Oct. 14, 2005

Math and Science Brain Drain?

There has been much wringing of hands and speech making about perceived declines in the number and quality of Americans prepared to work and do research in the so-called STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, and the implications of that trend for the country’s standing in the world economy. A federal report released Thursday aims to lay out exactly what federal programs are in place to educate and produce technologically skilled graduates and what might be done to prime the pump.

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It finds, for instance, that 13 federal agencies spent a total of $2.8 billion in 2004 on programs designed, at least in part, to “increase the numbers of students and graduates pursuing STEM degrees and occupations or improve educational programs in STEM fields.” About half of the programs and about two-thirds of the funds were through the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.

In addition, from the 1995-96 academic year to the 2003-4 academic year, the report finds, the number of students enrolled in science, technology, and math fields increased by 21 percent (compared to an increase of 11 percent in other fields), and the proportion of all students enrolled in STEM disciplines rose to 23 percent from 21 percent. There were even increases in the number of students from underrepresented minority groups in the fields – the representation of African American students grew by 69 percent and of Hispanic students by 33 percent, the study reveals.

But those overall statistics mask some problems. Most of the growth in the number of students enrolled in scientific fields occurred among bachelor’s and master’s degree students, while the number of students enrolled in doctoral programs in those fields actually declined, as evident in the following table:

Students Enrolled in STEM Fields, by Level

	1995-96	2003-4
Bachelor’s	2,218,510	2,876,721
Master’s	321,293	403,200
Doctoral	217,395	198,504

The GAO study also suggests that insufficient evidence is available to gauge the effectiveness of the programs on which the various agencies are now spending $2.8 billion.

Based on interviews with officials at numerous colleges and agencies, as well as some representative students, the report offers several suggestions for encouraging more students to go into STEM fields and ensuring that they come out of college better prepared. They included:

Mandating more and better mathematics and science courses in high school.
Improving the quality of teacher education and preparation in scientific disciplines.
Offering more outreach to women and minority students during the elementary and secondary years, and to community college students.
Enhancing the role of the federal government in creating a national agenda for science and technology education and providing more funds for academic research, perhaps along the lines of the National Defense Education Act of 1958.

— Doug Lederman

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Comments

News flash: hard work & discipline required

Much has been made about the STEM crisis, though one wonders if the vaunted USA dominance was due having survived WWII intact. Having endured, and watched the effects of, “new” methods in STEM, let me suggest a return to basics.

Example: this month’s AFT Journal on math-ed cites research on all-Asian classrooms and their expectations on order, discipline, and structure. This, as opposed to my K-12 classrooms, which lacked substantial structure (a.k.a., “fad of the moment") and discipline.

Let those who want to try the “fad of the moment” start their own charter schools. Let those who want to stick to the basics have theirs. The results will be self-evident over time.

B.J.S., Survivor at “Fad of the Moment”, at 8:26 am EDT on October 14, 2005

Where is the bad news?

The numbers in the table show an increase in students enrolled in STEM fields at the BS and MS levels. Aren’t these individuals the bulk of the workforce? Hence, preparation for work doesn’t sound like an issue.

The research issue does make sense. The number of Phd level students decreased according to the table and that is a problem.

The researchers lead the way in the adoption of new technologies and the advancement of the STEM fields in this country.

Some of the focus of the report committee should probably be on increasing the desire among students to pursue a Phd!

Regards, Donnell Duncan, Founder and President, The Cracked Door, “If the Door is Cracked, the Door is Open!”

Donnell, Civil Engineering (Structures) Graduate at Georgia Instititute of Technology, at 8:45 am EDT on October 14, 2005

