As a science educator, I'm so sick of hearing our public schools bashed from both sides of the propaganda wars for not educating enough kids in science /math so they can become scientists, when nobody ever investigates whether our schools do in fact produce sufficient top graduates in those areas to meet the economic needs of our country. And if they do, then why are those graduates still missing from science fields?
So when I recently came across an article on Miller-McCune called "The Real Science Gap," I was interested.
The author, Beryl Lieff Benderly analyzes the concerns about the United States maintaining its leadership in science and, among other things, debunks the idea that "our schools are not producing enough talented math and science graduates."
Therefore, if talented and educated young Americans are missing from the science workplace, there must be some other reason than "failing schools" to account for it.
Benderly's main point in the article is this:
The current approach — trying to improve the students or schools — will not produce the desired result, the experts predict, because the forces driving bright young Americans away from technical careers arise elsewhere, in the very structure of the U.S. research establishment.
Before I summarize some of Benderly's arguments, I'd like to include a couple more links.
A couple more links
First, here's a link to theentry on Slashdot, the popular "news for nerds" blog, that drew me to her article in the first place. Slashdot's readers and commenters, many of them highly-skilled professionals in computers, science and related fields, are precisely the kind of people we're talking about here, which lends some weight to the opinions you can read at that link.
Second, here's a link to Science Magazine's blog, where Ms. Benderly is a regular contributor.
What does politics have to do with it?
This is not a "news for nerds" site, but a political one. Still, it's important to bring science articles like this one to everyone's attention because the forces that have shaped the current system, which discourages budding scientists, are political and economic.
Indeed, the current system was set up by congress after World War II, and has been running on inertia ever since. Benderly claims it ceased to function productively sometime in the mid 1970's. After that it morphed into a monster that devours its own, an economic system that she compares to a "ponzi scheme," since a few individuals on top are reaping the economic harvest of those beneath, who are in turn left with very little.
Meanwhile, from the point of view of the newly-graduated science major (and Benderly argues there's a glut of them, not a shortage):
It’s a lack of job opportunities. Americans need the reasonable hope that spending their youth preparing to do science will provide a satisfactory career.
So what happened in the 1970's?
Benderly reviews in detail the history of the National Science Foundation (NSF), which basically grew out of the wartime Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD)
Besides Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, a key figure in both these organizations was Vannevar Bush. (although from New England, he's apparently no relation to THOSE Bushes, though)
Anyway, he set up a system of government-funded research through universities that continues to this day. Congress listened to all his recommendations save one: That funding for science be both dependable and predictable. (sound familiar?)
The system depends on head researchers (i.e. professors) developing young talent in a sort of apprenticeship system. This actually sounds like a good idea, but there are a couple flaws.
First flaw - a glut of graduates
Since each head researcher has multiple apprentices, the result is a glut of young scientists hoping for a career path that might lead to themselves becoming head researchers, either in a university, a government research institute, or a large corporation. Indeed, at present only a small number of such apprentices ever achieve this.
This flaw did not become apparent until the 1970's because of the huge expansions of science and science education due to the G. I. Bill and then the Sputnik scare. Science education and research expanded so fast in those days that we really did need those huge expanding numbers of new scientists.
Still, doesn't this glut of graduates merely mean there's a greater talent pool whose competition should produce even-better scientists in the long run? Maybe, but then there's this other flaw:
Second flaw - serfdom for Post-docs
In the old days, Benderly notes, professors' prestige was magnified by their successful development of creative-minded apprentices and their subsequent placement in prestige positions. Those apprentices often worked independently from their professors, developing their own ideas during some of their most creative years.
These days, however, the economics of research has reshaped the experience of such apprentices. That is, the professors compete for relatively unpredictable grant money, and need cheap labor to see experiments through in case the money source dries up. So it's in everybody's economic interest (save the students') that apprenticeships be lengthened as long as possible for their cheap labor, and that they work on their professors' projects and ideas, not their own creations.
Indeed, grad students these days often linger as students for as many years after receiving their bachelor degrees as they spent in K-12 education before entering their bachelor programs. By the time they finally get to work on their own projects, many of their most creative years are already behind them. It is in this way that we may be throttling the goose that lays the most creative golden eggs.
It's this prospect of putting off gainful employment until one is in one's thirties that causes many bright mathematically-inclined minds to search out more lucrative, family-supporting careers in other areas, like, for example, inventing creative financing schemes on Wall Street.
Miscellaneous points
I don't want this diary to go too long, lest the reader mistakenly think I've covered all the main points in the original article(even a much longer diary wouldn't do that)and therefore be tempted to skip reading it.
I would like to emphasize a couple points, however
First of all, the system as it exists today is a creation of Congress, and only Congress has the means to reshape it. This puts the prospects of our American scientific leadership squarely in the realm of politics. The original article should be read by all visitors to this site who are interested in furthering American science through political means.
Second, to back up her argument that schools already produce enough talented scientists, Benderly includes yet more evidence useful in countering the disparagement of education that, since that masterpiece of propaganda, "A Nation at Risk," has become the norm. Actually, that's the part that made me want to read the rest of the article, but there's no need to repeat the evidence here.
Third, follow the money. In all things follow the money. As Benderly points out, the reason for the ubiquitous H-1B visas is to exploit cheap foreign labor, pure and simple, and not because of any actual shortage of homegrown talent in America.
Actually, in some ways, I personally find the idea of "sharing the wealth" with the developing world via H-1B visas to be appealing, but we should be clear that that's what we're doing, and why we're doing it. Only then can we have an intelligent conversation about how to manage it.
Anyway, here's the link again, if you'd like to read the original article.