On the Shortage of Scientists and Engineers

Abstract

ABOUT the same time people decided the schools weren't working (circa 1949), they also decided that we had too few mathematicians, scientists, and engineers. confirmed their fears--although both the shortage and Russia's putative superior technology turned out to be illusory. Before Sputnik, the most common association with the word scientist was odd, but afterward science became an umbrella term for fields where exciting things happened. This produced the Sputnik Spike, followed by a sharp decline in interest in science, followed by a gradual increase that began in the 1970s and continues today. More recently, John Glenn's commission published the near-hysterical Before It's Too Late, and the National Academies came out with the pretentiously titled Rising Above the Gathering (the title alludes to Winston Churchill's Gathering Storm, which describes the events leading up to World War II). The Business Round-table chimed in with Tapping America's Potential, signed by 14 other business organizations. In November 2007, a number of people testified before the House Subcommittee on Technology and Innovation that the conventional wisdom is wrong. Michael Teitelbaum, vice president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, outlined the litany of the conventional complaints, which I've summarized below: 1. The U.S. suffers serious shortfalls or shortages of scientists and engineers, and this bodes ill for both creativity and international competitiveness. 2. The number of newly educated scientists and engineers is insufficient to fulfill employer needs. Thus the need to hire from overseas. 3. The insufficient quantities are due to weaknesses--or even failure--of K-12 education. 4. U.S. students' interest in science and engineering is declining. 5. Post-doc jobs, increasingly common, offer excellent opportunities leading to later research opportunities. 6. Congress should provide more money to increase the number of science and engineering (S & E) graduates. Tapping America's Potential called for spending to double the number of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics graduates by 2015. Teitelbaum then countered each item on the list by presenting the facts. I offer them here as a dispersed list, with some supporting evidence for each counterclaim. 1. There is no shortage. Several RAND Corporation studies found surpluses. There might be shortages in some new fields or fields growing explosively, but not overall. 2. There are substantially more scientists and engineers graduating from U.S. universities than can find attractive career openings in S & E fields. Indeed, the S & E opportunities seem unattractive to many holders of S & E degrees. Into the Eye of the Storm (no doubt a pot shot at the National Academies), a paper by Lindsay Lowell of Georgetown University and Harold Salzman of the Urban Institute, found roughly three S & E graduates for every new S & E job (not counting openings created by retirements). They also found that two years after graduation from S & E programs, 20% of the grads with bachelor's degrees were in school but not in S & E programs and 45% were in the work force but not in S & E jobs. The attrition rate for that time period for those with master's degrees was about 38%. One can only imagine how critics would howl if education lost 65% of its work force in just two years! Nor are fewer students following S & E paths in universities. From 1977 to 2002, the number of citizens and permanent residents earning bachelor's degrees in S & E grew from about 300,000 to about 400,000, those earning master's degrees increased from about 60,000 to about 70,000, and those earning doctorates held steady at about 20,000. Other studies have concluded that the decline in the pool of citizens and permanent residents with S & E credentials may reflect a weakening demand, a comparative decline in S & E wages, and market signals to students about low relative wages in S & E. …