Posted on 08/22/2004 12:02:47 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Hidden amid the hoopla of finding planets orbiting other stars, decoding the human genome and discovering miracle materials with nanotechnology, there's a seemingly improbable but perhaps even more important story — U.S. science may be in decline.
After 50 years of supremacy, both scientifically and economically, America now faces formidable challenges from foreign governments that have recognized scientific research and new technology as the fuels of a powerful economy.
"The Chinese government has a slogan, 'Develop science to save the country,' " said Paul Chu, a physics professor at the University of Houston who also is president of Hong Kong University of Science & Technology. "For a long time they have talked about it. Now they are serious."
According to the National Science Foundation and other organizations that track science indicators, the United States' share of worldwide scientific and engineering research publications, Nobel Prize awards, and some types of patents is falling.
A recent trend in the number of foreign students applying to U.S. schools is even more troubling, scientists say.
As American students have become less interested in science and engineering, top U.S. graduate schools have turned increasingly toward Europe and Asia for the best young scientists to fill laboratories. Yet now, with post-Sept. 11 visa rules tightening American borders, fewer foreign students are willing to endure the hassle of getting into the country.
"Essentially, the United States is pushing the best students from China and other countries away," Chu said.
The new restrictions also hassle students who are already here, like Lijun Zhu, a physics graduate student at Rice University since 1998 who returned two years ago to China to get married. The honeymoon became a nightmare when he and his new wife were stranded for more than two months, awaiting visa renewals.
"I was afraid of going outside my home for even a moment and missing the call from the consulate," Zhu recalled.
Losing future students like Zhu would cost more than just prestige in ivory towers. It could very well mean losing the nation's technological leadership, with implications for the nation's job market and security, to say nothing of culture.
Decline called 'ridiculous' Although President Bush's science adviser, John Marburger, dismisses as "ridiculous" the notion that America could lose its scientific prestige, scientists and policy-makers lay the blame in several areas: the drying well of foreign students, limited stem cell research and less federal funding for basic science research.
Since the visa restrictions were tightened in 2002, foreign-student applications to U.S. universities have fallen from 400,000 a year to 325,000, a 19 percent drop. Graduate school applications nationally are down even further, by up to 40 percent, said Jordan Konisky, vice provost for research and graduate studies at Rice University.
The problem, he said, is that when additional screening requirements were added, extra staffing in U.S. consulates to handle the workload was not.
And the atmosphere in these foreign offices, simmering with tension from terrorism's threat, breeds caution.
"No bureaucrat wants to make a mistake and approve a visa for someone that comes to this country and causes a problem," Konisky said. "So they tend to be very conservative about this, and that's good. But I think they're being overly conservative."
Graduate science programs at Rice and elsewhere are heavily dependent on foreign students.
Nearly half of engineering graduate students are foreign, as are more than one-third of all natural sciences graduate students.
These students invigorate research, professors say. They publish papers, bring new ideas and play a major role in patent applications.
Afraid to leave the U.S. In 2003, the Rice graduate physics program admitted 16 foreign students. Two were delayed more than six months, and three were permanently blocked from entering the United States. Southern Methodist University has a smaller program, and in 2002, the two foreign students who were accepted didn't get visas. School officials briefly considered ending the program, but enough students gained visas in 2003 and this fall to keep it open, said Fredrick Olness, the SMU physics department chairman.
Yet even if students make it into the United States, their visa troubles, as evidenced by the plight of Zhu, aren't over.
Scientific conferences are held worldwide, and many students with families or looming deadlines at school opt not to travel for fear that they won't be able to come back. Likewise, meeting planners say the number of foreign scientists attending conferences in the United States has dropped because they don't want to bother with obtaining a temporary visa.
Then there are the physicists who want to work at some of the world's best particle accelerators, which are in Switzerland and Germany.
"All of the foreign faculty we have are afraid to leave the country because of visa problems," Olness said. "If this keeps up, the United States is going to take a hit on its stature in the worldwide physics community."
Seizing the opportunity Marburger, himself a physicist, said changes to streamline visa problems, including adding staff in U.S. consular offices abroad, should be announced soon.
