Recent Alarms
In the race for the future, America is in danger of falling behind … our generation’s Sputnik moment is back.
—President Barack Obama, 2010, “Remarks by the President on the Economy in Winston-Salem, North Carolina,” December 6, 2010
Three highly influential reports, all released within a five-month period in 2005 and all guided by prominent corporate leaders, have dominated the past years of discussions about whether the United States is falling behind in terms of its science and engineering workforce. These three followed different styles but had much in common, and for good reason, as we shall see.
The first report, entitled Innovate America, was published in May 2005 as a product of the “National Innovation Initiative” of the Council on Competitiveness; it addressed a very broad range of issues it considered central to innovation. The second and third of the reports published in 2005 focused heavily upon the issues surrounding the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) workforce. Tapping America’s Potential (TAP)1 was produced and published in July 2005 by the Business Roundtable, an association of CEOs of large U.S.-headquartered corporations. The last of this report trio, released in October 2005, was produced by an ad hoc committee appointed by the National Research Council and bore the evocative title Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future (Gathering Storm).2
Both the TAP and Gathering Storm reports recounted indicators of decline in both the quantity and quality of U.S. students graduating from the nation’s K-12 primary and secondary education systems, particularly their skills in science and mathematics. Both made the case that the result is inadequate numbers of scientists and engineers—whether current or projected—that pose profound threats to the future of U.S. economic prosperity and security.
The views of leaders of corporations, business associations, and research universities that energized all three of these 2005 reports were echoed and amplified by prominent journalists and editorial writers; by leaders of K-12 education; by prominent figures in higher education and research; by numerous state governors; and by national politicians of both parties. Indeed, it is fair to say this perspective has been and continues to be the conventional and dominant view among elite U.S. opinion leaders.
Yet, as we shall see, it is also a perspective that has been but little scrutinized in an objective way, and rarely tested against empirical evidence. It is the goal—perhaps the overly ambitious goal—of this book to describe what is known, what is unknown, and even what is intrinsically unknowable about this critical set of issues.
Innovate America
This report, produced by a project called the National Innovation Initiative organized by the Council on Competitiveness, was led by a nineteen-member “Principals Committee.” This committee was comprised of ten CEOs of major corporations and nine presidents of leading research universities and institutions, and was co-chaired by Samuel J. Palmisano, CEO of IBM Corporation and G. Wayne Clough, president of Georgia Institute of Technology (see table 1.1).
A related advisory committee was co-chaired by Norman R. Augustine, retired CEO of Lockheed Martin Corporation and William R. Brody, president of Johns Hopkins University. The report lists numerous working groups in addition to these leadership committees, and hundreds attended the “National Innovation Initiative Summit” in December 2004 to discuss the Initiative’s recommendations.3
The scope of the Innovate America report was far broader than the two reports that followed and are discussed later, as it addressed the entire “innovation ecosystem” of the U.S. economy. Its recommendations included improvements in U.S. “infrastructure,” including support for innovative manufacturing, national prizes for innovation, improvements to the U.S. patent system, and expansion of integrated health data systems. In addition there were recommendations under the heading “investment” that included expanded federal support for the physical sciences and engineering, a permanent and restructured research and development (R&D) tax credit for corporations, increased tax incentives favoring early-stage risk capital provided by angel networks and seed capital funds, and reforms in the U.S. tort system. Under its third main heading of “talent,” Innovate America noted that K-12 education was not its primary focus,4 but did make recommendations for U.S. higher education including federal funding for at least 5,000 new portable graduate fellowships in science and engineering, tax deductions for private sector scholarships for U.S. undergraduates in science and engineering, expansion of Professional Science Master’s programs at U.S. universities, and measures to attract international science and engineering students and provide them with work permits. As we shall see, these latter recommendations had much in common with those embraced by the two later reports issued by other organizations that same year.
Table 1.1. Members of Principals Committee, National Innovation Initiative
Samuel J. Palmisano, Co-Chair
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, IBM Corporation
G. Wayne Clough, Co-Chair
President, Georgia Institute of Technology
Gerard J. Arpey
Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President, AMR and American Airlines
Lee C. Bollinger
President, Columbia University
Molly Corbett Broad
President, University of North Carolina
Michael J. Burns
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Dana Corporation
Mary Sue Coleman
President, University of Michigan
Denis A. Cortese
President and Chief Executive Officer, Mayo Clinic
The Honorable Robert M. Gates
President, Texas A&M University
Sheryl Handler
Chief Executive Officer, Ab Initio
John L. Hennessy
President, Stanford University
The Honorable Shirley Ann Jackson
President, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Vikram Pandit
President and Chief Operating Officer, Institutional Securities and Investment Banking Group, Morgan Stanley
Steven S. Reinemund
Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, PepsiCo, Inc.
