February/March 2006

Volume 46, Number 4

Alarming Slide in U.S. Science and Technology

by Sam Omatseye. You can find a short bio of Sam, the newest member of the Technicalities staff, on the Chapter News page of the current issue.

Rising Above The Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future
Committee on Prospering in the Global Economy of the 21st Century: An Agenda for American Science and Technology, National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine. 2006. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press. [ISBN: 0309100399. 504 pages.]

While terrorism may be perceived as the clear and present danger to the American way of life, another threat lurks, which many observers believe to be far more insidious. This threat is what experts in many fields describe as America's slide in science and technology leadership. President George W. Bush outlined this in his State of the Union address. Members of Congress are also agitated, which has prompted them to commission a study by the National Academy of Sciences. The NAS returned its report titled Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Empowering America for a Brighter Economic Future this year.

This is not the first study on the subject. The Electronic Industry Alliance, the Business Roundtable, and the Council of Competitiveness have also unveiled reports that present the same conclusion: that the United States' slide is real, and all resources should be summoned to arrest it as soon as possible.

"It is the unanimous view of our committee that America today faces a serious and intensifying challenge with regard to its future competitiveness and standard of living," said Norman Augustine, retired chairman of Lockheed Martin Corp. before the U.S. House of Representatives. He was one of 20 members who conducted the study for the NAS. In his recent book, The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century, New York Times Columnist Thomas Friedman also hinted at this challenge.

The NAS report also stated that the outsourcing of low- and high-end jobs to some developing countries may just be the tip of the iceberg. The "scientific and technical building blocks of our economic leadership are eroding at a time when many other nations are gathering strength." The United States could lose its lead abruptly and that lead could be difficult to regain, "if indeed it can be regained at all."

The foreign culprits in this drama include China, India, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and a raft of so-called Asian tigers, who are exploiting the high cost of labor and emerging technologies to chip away at US dominance according to the report.

"For the cost of one chemist or one engineer in the United States, a company can hire about five scientists in China or 11 engineers in India," explained the report. "Chemical companies closed 70 facilities in the United States in 2004 and have tagged more for shutdown." In the past few years, the clamor to arrest the outflow of U.S. jobs abroad has been rising, but the outsourcing alone may not explain the slide of science and technology leadership. Outsourcing may be a consequence of practical economics. Cheaper labor abroad is trumping the need to pay costlier employees at home.

In spite of a surge of outsourcing, the United States still enjoys clear advantages over the rest of the world. But outsourcing may create the setting for a slide among other factors. One of the features of outsourcing includes setting up research and development centers in foreign countries. This means that the United States, which has historically provided the bulk of the research dollars available within its borders, may be enabling other countries and citizens to develop tomorrow's cutting-edge ideas, discoveries, and technologies.

Another reason for the slide is that fewer U.S. citizens are majoring in the sciences in college. The report shows that in the major graduate schools in the country, the majority of the students are foreign-born. In the past, foreign students often remained in the country after graduation, and then ploughed their expertise back into the country. Now, however, more and more foreign students return home. With the preponderance of outsourcing of jobs to India, China, and other developing countries, graduates can get the same jobs that America normally offered them. Visa problems can also drive them back home.

The NAS study, which was conducted by 20 professionals in a wide variety of fields, recommended major steps to Congress. They were as follows:

• Increase America's talent pool by boosting K-12 mathematics and science education
• Sustain and strengthen the nation's commitment to long-term basic research
• Develop, recruit, and retain top students and engineers from both the United States and abroad
• Ensure that the United States is the premier place in the world for innovation

Augustine lamented that "our students will not have the purchasing power to support the standard of living which they seek, and to which many have become accustomed; tax revenues will not be generated to provide strong national security and healthcare; and the lack of a vibrant domestic consumer market will provide a disincentive for either U.S. or foreign companies to invest in jobs in America."

The report also calls for the United States to recruit 10,000 science and mathematics teachers with an incentive of four-year scholarships of up to $20,000 per year for majors in mathematics, physical or life sciences, and engineering. Such students will be required to teach K-12 students for five years. A $10,000 bonus will go to those who teach in rural and inner-city schools. "Teachers must gradually be held accountable for majoring in the areas they teach, especially when the areas are math and science, and for demonstrating that they have mastered those subjects by passing rigorous tests," remarked the New York Times in an editorial on January 24, 2006.

To sustain long-term research, the NAS report further recommended a 10-percent increase in federal investment in research each year for seven years. It also suggested new research grants of $500,000 a year for five years to 200 of the sharpest early career researchers. It said the United States should establish a "creative, out-of-the-box transformational generic energy research" without the support of industry.

As a magnet for the smartest students, the NAS recommended 25,000 new undergraduate scholarships of up to $25,000 a year to U.S. students in mathematics and science. To maintain the U.S. lead in innovation, it recommended protection of our intellectual property.

The access to new technologies by developing countries has led to what many see as copycat replications of US inventions and discoveries. In the wireless industries, China claims to have developed what it calls a proprietary technology called TD-SCDMA. But U.S. players believe that it is an adulteration of U.S. products, which include TDMA and Qualcomm Inc.-made CDMA technologies. One of China's major firms is Huawei Technologies, and it is in the frontlines of promoting the Chinese technology over the American, but that has not stopped U.S. major players from investing in the market.

Motorola Inc., Lucent technologies inc., Texas Instruments, and other Western firms like Siemens, Nokia, and Ericsson have invested huge sums of money and personnel in the markets in China and India. They also partner with them in developing technologies, a practice that opens the way for the local engineers to learn the tricks and possibly create their cutting-edge technologies. This trend underlines the United State's superior position, and it also foreshadows its vulnerability once the apprentice hones the master's craft. That's why concerned individuals, professionals, the U.S. Congress, and the president are stressing urgency of action in this matter.