"This has very high visibility in Washington, all the way up to the president," Marburger said.
The winner, for now at least, is clear — scientific enterprise everywhere else.
At Hong Kong University, applications from Chinese students have more than doubled in the past three years. Chu says his faculty is thrilled.
Chu said Great Britain and Australia have seized the opportunity and opened recruiting offices in China. The European Union, too, has set a goal of having the most competitive and knowledge-based economy in the world by 2010.
What concerns U.S. scientists is that a decades-long brain drain into America may be coming to an end.
America began attracting scientists in the 1930s when the shadow of Hitler's political and religious persecution fell over Europe. Hordes of leading scientists such as Albert Einstein and Enrico Fermi, whose work with nuclear chain reactions led to the atomic bomb, immigrated to the United States.
Focus on science funding After the war, the United States began spending billions of dollars on basic and defense-related research. Other great foreign scientists followed, drawn to new facilities and money. Their work laid the foundation for the technology bonanza of the 1990s, when one-third of Silicon Valley start-up companies were begun by foreigners.
Attracting top graduate students from other countries, then, is the first step toward continuing the trend.
"The United States used to welcome foreign scientists," said Zhu's adviser at Rice, physics professor Qimiao Si. "Nearly a century ago, the center of gravity shifted to the United States. We don't want that to happen in a reverse direction."
There are other policy areas that U.S. scientists say harm their ability to compete. Scientists say the Bush administration's policy to limit the use of embryonic stem cells will blunt advances made in biomedical research. "The stem cell decision has certainly put us behind at the front end of the curve," said Neal Lane, Clinton's science adviser. "It's a huge barrier."
The president's decision also led some U.S. researchers to seek private funds for their work. But this, said Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, usually a stalwart ally of Bush, is no solution to the issue.
"It's the federal research that is the big opportunity," the Texas senator said. "That's where the big dollars are. And to have these avenues to federal resources closed is going to hurt us in the long run."
Another problem, said Albert Teich, director of science and policy programs at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, is an increasing focus in the federal budget on applied military and homeland security research. Excluding a modest increase for biomedical research, nondefense research and development in the proposed 2005 federal budget would decline 2.1 percent, according to the association.
Marburger said federal science spending is still far greater than in any other country. The United States, he said, spends 1 1/2 times more on research and development than all of the European Union countries combined.
Teich agreed, but only to a point.
"It is probably wrong to say U.S. science is currently in decline," he said. "But it is certainly in danger of declining. We're perched on the edge."
Another troubling trend A fundamental problem, scientists and policy-makers say, is the lack of interest in science from American children.
Between 1994 and 2001, the number of U.S. students enrolling in science and engineering graduate programs fell 10 percent. Foreign enrollment jumped by 31 percent to make up for the shortfall.
National reports on this trend have offered suggestions to address the problem, such as giving money to community colleges to assist high-ability students in transferring to four-year science and engineering programs.
"Unfortunately, there's no silver bullet," said President Clinton's science adviser, Neal Lane.
Although there are some encouraging trends — the number of U.S. Hispanics enrolling in science graduate programs between 1994 and 2001 increased by more than one-third — the number of U.S. minorities in science graduate programs remains well below their representation in the total population.
Seemed to me that there was a lot of interest in that little probe to Mars last year. And all it really did--to the public-- was look at dirt. But the public liked it anyway. The novelty was being able to see and move. And the thought occurred to me--what if we had sent up a couple dozen of the things at once, to attempt to begin a visual grid of the planet? Now there's a project to excite. Heck, if we need to, why not design the thing to look like R2D2?
Whatever we could do now, anything of real lasting consequence in learning and exploration, is in danger as of this moment. It is going down that same stupid path.
how many people want to teach? and who are they teaching? mostly foreign nationals now.
no offense, teaching is a noble profession, but its not a productive industry. these CS PHds should be working at US technology firms - but the demand (and pay grade) for them in those jobs, isn't there.
Maybe inner city schools are terrible, and maybe American students don't have the same love of Science that foreign students have, but if the foreign eggheads consider the US to be the prime place to get those Studies down pat, the chances are very good that they're going to want to stay here. This is the best place in the World to live, and barring some Worldwide catastrophy, that's not going to change.