W. J. Sanders III
Founder and Chairman Emeritus, Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
Ivan G. Seidenberg
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Verizon
Kevin W. Sharer
Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, and President, Amgen, Inc.
Charles M. Vest
President, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
G. Richard Wagoner, Jr.
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, General Motors Corporation
Tapping America’s Potential (TAP)
The TAP report, a declarative pamphlet only nineteen pages long, was produced in July 2005 by a coalition of industry associations led by the Business Roundtable, “an association of chief executive officers of leading U.S. companies with more than over $6 trillion in annual revenues and more than 14 million employees.”5 Its signatories included fourteen other politically influential business organizations such as the National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
The report was addressed “To Leaders Who Care about America’s Future.” It began with an expression of “deep concern” about the ability of the United States to sustain its leadership in science and technology and thereby to maintain its economic competitiveness. In response to such concerns, it called for a rapid doubling of the number of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics graduates earning bachelor’s degrees during the decade from 2005 to 2015.
Its perspective and recommendations were succinctly summarized in its first few paragraphs:
Fifteen of our country’s most prominent business organizations have joined together to express our deep concern about the United States’ ability to sustain its scientific and technological superiority through this decade and beyond. To maintain our country’s competitiveness in the 21st century, we must cultivate the skilled scientists and engineers needed to create tomorrow’s innovations.
Our goal is to double the number of science, technology, engineering and mathematics graduates with bachelor’s degrees by 2015.6
The United States is in a fierce contest with other nations to remain the world’s scientific leader. But other countries are demonstrating a greater commitment to building their brainpower.
The TAP report began with the ominous (and factually correct) observation that “History is replete with examples of world economies that once were dominant but declined because of myopic, self-determined choices.” It then focused on what it called “the critical situation in U.S. science, technology, engineering and mathematics.” It pointed to numerous “warning signs,” including waning achievement and interest in science and mathematics among U.S. students; higher interest in science and engineering among competitor nations such as China; rising production of engineers in such countries; increasing dependence in the United States on foreign-born scientists and engineers; and lagging government support for basic research in the physical sciences.
The report argued that it is essential for the United States to maintain its competitiveness in the twenty-first century, and that to do so it must create a new “National Education for Innovation Initiative,” a “21st-century version of the post-Sputnik national commitment to strengthen science, technology, engineering and math education.” To this end it urged a “public/private partnership to promote, fund and execute a new National Education for Innovation Initiative … [that] must be broader than the 1958 [post-Sputnik] National Defense Education Act because federal legislation is only one component of a larger, more comprehensive agenda.”7 A primary goal would be to enhance the attractiveness of K-12 science and math teaching as a career, so as to “cultivate the skilled scientists and engineers needed to create tomorrow’s innovations.”8
Though the report was brief, it contained numerous recommendations addressed to federal, state, and local governments, along with business. All of its recommendations were designed to dramatically increase the number of scientists and engineers entering the U.S. workforce, by:
• Building public support for making science, technology, engineering, and math improvement a national priority.
• Motivating more U.S. students and adults to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
• Upgrading K-12 math and science teaching to foster higher student achievement.
• Reforming immigration policies to attract and retain the “best and brightest” STEM students from around the world to study for advanced degrees and stay to work in the United States.
• Boosting and sustaining funding for basic research, especially in the physical sciences and engineering.9
The coalition of sponsoring business organizations embraced an ambitious (though never explained) quantitative goal for this education initiative. Indeed it printed this goal very prominently on the Report’s front cover: “Double the number of science, technology, engineering and mathematics graduates by 2015”—that is, increase the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded by U.S. colleges and universities in these fields by 100 percent within a decade of the report’s 2005 publication date.
The Business Roundtable subsequently published an update in 2008, subtitled “Gaining Momentum, Losing Ground.” It also maintains a website for its campaign to double the number of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics graduates by 2015, headlined by a revolving planet Earth with the caption “Are We Falling Behind?”10
Cover of 2005 report Tapping America’s Potential: The Education for Innovation Initiative.
