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.
I have experienced (first hand) federal government science policy for about 25 years. (Before that, as a tenured professor, I just taught.) I would rate the administrations' position on science as:
Reagan: mildly pro
Bush I: mildly neutral
Clinton: wildy ignorant
Bush II: mildly anti
Of course, the mildly is because none of the above had much use for any science that disagreed with their politics-of-the-moment. Anyway, the above list may just reflect the attitudes of the public more than that of the administrations.
Note that 101 is a prime posting number.
35-"My neighbor works for Cooper Tools. Someone there invented a new kind of current-limiting fuse for electrical applications. The fools set up a plant in China to build the new fuses, and before the first batch came off the line, the Chinese had set up their own plant with the stolen technology and were selling the fuses here in America for a fraction of the price.
Our government does absolutely nothing to protect intellectual property of scientists from foreign pirates."
Too few free-traitors understand this basic fact. Many other countries have no morals in the area of intellectual property, in fact they can't even grasp the concept. I have spent hours arguing this concept many times in various other countries.
39 - "There are a lot of things we just take for granted - electricity, water, food, phones, computers, etc. Where do these things come from? Who invented them and when? There's tons of great stuff we take for granted every day that could be used to intro kids to science and engineering. "
very true - and about 20 years ago I ran across a 3 volume set of books - "How Things Work" (I forget the author), but it was just fascinating. Though not a 'repair manual', more of a theory manual - it covered just about everything, with simple explanations, drawings, pictures. From airplanes, and propellers, to electric motors, and pumps, to airconditioners and internal combustion engines and microscopes and dams, and ships, and cranes and bulldozers, and tanks and cannons, etc, etc, etc.
Most fascinating, easy read, great for children, and adults. Highly recommended if you can find it today.
I did a quick search on the web on "How Things Work", and came up with all kinds of stuff - and probably somewhere in the list of 15000+ returns is that book set. (It was silver colored, in a box, if that does any good
While there are more women in math, science and engineering than there used to be, science and engineering are still by far and away masculine domains.
There is something about the way women's brains and men's brains work. Men do much better with 'spacial'/concrete tasks. Women do better at relative and subjective tasks. Writing and Language and health care are often women, while driving, building, designing and construction are often men.
Lets point out one interesting fact. Out of every 100 German student who finishes his German Phd...30 of them will pack up that week and move to the US. And another 20 will eventually come to the US. Its probably the same in the UK, and in Italy. We should not be worried about educating them in the US...we are already getting the most gifted and brightest of the world. And the reason is simple...you get paid for your effort. In Germany, it would take you 20 years to get your own lab and run it. In the US...you could have your own lab within 2 or 3 year...provided you show that you aren't wasting time. And the tax situation...the stability of the US system...all of these add up. I'm not worried...we are getting the cream of the crop one way or another.
50 - "All of my engineer friends with children - are piling their kids into law school."
That's thanks to Eno_, shipping our engineering jobs to china and india.
We already have way too many lawyers now, and so pretty soon no more middle class.
55 - "Q: How can you tell that a Math Ph.D. is female?
A: When you state that outliers are overwhelmingly male, she comes back with, "That's not true. I am one of almost 30% who are female."
Doctorate in MATH???
No wonder we are slipping in the US.
ping #57 - Snopercod
in math, very simply and generally, I would say women are more adept at algebra and men more adept at geometry.
Yup. I personally went to school with a guy with a PhD
from the top Chem Eng. school in the US, studying under
a Regents' Professor. After about 3 years, his job
was outsourced to India (GE stands for "Greedy Executives"). And I know other PhD's from
the same school who are teaching _High School_ rather
than anything lucrative.
One of the problems is the "publish or perish" system
for tenure at Universities requires up-and-coming professors to stuff the pipelines with cheap labor so
they can pad their resumes with enough papers. Then when
the students get out, they are suprised that the big wide
world isn't open for them!
The problem isn't so much with the outsourcing, or the
foreign students, it is the absurdity of the LIES used
to justify the practice.
E.g. in the IT world, one of the trade magazines (E-week,
or some such) quoted someone from Microsoft as ordering
his managers to "Think India! Two for the price of one!"
This was last summer when Microsoft had virtually NO DEBT
and $60 BILLION in CASH.
Exercise for the interested reader: Assume Microsoft
saves $40k per year per outsourced position. With their
$60 BILLION in cash, and assuming an interest rate of 3%
(actually somewhat lower than the T-bill, "risk-free" rate
of return), then:
Just on the interest on the cash, how many outsourced positions could be kept in the US?
--without affecting principal, and without affecting
cash flow from continuing operations.
--but Microsoft implies it will "go out of business" if
it does not outsource. Even Monica Lewinsky wouldn't
swallow that.
Bingo.
I still think NASA should invest more in basic research on new methods for propulsion - such as something similar to 'anti-gravity'.
We will never get very far using chemical rockets no matter how good or well developed. The distances are just too vast, and the power/fuel requirements just too great.
One hundred years ago, engineers made about $4,000 per year - roughly ten times the average wage in America. That was more than dentists made, twice as much as accountants, more than veterinarians.
My how things have changed.
On the day I was hired into the shuttle program - with a BSEE, but knowing absoulutly nothing about the shuttle - they gave me $17 per hour. Thirteen years later on the day I quit - knowing just about everything about the shuttle and how it was processed - I was making less than when I started after adjusting for inflation.
My neighbor, OTOH, was a bean-counter at KSC (configuration management). On the day he left, he was making twice what I was.
Come to think of it, at just about every job I ever had, the engineers were not very well paid. Working at Vidar, the electronic techs made more than the engineers. Working for Pacific Gas & Electric, the union janitors made more than the engineers.
I should have gone into architecture...
If you believe that, you haven't read the Presidential Space Commission Report or you do not understand the president's vision.
Algebra and logic are an outgrowth of human verbal skills (language is complex, logical and rule-based), so it makes sense for women to be better at it; and geometry is tied to visual/spatial ability in an obvious way.
However, in modern mathematics, geometry is often highly algebraic and vice-versa. This dates to the early 1600s, when Descartes invented analytic geometry (coordinate systems), which married algebra and geometry -- to every geometric shape there is an equation, and vice-versa. (Descartes is the earliest mathematics that a modern algebra student can read; he is the one who first used x and y for unknowns.) If you can't do both algebra and geometry, you won't succeed at math.
Don't worry, lawyers are easier to outsource than engineers. Buy a backhoe, or learn plumbing, if you want to be prosperous and independent. My brother in law quit programming in Java and started an applicance repair business. Three months in and he bought two more trucks and hired four helpers.
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