I'm not saying that the American Education system doesn't need a kick in the pants, but was it ever really as good as Germany's and Japan's following WW II? Even as far back as the 1840s or whenever it was that de Toqueville wrote Democracy In America, the American Education system was not considered first rate as the Europeans were wont to view first rate at the time.
But, that didn't really matter because the American People have always viewed education with a utilitarian mindset, and that's always been a good thing. I knew boys in high school who hated opening any books, but they could take apart an engine and put it back together when they were only 15 years old. Americans are a hands on people, that's always been a strength. Gates probably had a very average education, he didn't finish college, yet he changed the world, that's quintessentially American.
Plenty of us plan to do just that. And the pay grade is there. You have to be willing to go where the demand is, and CS is a really hard field to keep a job in - by that I mean, if you get comfortable in one job for three years, and don't keep up with the field, you won't find another job, the field will have passed you.
I would say maybe 1 in 5 CS students studying for a PhD wants primarily to teach. There is a great deal of CS research going on right now. A lot is in the universities, so a lot of students who want to research will end up becoming faculty. If you want to have more input into your research, you become a faculty member somewhere, teach two classes a semester and, as long as you get funding, do what you want.
Working in industry, you give up some of that freedom but you make some serious money. You can outsource programming to India, but they haven't managed to come close to us in innovation.
I don't have an answer. I love space and space exploration. Apollo is still one of the great achievements in human history. The science and spin-offs we got back from Apollo made it all worth the effort.
I get frustrated as well. What we could be doing with the Moon... It's just sitting up there. We should be using it. No easy solutions IMHO.
They had a perfect satellite killer and/or reconnaissance bird with a little enhancement.
well, I don't know what you consider serious money.
if I had my engineering career to do over again - I'd go into hedge funds, that's where I'd be. that's serious money. is it rewarding, no. but when you find yourself at middle age facing layoffs and offshoring and H1Bs and loss of retirement benefits, and you are too old to be hired anyplace else - that's not very rewarding either.
I sure hoped so as well. But if so, SSTO would be already here I think.
This subject is near to my heart as well. I just don't see it as a national priority. Neither manned or unmanned. Without funding, you go nowhere. (no pun intended from your name) :-)
Are you talking about K-12 or college? Anyway, I don't think the problem is the schools so much as the job marketplace. In between the junk courses the same old 3 Rs are available.
Ooops. A contrail thread...
Are there any postdocs in your department? If so, you might ask them what they are finding the job market is like for recent PhDs in computer science.
I suspect that they won't tell you they are making $90,000 in their current position while they are trying to pick out which school to teach for.
Instead, I think you will hear about the multiplicity of candidates for each advertised tenured position, and the brutal competition out there for these positions. There is a recent trend toward offering non-tenured teaching position (adjuncts and such), but the pay for these from what I have seen is not anywhere near $90,000.
But let me know if you find differently; I would be interested in hearing about a strong job market in this area.
Best of luck with your career choice.
If you want to teach, you should be able to. There are postdocs, yes, but historically CS hasn't produced enough Ph.Ds to fill faculty positions because industry offers them more. I had a number of teachers as an undergrad who had an MS, no more.
You don't make good money teaching. You make it in industry. There are downsides to industry, of course, but the jobs are there
Eliminate public schools, cut taxes accordingly, and let parents pay for, and send their children to the private schools of their choice.
You may want to ping the list. Evidently, the anti-science attitude expressed by many folks in the U.S. is obviously a goodly portion of the problem.
5 - "The ones walking across are borders will probably not be applying soon. Somehow we have got this all a** backwards."
TheLion is talking about you - _Eno - our job in this country is not to build the middle class of India and China, but to build and strengthen the US middle class.
Thanks for the ping!
13 - " This is not an accident folks. This is feminist social engineering coming to fruition. Think about a world where it's the Chinese and the Indians who have all the high-tech weapons, and we have nothing comparable. It isn't 30 years away. "
This is _Eno's goal - he is an avid supporter of eporting our expertice to give our knwledge and wealth to India and China, to develop them instead of us.
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