Source: Washington, DC: Business Roundtable, 2005.
Rising above the Gathering Storm (“Gathering Storm”)
The third report was produced with unusual rapidity by the National Research Council (NRC), the executive arm of the National Academies.11 An early draft was completed and circulated in October 2005, only a few months following the July publication of the TAP report. The final hard-copy volume, at 592 pages far longer and more detailed than the TAP report, was published by the National Academies Press in 2007.
The membership of this committee was dominated by current or former CEOs of large corporations and leading research universities. The report itself was both more detailed in its arguments and more restrained in its tone than Tapping America’s Potential, although it did use evocative language such as the “Gathering Storm” metaphor in its title, “creeping crisis,” “disturbing mosaic,” and “the possibility that our lack of preparation will reduce the ability of the United States to compete in such a [globalizing] world.”
The impetus for this report, and the process by which it was produced, both were quite unusual for the National Academies/National Research Council. The ad hoc committee was appointed in response to a request to the National Academies from four prominent members of Congress—all of whom were senior members of the relevant congressional committees.12 They asked the Academies for prompt responses (within ten weeks) to the following questions:
• What are the top ten actions, in priority order, that federal policymakers could take to enhance the science and technology enterprise so that the United States can successfully compete, prosper, and be secure in the global community of the twenty-first century?
• What implementation strategy, with several concrete steps, could be used to implement each of those actions?
The National Research Council responded quickly by appointing a twenty-person ad hoc “Committee on Prospering in the Global Economy of the 21st Century.” The committee was chaired by Norman R. Augustine, the respected former chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin Corporation and former Under Secretary of the Army, and included five current or former chairmen or CEOs of very large corporations.13 The other fifteen members included five current or former presidents of major research universities;14 six academic scientists or engineers, including three Nobelists;15 three senior executives from National Laboratories and a leading pharmaceutical firm; a state superintendent of schools; and the founder of a foundation focused on strengthening education and research in science, mathematics, and engineering in Texas. (For a full listing of committee members, see table 1.2.)
In its report, the Gathering Storm committee honorably noted that the very short timetable required by the congressional request meant that it had been unable to undertake careful data collection and analyses of its own. Under these circumstances all of its recommendations had to be based upon the “consensus views and judgments of the committee members,” bolstered by a necessarily rapidly prepared review of existing literature prepared by National Research Council (NRC) staff.16 In short, this was hardly the kind of careful and deliberate analysis that would normally be expected from a National Research Council report; in the time available to the committee, it could not be. The draft report produced in this way was reviewed by thirty-seven experts invited by the National Research Council; these reviews too had to be completed in a highly expedited fashion.17
Given these conditions, it is perhaps not surprising that the Gathering Storm report’s conclusions and recommendations were very close indeed to two other reports on the topic published only a few months earlier. It is also worth noting that there were nontrivial overlaps in the membership and staffing of the Innovate America and Gathering Storm reports: three participants served as members of both the “Principals Committee” for Innovate America and of the Gathering Storm committee; the chair of the Gathering Storm committee had co-chaired Innovate America’s advisory committee; and at least one person (David Attis) served as director, Policy Studies for Innovate America and as policy consultant for the Gathering Storm report.18 It is impossible to know if these overlaps contributed to the similarity of these reports’ recommendations. (For a side-by-side comparison of these report’s key recommendations, see table 1.3.)
Conclusions of the NRC Report “Rising Above the Gathering Storm”
Any brief summary of the nearly 600-page report Rising Above the Gathering Storm would include the following key conclusions:
• Multiple trends variously described as a “quiet crisis,” a “disturbing mosaic,” or a “creeping crisis” suggest that the United States will be unable to compete in a globalizing world.
• These trends are “developing slowly but surely, each like a tile in a mosaic,” due to failure to invest sufficiently over the long term in science and technology.”19
Table 1.2. Membership of Committee on Prospering in the Global Economy of the Twenty-first Century, National Research Council
Norman R. Augustine
(Chair), Retired Chairman and CEO, Lockheed Martin Corporation, Bethesda, Maryland
Craig R. Barrett
Chairman of the Board, Intel Corporation, Chandler, Arizona
Gail Cassell
Vice President, Scientific Affairs, and Distinguished Lilly Research Scholar for Infectious Diseases, Eli Lilly and Company, Indianapolis, Indiana
Steven Chu
Director, E. O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California
Robert M. Gates
President, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas
Nancy S. Grasmick
Maryland State Superintendent of Schools, Baltimore, Maryland
Charles O. Holliday, Jr.
