DATA DISPUTE HYPOTHESIS OF NATIONAL SCIENCE CRISIS

Saturday, July 10, 2004

When I started teaching math in college, nearly 40 years ago, lots of people were worried that the United States wasn't turning out enough mathematicians -- and scientists and engineers -- to replace the ones who would retire over the coming decades.

Well, the decades have passed, and lots of people are still worried.

Science teachers attending last week's convention of the National Education Association sounded off to the Associated Press about the poor preparation of science teachers, the lack of resources and declining student interest.

"It's going to cause a steady weakening of U.S. leadership in technology and related fields." Gary Bloom, CEO of Veritas, a software company, told the AP, "More and more creativity, new ideas, patents, engineering and businesses will begin to creep overseas."

And in a sky-is-falling interview with The New York Times Tuesday, Nobel prize-winning physicist Robert Richardson of Cornell University lamented the decline in the number of Americans studying science and technology.

"We've got a serious scientific manpower problem, and it's been developing since the 1970s," Richardson said. "We used to be third in the world, behind Japan and Finland, in the percentage of our students who became scientists and engineers. Now we're 23rd."

As it happens, not everyone agrees. The Chronicle of Higher Education, in its lead article this week, asks, "Is There a Science Crisis?" and answers, "Maybe Not." Though leaders warn of a labor shortage in the U.S., it says, "indicators point to an oversupply."

The Chronicle also notes that past predictions have proved something less than accurate. In the mid-1980s, the National Science Foundation warned that soon there wouldn't be enough scientists and engineers even to staff college and university faculties, let alone the other things they do. In 1990, NSF Director Erich Bloch wrote, "the demand for engineers, scientists and technicians is growing about twice as fast as supply and will exceed supply by 35 percent in the year 2000."

As The Chronicle wryly notes, that was about as accurate as long-range weather forecasts. In fact, jobs got scarcer in the 1990s, forcing many new Ph.D.s into postdoctoral fellowships. The American Chemical Society said last year that unemployment for chemists was at an all-time high. For computer scientists, unemployment rates in the first quarter of this year hit 6.7 percent, higher than for the work force as a whole.

My son's one of those, though to be fair he isn't really looking for a job; he's trying to make a go of it as a writer. But a lot of his friends and former colleagues are out of work, too.

"We have lots and lots of very bright people who could go into science and engineering who don't," Richard Freeman, a Harvard economist, told the Chronicle. Students ask themselves, he says, whether they'd rather be making $35,000 working in somebody's lab or earning $150,000 as an M.B.A. who hires Ph.D.s.

Not a tough question.

As it happens, though, record numbers of Americans are earning bachelor's degrees in science and engineering, among other indicators cited by the Chronicle. The number of American undergraduates majoring in physics is up 25 percent in five years, and the number of graduate students by 45 percent.

The NSF, which reported in May about looming shortages, said in June that graduate enrollment had reached a new peak in 2002. UCLA reported that the number of American graduate students in the sciences had increased from 1,771 in 1993 to 2,208 in 2003.

It is true that many graduate students are foreign. Less than 40 percent of the 1,107 doctorates in math awarded in 2003 went to Americans, for instance, according to the American Mathematical Society. And since 9/11, increased scrutiny has made it difficult for some foreign students to get visas to study here, and that in turn has discouraged many more from applying. But universities that enroll lots of foreign students still have plenty of applicants. The University of Texas at Austin, for example, told The Chronicle that it turned away more than 4,000 applicants from overseas last year.

We could, if we had to, alter the patterns of undergraduate enrollment. Jobs and income certainly matter when students are deciding what to major in, but departments and their faculties have a lot of influence, too. In 1965, when my husband, Arthur, and I came to St. Olaf College, there were seven faculty members and only a handful of math majors. Now there are 24 faculty members, and more than 50 math majors graduated this year (and in some years it has been much higher). Among all four-year colleges, it has the highest number of graduates who have earned doctorates in mathematics, and it's fifth in chemistry and sixth in the life sciences. Forty percent of graduates major in science or mathematics.

Having heard the crying of "Wolf!" for such a long time now, I'm inclined to go with The Chronicle's skepticism about a crisis in science. But should one truly arise, St. Olaf's experience demonstrates that if we really need more scientists, we can surely grow our own.