Facing up to global realities

According to a page-one story, “Inside Pentagon, A Scholar Shapes Views of China,” Neil King Jr, [The Wall Street Journal, September 8, 2005], Beijing sees the U.S. as a military foe. But why fight the best customer for your textile and manufactured products? And, why would China ever want to fight a military war against the United States rather than waging a less painful and more profitable economic war against an adversary that is not only losing its edge in R&D, but also is preoccupied with fun and games? In China, the study of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEMs) is considered to be a patriotic duty — providing a robust pipeline of human resources for R&D. This will be China’s real army — fighting to dominate the technology-driven, global economy that is both expanding and becoming evermore complex. It seems that only in seemingly complacent America can we find a general public that views sports as super cool while STEMs are considered to be nerdy/geeky at best. Worse yet, greed, fanatic sports fans, an apathetic public and inconsistent government policies allow the commercially driven college sports enterprise to grow unchecked, all but guaranteeing an expanding set of fun-loving consumers for the college sports entertainment business that has hijacked the academic mission of many of our universities. In the future. there will be no room at the table for societies that remain clueless — asleep at the switch or preoccupied with other things. Meanwhile in China, English is becoming big business as the country’s growing middle class pays to learn the language of global commerce [The Wall Street Journal, p A15, September 15, 2005].

Also, the drive for incremental (quarter-to-quarter) profit improvements “demanded” by Wall Street has resulted in all too many short-term-thinking CEOs that strive to keep their jobs by pleasing the ’street.’ Most of these CEOs curtail investment in innovation-breeding incubators and long-term projects —even abandoning R&D. A science and math brain drain, who really cares? If the US businesses continue in this mode, R&D will be conducted in labs far from America. Such actions ripple down — reducing the demand for engineers and scientists and STEM students. It is surprising how quickly students perceive change and alter their choice of a major to follow the money. There has been a large fall off of CS students and ECE is also declining. Look for more of America’s young folks to become lawyers and financial persons unless we can develop turnaround strategies and tactics.

All but forgotten are the sobering words of the January 2001, Hart-Rudman Commission Report: ” ... the the inadequacies of our systems of research and education pose a greater threat to U.S. national security over the next quarter century than any potential conventional war that we might imagine.”

America must face up to its shortcomings and adapt to global realities. So, what do we, as a nation, need to be thinking about if we are going to continue as a dominant player on the world stage in the 21st century? Might I suggest that we need to begin thinking about STEMs and STEMs literacy in a global context for they are the ‘tools’ of modern-day economic warfare? Pentagon strategists need balance the input from high-cost ‘China scholars’ with a relatively low-cost reading of two best-selling books, Thomas Friedman’s, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, and Jared Diamond’s, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. Perhaps they will see that what we did to the Soviet Union during the Cold War is now being done to us There should not only be concern at the Pentagon, but also at the highest levels of our government — concern that things are moving in a direction where America could very well be a net loser in a modern-day economic war. The good news is that a democracy has as one of its fundamental strengths the ability to bring great ideas, innovation and individual initiative, into what could otherwise be a failing system. But democracy is only as strong as the people who are willing to keep it vital and ever evolving. We all need to rise to the challenge.

Frank G. Splitt, McCormick Faculty Fellow at Northwestern University, at 12:37 pm EDT on October 14, 2005

Cold War vs. china

I don’t think that the comparison between how we beat the Russians and how the Chinese are “beating” us is accurate. Nor do I think its fair to call our trading relationship a war.

The way we beat the Russians is by having a freer, more open and less regulated market, while their economy was a mess. Our strong market gave us the resources to outbuild their miliatary until the state collapsed trying to keep up.

The Chinese are in no position, and likely never will be, to do the same to us. Our military spending is a small portion of the GDP, and our government is stable and unlikely to fail (anarchist rants about the end of government being near aside).

Kevin, Undergraduate, at 7:50 pm EDT on October 16, 2005

A strong prediction there

Kevin,

As someone with his first two degrees in STEM fields, I invite you to print out and post your strong prediction about China and the US on your desk so that you can look at it each and every day as you go through your career after college. It may provide some comfort to you in the very rough years that are coming soon to an advanced “hyperpower” nation near you.

JMG, at 2:20 pm EDT on October 19, 2005

Cutting Through the B.S.

Sorry, but as usual my response is a personal treatise.