Chairman of the Board and CEO, DuPont Company, Wilmington, Delaware
Shirley Ann Jackson
President, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York
Anita K. Jones
Lawrence R. Quarles Professor of Engineering and Applied Science, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia
Joshua Lederberg
Sackler Foundation Scholar, Rockefeller University, New York, New York
Richard Levin
President, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
C. D. (Dan) Mote, Jr.
President, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland
Cherry Murray
Deputy Director for Science and Technology, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California
Peter O’Donnell, Jr.
President, O’Donnell Foundation, Dallas, Texas
Lee R. Raymond
Chairman and CEO, Exxon Mobil Corporation, Irving, Texas
Robert C. Richardson
F. R. Newman Professor of Physics and Vice Provost for Research, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
P. Roy Vagelos
Retired Chairman and CEO, Merck, Whitehouse Station, New Jersey
Charles M. Vest
President Emeritus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts
George M. Whitesides
Woodford L. & Ann A. Flowers University Professor, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Richard N. Zare
Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor in Natural Science, Stanford University, Stanford, California
Table 1.3. Parallel Report Recommendations
| Innovate America (May 2005) | Tapping America’s Potential (July 2005) | Rising Above the Gathering Storm (October 2005) |
|
• More S&E undergrad/grad Incentivize universities Tax deductions for S&E scholarships • 5000 new portable graduate fellowships • More S&E immigrants • More research funding • Permanent, restructured R&D tax credit • More Professional Science Master’s programs |
• More/better K–12 teachers • More S&E undergrad/grad ° More scholarships & loan-forgiveness at all levels • More S&E immigrants • More research funding |
• More/better K–12 teachers • More S&E scholarships ° +25,000 4-yr undergraduate ° +5,000 3-yr graduate • More S&E immigrants • More research funding • Double R&D tax credit |
• Human capital in science and engineering is the most essential long-term need of all economies, and the U.S. K-12 education system does “not seem able to produce enough students with the interest, motivation, knowledge, and skills they will need to compete and prosper in the emerging world.”20
• Lower percentages of U.S. undergraduates pursue science and engineering degrees than in other countries. U.S. student interest in science and engineering has been waning, whereas students throughout much of the world see careers in science and engineering as the path to a better future.21
• The result is shortages of domestic scientists and engineers. The resulting gaps have been filled by foreign graduate scientists and engineers.
• Without intervention, “the nation could have difficulty meeting its need for scientists and engineers” if the number of foreign-born graduate students decreases as well.22
The tone of the Gathering Storm report is best conveyed by direct quotes from the report text itself. Under the heading “A Disturbing Mosaic,” the NRC Committee offered the following summary of the views of its members:
An educated, innovative, motivated workforce—human capital—is the most precious resource of any country in this new, flat world. Yet there is widespread concern about our K-12 science and mathematics education system, the foundation of that human capital in today’s global economy…. Students in the United States are not keeping up with their counterparts in other countries…. After secondary school, fewer US students pursue science and engineering degrees than is the case of students in other countries.
The domestic and world economies depend more and more on science and engineering. But our primary and secondary schools do not seem able to produce enough students with the interest, motivation, knowledge, and skills they will need to compete and prosper in the emerging world.23 The United States ranks 16 of 17 nations in the proportion of 24-year-olds who earn degrees in natural sciences or engineering as opposed to other majors … and 20 of 24 nations when looking at all 24-year-olds…. The number of bachelor’s degrees awarded in the United States fluctuates greatly…. About 30% of students entering college in the United States (more than 95% of them US citizens or permanent residents) intend to major in science or engineering. That proportion has remained fairly constant over the past 20 years. However, undergraduate programs in those disciplines report the lowest retention rates among all academic disciplines, and very few students transfer into these fields from others. Throughout the 1990s, fewer than half of undergraduate students who entered college intending to earn a science or engineering major completed a degree in one of those subjects. Undergraduates who opt out of those programs by switching majors are often among the most highly qualified college entrants, and they are disproportionately women and students of color. The implication is that potential science or engineering majors become discouraged well before they can join the workforce.24
There is still ample reason for concern about the future. A number of analysts expect to see a leveling off of the number of US-born students in graduate programs. If the number of foreign-born graduate students decreases as well, absent some substantive intervention, the nation could have difficulty meeting its need for scientists and engineers.25
Based on such views, the committee called for an ambitious array of new public policies to reverse these trends. These included:
• Make large government investments to “vastly improve” K-12 science and mathematics education, including annual recruitment of “10,000 science and mathematics teachers by awarding four-year scholarships and thereby educating 10 million minds,” while also strengthening the skills of 250,000 current K-12 teachers through in-service training programs and economic incentives.
