive.  They emphasize the fact that the USA still has a prominent leadership position with respect to production of new technologies, and advancement of discoveries in basic science.  Of course, the NSF and John Marburger represent the executive branch of the government, so they can be expected to try to put a positive spin on things.  The newspapers know that negative news is what attracts attention, so they tend to write alarming titles.  Eureka Alert is written by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (about).  AAAS is a nongovernmental organization.  They have their own agenda, of course, but their report seems to be the most balanced. 

In order to make sense of all the data reported, it is important to recognize that the articles are mixing data related to two separate subjects.  One is the changing enrollments of college students in various scientific and technical areas; the other is the scientific and technical output of the country as a whole.

With regard to the trends in education, what we see is that the trends change dramatically,  often in response to economic conditions.  It appears that the economy has two opposite effects: when the job market outside of academia is tight, undergraduate students are more inclined to delay entry into the job market, often by going to grad school.  On the other hand, when there is economic uncertainty, undergrads are disinclined to expose themselves to years of low pay by pursuing academic careers.  There are other factors as well.  Academia is prone to fads just like the apparel industry, or any other aspect of popular culture.  Because of these various factors, enrollment in different programs will go up and down.  The CNN and NYT articles key in on a few findings that, taken in isolation, seem to support the dire predictions implied by the titles of the article.  In my view, it is hazardous to try to read too much into these trends.  

With regard to the educational trends, clearly, the USA has a lot to gain by maintaining a large pool of persons well-trained in science and technology.  It appears that Dr. Marburger is counseling Mr. Bush to appropriate funds in a manner that will tend to maintain this resource.  Marburger points out that there has been an increase in the difficulty for foreign students to enroll in US colleges and universities.  This is a consequence, probably an unintended consequence, of the War on Terror.  Whatever the cause, it is a problem.  Sure, there can be a security risk to enrolling foreign students.  But there is a strategic advantage to be had by collecting the world's most talented students here in the USA.  Some will go back home, and perhaps a few will be involved in mischief later on.  But we will know who they are and what their talents are, so we will be in a better position to keep track of what they are up to.  If they go somewhere else for their education, we loose that.  If they go somewhere else, they still will be just as bright and as talented as they were before.  So there is nothing to gain by denying them access to an education in the USA. 

To think that there is a strategic advantage to making them go elsewhere for their education is a shortsighted kind of snobbery; this has no place in serious policy decisions.  It is based on the false notion that scientists trained in the USA will be more capable -- and therefore more dangerous -- than those trained elsewhere.  Guess what?  It does not take a rocket scientist to strap on a bomb and blow yourself up, or highjack a plane and fly into a building.  What makes terrorists dangerous is their psychological state, not their technical expertise. 

Let's think about a hypothetical future weapons-of-mass-destruction-program-related-scientist (FWOMDPRS).  If that person comes to the USA to study, he or she is likely to develop some kind of emotional attachment here.  He or she will then be less inclined to cooperate with an attempt to harm our country.  That is no guarantee, but it is better than breeding contempt by shunning someone.  Of course, this only will work if the FWOMDPRS experiences an open, inclusive, and diverse community when studying here.  If the FWOMDPRS is met with racism, elitism, or intolerance, that would be a bad thing.  Note that this would imply that there is a benefit to having diversity on our campuses, and to being nice to people. 

With regard to technological output, the NYT article expresses this concern:

One area of international competition involves patents. Americans still win large numbers of them, but the percentage is falling as foreigners, especially Asians, have become more active and in some fields have seized the innovation lead. The United States' share of its own industrial patents has fallen steadily over the decades and now stands at 52 percent.

This, of course, is a natural consequence of globalization.  If it is true that globalization has more advantages that disadvantages, then this one particular aspect of globalization should not be a matter of concern.  We will have to take the bad with the good. 

Naturally, we should make global competitiveness a priority.  But we should not expect to retain complete dominance.  In order to do that, we would have to shortchange other priorities, such as health care and social services.  The government does have an important role to play in maintaining competitiveness.  This is done primarily through funding of research and development.  The Science Czar has an important role in advising the President on the priorities for such funding.  He is asked about this in the Business Week article.  Oddly, in the BW article, he does not really answer the author's questions.   For example:

Q: A lot of the most important figures in the technology business are concerned that the percentage of U.S. gross domestic product going to fund basic science research has fallen significantly over time.
A: For 40 years, the percentage of the domestic discretionary budget devoted to nondefense R&D has been about 11%. It's at 13.7% right now, and that's about a 20-year high. For the total budget including military R&D, we're at the highest level in 37 years as a percentage of the domestic discretionary budget.

He seems to equate nondefense R&D to basic science research.  This is semantic gamesmanship.  The classification of R&D spending into defense and nondefense categories is a different frame of reference than the classification of basic vs. applied research.  The author asked about the funding priorities using the basic vs. applied frame of reference.  The answer was phrased using the defense vs. nondefense frame of reference.  This enabled him to respond  to the question without really answering  it. 

If it is true that there is a trend toward more applied R&D and less basic science R&D, that is a matter of concern;  this is true especially if the apportioning of research funds reflects a political agenda involving favoritism to certain industries.  The author did not press that point, and Dr. Marburger does not really address it.  There probably is an optimum balance between funding basic vs. applied research, but I do not know of any objective way to determine the optimum.  I can say, though, that using political factors is not going to lead to the optimum balance.  The thing is, basic research pays off, but the payoff is later than the payoff for applied research.  Putting too much into the quick-payoff areas makes no more sense, strategically, that investing all your money in short-term market positions.  We need a balanced research portfolio, just as a smart investor seeks to maintain a balanced investment portfolio.