In 1968 I completed the course work for a Ph.D. in mathematics, passed the qualifying exams, and began working on a dissertation in point-set topology (quasi-uniform spaces). The time I invested protesting the U.S. war against Viet Nam inspired me to consider the (ir)relevance of what I was doing, so I switched over to Education Research and Evaluation. Had it not been for the intellectual mediocrity of that professional culture, I would have spent my academic career assessing important issues of public education. No big deal ... the compatriots I left behind in mathematics were completing their Ph.D.’s and sending out 200 – 300 (mostly unsolicited) letters of application ... and without a bite.

I completed the course work for a Ph.D. in Ed. Research and passed the qualifying exams. Nevertheless, I was unable to find an advisor with an interest in the research problems I thought were both exiting and important. On the advice of one of my professors (he was 24-years-old), I switched over to statistics, and, as usual, completed the course work for a Ph.D., passed the qualifying exams, and, this time, actually wrote a dissertation (multivariate probability models of public choice ... a mushy discipline that fits somewhere between economics and political science and, if you know a little mathematics — emphasis on “little” – is the proverbial “piece of cake” ... even for Nobel laureates). Little did I know that I was going on the market at a time when practically everyone in the world thought he could not get along without a statistician ... and while my old pals in mathematics were still struggling to find work.

Starting in 1966, I had tenure-track positions in mathematics (Virginia Tech), statistics and political science (West Virginia), political science (Yale), director of instructional programs at the Institute for Social Research (Michigan), mathematics and political science (UNC-Asheville), statistics and management science (Michigan), and had a soft money research appointment in statistics at Princeton. In addition, I spent almost fifteen years providing workshop development and facilitation in the technical side of total quality management – a la W. Edwards Deming – for what used to be known as the automotive Big Three ... and before they foolishly squandered their business acumen by following what they thought was the insight of a variety of light-weight business school management gurus.

What I find quite interesting is that, at 68 years of age, I cannot find an academic position. Lederman may be exorcized by the number of young folks in the U.S. today who are not enthused about careers in STEM, but I would be hard pressed to recommend it as a career choice for a young person today. One of my sons is a software design engineer for Hewlett-Packard. The other is a junior in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) at the University of Michigan and is considering the possibility of pursuing a Ph.D. I encourage him, but, quite frankly, I am more than a little disappointed that he made that choice after completing his sophomore year as an A-student in physics at Michigan.

“STEM” is a terrible acronym. Science (physics, chemistry, and biology) and mathematics are light years away from technology and engineering. I had always hoped for the “SM” part of STEM for my sons and they both chose the “TE” part. And what about the Chinese and Indians ... and to a lesser degree the Russians and even the Irish. Well Lederman (and my sons) had better watch out for them. They’re much more concerned about proficiency than self-esteem, the raison d’état of American education.

Now back to the personal part of this diatribe. During the past four years my teacher evaluations – teaching mathematics (operations research and supply chain management) and statistics (including time series analysis) to business school students – have been in excess of 4.5/5.0. Yet I cannot find a job in academe. I am writing a book about the logical and intellectual poverty of six-sigma quality (a big-time driver of the rather pathetic U.S. business community); but it falls on deaf ears.

We weep about the number of mathematicians and scientists available to nurture the next generation of the same in the United States, but ageism is so pervasive in our academic culture that we eliminate a significant number of individuals who have both the intellect and the initiative to address those issues but are older than the typical sociologist (who could apparently serve the same purpose).

So what would I advise a young person currently thinking about his or her professional future? I can’t say for sure, but I were a student today, I would go to some pains to avoid being in a competitive position with a youngster currently being educated in India ... or China ... or even Ireland.

RWH, at 7:54 pm EDT on October 26, 2005

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Math and Science Brain Drain?

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Comments

News flash: hard work & discipline required

Where is the bad news?

Facing up to global realities

Cold War vs. china

A strong prediction there

Cutting Through the B.S.

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Instructor Medical University of South Carolina

Radiologic Technologist — 3257X Saint Louis University

Clinical Nurse Administrator Yale University

Relief Pharmacist, Student Health Services University of Idaho

Assistant to the Executive Director, External Affairs New York University

Assistant Professor of Immunology University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center-Ninth and Colorado

Assistant Professor, American Politics University of Miami

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Systems Administrator New York University

Coder-Biller Faculty #10726 Daytona State College