• Increase federal investment in long-term basic research by 10 percent each year for the next seven years.
• Increase the number and proportion of U.S. citizens who earn bachelor’s and doctoral degrees in science, mathematics, and engineering by providing 25,000 new undergraduate scholarships and 5,000 new graduate fellowships each year.
• For foreign students who receive U.S. doctorates in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, or other fields of national need, extend visas by one year, and provide automatic work permits and expedited permanent residence visas if they are offered jobs by U.S.-based employers.
• At the same time institute a new skills-based, preferential immigration option.
As measured by direct impacts on specific legislation, the Gathering Storm report can be fairly described as one of the most politically influential reports ever produced by a National Research Council committee. Of course not all of its recommendations were enacted into law, but the four members of Congress who had requested this short-cycle report quickly transformed many of its recommendations into legislative language and introduced bills for congressional consideration, joining other pending legislative proposals on related topics.
After some delay caused by the vagaries of the legislative process, many of these recommendations were adopted by the U.S. Congress and signed by the president as part of the America COMPETES Act of 2007.26 The Act authorized new or greatly expanded federal research funding for the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Science, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), with the research budgets for NSF and DOE to be doubled over ten years. At the K-12 level it authorized new grants to expand and improve teaching of science and mathematics and to better align it with postsecondary education, twenty-first-century workforce needs, and the Armed Forces. At the postgraduate level it authorized major expansions of NSF graduate research fellowship and traineeship programs, and mandated the NSF to facilitate development of professional science master’s degree programs.27
The America COMPETES Act was “authorizing legislation,” the first stage of the two-key U.S. legislative funding process—well-known for its complexity and apparent disorder, and often confusing to those not directly involved in it. Such “authorizations” can only enable the expenditures specified, but do not provide the needed funds. This requires passage of separate “appropriations” legislation, and this two-key legislative process had direct impact in this case. While many of the Gathering Storm report recommendations were indeed quickly incorporated into the authorizing language of the America COMPETES Act, the rapid pace with which the Gathering Storm recommendations were incorporated into law was then brought to a sudden halt by an unrelated legislative impasse that froze most of the annual appropriations bills during 2008.
During 2009, as the sharply negative consequences of the global financial crisis became apparent, appropriation bills were passed that incorporate funds for most of the expenditures authorized by the COMPETES Act, though only over the ensuing two-year period. These time-limited appropriations were part of the emergency economic stimulus legislation passed in 2009 under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), which allocated substantial additional government expenditures during fiscal years 2009 and 2010 that proponents hoped would counteract rising unemployment and declining economic activity. Hence, though delayed by the appropriations impasse during 2008, the TAP and Gathering Storm reports can fairly be described as having achieved striking legislative success as part of the emergency economic stimulus. The additional funds appropriated were short-term only, however. It remains to be seen if the two reports’ longer-term recommendations will be followed in the ensuing years.
Reprise: In 2010 the presidents of the three National Academies invited available members of the original Gathering Storm committee to provide a five-year update on the context and events since the original report was drafted in 2005. The update was drafted by the committee chair, Norman R. Augustine, and then refined by those members of the 2005 committee who were available.28 Its conclusions were stated in brief and declarative language, building upon the “Gathering Storm” metaphor of the original report to forecast a storm of even greater power and destructiveness than had been anticipated in 2005:
So where does America stand relative to its position of five years ago when the Gathering Storm report was prepared? The unanimous view of the committee members participating in the preparation of this report is that our nation’s outlook has worsened. While progress has been made in certain areas—for example, launching of Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy—the latitude to fix the problems being confronted has been severely diminished by the growth of the national debt over this period from $9 trillion to $13 trillion.
Further, in spite of sometimes heroic efforts and occasional very bright spots, our overall public school system … has shown little sign of improvement, particularly in mathematics and science. Finally, many other nations have been markedly progressing, thereby affecting America’s relative ability to compete effectively for new factories, research laboratories, administrative centers—and jobs….
The Gathering Storm Committee’s overall conclusion is that in spite of the efforts of both those in government and the private sector, the outlook for America to compete for quality jobs has further deteriorated over the past five years.
The Gathering Storm increasingly appears to be a Category 5.29
It was notable that the committee chose to build upon the metaphorical title of its original report by adding a vividly ominous metaphor to its subtitle—“Rapidly Approaching Category 5.” This presumably refers to the catastrophic impacts of the most destructive category of hurricanes classified in the National Weather Service’s Hurricane Wind Scale.30 The destructive potential of a Category 5 hurricane is impressive: for example Hurricane Andrew, a Category 5 storm when it made landfall in South Florida in 1992, devastated the city of Homestead and surrounding areas and caused $48 billion in damage.31
Criticism of the Gathering Storm Report
Since publication of the Gathering Storm report in 2007, several empirical assessments of its data and analyses have been undertaken. Most have not been able to find credible evidence in support of the report’s concerns about insufficiency in the numbers or quality of scientists and engineers being produced by U.S. higher education.
A 2007 paper by B. Lindsay Lowell and Hal Salzman examined the available empirical evidence about both the performance of U.S. K-12 students in science and mathematics, and the sufficiency of supply of graduates in these fields.32 In brief, their conclusions are:
Domestic and international trends suggest that U.S. schools show steady improvement in math and science, the U.S. is not at any particular disadvantage compared with most nations, and the supply of S&E-qualified graduates is large and ranks among the best internationally. Further, the number of undergraduates completing S&E studies has grown, and the number of S&E graduates remains high by historical standards.33
Their interpretation of the available data is that the average performance levels of U.S. K-12 students on international science and math exams is in the “moderate” range—neither high nor low. They find that this “moderate” average is a consequence not of weak or failing performance of those in the upper quartile, who are the most likely to pursue careers in these fields. To the contrary, their performance on these exams is strong. Instead, the U.S. average is pulled down to its “moderate” levels by the very poor performance at the lower end of the distribution.
Like most other quantitative analysts, Lowell and Salzman could find no credible evidence of insufficient supply of scientists and engineers in the U.S. workforce. To the contrary:
Analysis of the flow of students up through the S&E pipeline, when it reaches the labor market, suggests the education system produces qualified graduates far in excess of demand: S&E occupations make up only about one-twentieth of all workers, and each year there are more than three times as many S&E four-year college graduates as S&E job openings.34
The authors do express support for efforts to improve average math and science education at the K-12 level, but do so out of concern for the needs of poorly performing students in the lower quartiles. They note however that given the above supply/demand situation, “such a strategy may not be the most efficient means of supplying the S&E workforce.” They therefore conclude that:
The available evidence points, first, to a need for targeted education policy, to focus on the populations in the lower portion of the performance distribution. Second, the seemingly more-than-adequate supply of qualified college graduates suggests a need for better understanding why the “demand side” fails to induce more graduates into the S&E workforce. Third, public and private investment should be balanced between domestic development of S&E workforce supply and global collaboration as a longer-term goal.35
A 2012 book by Yu Xie and Alexandra Killewald36 also addresses the subject of the Gathering Storm, as indicated by its title: Is American Science in Decline?37 It analyzes some of the same data studied by Lowell and Salzman, and offers a number of similar conclusions along with some differing interpretations.
Specifically, Xie and Killewald found no evidence of general shortages of scientists and engineers in the U.S. workforce. They agree that U.S. higher education routinely awards more degrees in science and engineering than can be employed in science and engineering occupations. However, they differ from Lowell and Salzman and from the National Science Board’s Science and Engineering Indicators in arguing that the ratio of individuals with science or engineering degrees to those employed in science and engineering occupations is more like 2:1 than 3:1.38 This difference is due to Xie and Killewald’s decision to exclude the social sciences from the “science and engineering” category that is defined by the National Science Board and used by Lowell and Salzman. This also leads to higher completion rates among undergraduates who enter such science and engineering majors so defined, and higher rates of continuation into graduate degree programs among those who complete undergraduate degrees.
With respect to K-12 education, Xie and Killewald’s analysis suggests that, when controlled for economic prosperity, the performance of U.S. K-12 students in internationally comparative studies such as TIMSS and PISA39 is slightly below what might be expected in mathematics and slightly above in science. However, when compared to the two top-performing countries in TIMSS (Singapore and Hong Kong), U.S. performance “appears poor.” In the PISA data, U.S. performance is somewhat lower in relative terms; in this study the top performers are “Chinese Taipei” (i.e., Taiwan) and Finland.
It should be noted that Xie and Killewald do not consider the possible distortions in such international comparisons of “average” performance that may result from the unusually high degree of inequality in U.S. K-12 education and the poor performance of its lowest student quartile, previously discussed. Nor do they stress the “city-state” nature of both Singapore and Hong Kong.
Overall, Xie and Killewald answer the question posed in their book’s title with the conclusion that U.S. science (and engineering) is not in decline. Instead, U.S. science and engineering continue to strengthen and to maintain their positions as global leaders in many areas. They also find no sign of decline in the quality of U.S. K-12 education in science and mathematics; to the contrary they find it has been improving. At the same time, other countries that have lagged behind while the United States dominated global science and engineering have been catching up, and if their more rapid rates of improvement are sustained over many years, the United States may lose the dominant role it has held since World War II.40
Summary and Conclusions
The most credible evidence available is that at K-12 levels (or more specifically at middle and high school levels), the United States is by no means a world leader in average (or mean) student performance in science and mathematics. In comparison with other advanced countries, the average level of U.S. educational performance in these fields would best be described as “moderate” or even “mediocre.”
These averages, however, disguise unusually high disparities in U.S. primary and secondary education. The performance in science and mathematics demonstrated by the top quartile of U.S. students is very strong, but the performance of the lowest quartile is very weak. In short, U.S. student performance in science and mathematics is unequal to a degree that may be unique among economically comparable countries.
Most countries in which average performance exceeds that of the United States show distributions of student performance that are much more homogeneous. In particular the lowest quartile of their students perform far better than does the lower quartile of U.S. students, although the performance of their top quartiles may be lower than that of the U.S. top quartile. There are many candidate explanations for these persistent educational inequalities in the United States: large economic inequalities, the heavy reliance upon local taxation to finance public schools, the absence of effective national, regional, or state mechanisms for raising the performance of the lowest-performing schools and students, and other factors as well.
Reduction of these very large differences between the top and bottom U.S. quartiles would be highly desirable in every respect. Competence in science and mathematics is essential to being adequately educated in the twenty-first century. The vexing challenge is in the “how”: K-12 education in science and mathematics in the United States is, nearly uniquely among advanced industrialized countries, under the control of state and local governments, and indeed most of the (very large) financial resources devoted to this level of education come from state and local tax revenues. The governors of nearly all states have proclaimed that improvement of K-12 education is one of their highest priorities, and successive presidents and Congresses have devoted substantial political and financial capital to such efforts. State and federal initiatives, including “No Child Left Behind” and “Race to the Top,” have provided large increases in financial support, but have proved to be politically controversial. Progress across states and local school districts has been highly uneven. While additional increases in federal funding and teacher training may be highly desirable if funds are available from constricted budgets, it would be wise to be skeptical that they will be able to cut or untie the Gordian Knot of U.S. K-12 education policy.
For the purposes of this volume, we must note that much recent discourse has tended to conflate the “moderate” or “mediocre” performance on average of U.S. K-12 students with the adequacy of the future U.S. science and engineering workforce. This is a sloppy argument, in part because it fails to recognize that the obviously large disparities in K-12 education mean that combining the very poor performance of the bottom quartile of U.S. students with the high performance of the upper quartile drives the overall averages downward, especially when compared to comparably advanced countries with greater homogeneity in their educational outcomes. Yet it is a fact that only a very small fraction of most countries’ workforces are engaged in occupations that require high levels of science and mathematics—on the order of 5–10 percent—almost all of whom are drawn from the highest-performing student quartile. The poor performance of the bottom quartile is a very legitimate cause for real concern in terms of equality of opportunity and the overall education of the future citizenry and workforce, but it has rather less to say than might be supposed about the implications for the future U.S. science and engineering workforce.
Finally, there is a persistent tendency toward use of excessive language in public pronouncements about this subject. Phrases such as “the gathering storm” that is “now approaching Category 5” might suggest urgent and legitimate alarm about the serious, even catastrophic, damage that would result if current patterns were to continue.”41 They may also reflect however simply an astute assessment by sophisticated proponents as to just how difficult it is to capture the attention of U.S. political leaders about important education issues that really do need to be addressed. In the cacophony of U.S. political debates, screaming may be required if one wishes to be heard.