The Science and Engineering Workforce and National Security

Overview Trends in the American science and engineering (SE * A rapidly accelerating accumulation of intellectual capital, including an educated SE * A long-term decline in the overall Federal investment in RD and * Reduced Department of Defense funding for research throughout the 1990s, a trend that has exacerbated the general decline in the physical sciences and engineering, despite the importance of these fields to the development of new military capabilities. There is no crisis today. Indeed, in several areas, such as computer science, the number of computer programmers exceeds demand, a situation largely caused by the collapse of the dot.com bubble, softness in the overall economy in recent years, and a trend toward off-shore outsourcing of such work. The basic problem that we face lies in understanding the trends and their implications for the future. It is important to gain this understanding soon because of the long delays involved in building a workforce with the required skills to replace the scientists and engineers of the baby-boom generation, who are retiring just as the needs of national defense and homeland security are increasing. In some important fields, the United States faces a potential S&E shortfall, while our foreign competitors are significantly increasing production of S&Es, and foreign graduate students are earning a significant percentage of the technical degrees granted by American universities. (1) (table 1.) Especially noteworthy is increasing home-grown technical capability in Asia, which is exemplified by the rapid growth in the number of students receiving S&E doctorates from Asian institutions. Moreover, the fact that other nations are acquiring high-end innovation capabilities by building up their sophisticated science and technology (S&T) infrastructures and capabilities signifies growing global competition for scientific and engineering talent. This trend raises a question whether the United States can over the long term rely on an international S&E labor force to satisfy its needs. (2) National research and development (R&D) funding patterns and priorities, particularly the declining DOD investment in the physical sciences and engineering, raise especially important national security issues. These reductions have exacerbated the general decline in the physical and mathematical sciences and engineering, even as defense remains heavily dependent on the application of these fields. Cross-disciplinary sciences and enabling technologies are growing. Yet, they too are affected by declining funding for the physical sciences and engineering that underpin them. As just one indicator, the U.S. fraction of the world's physics publications is declining. (3) More specifically, data compiled by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) suggest both a small absolute decline in U.S. physics articles and a noticeable decline in the U.S. world share of physics papers. (Table 2.) The citation impact of U.S. physics papers has remained relatively constant, despite the decline in world share. (Table 3.) There is some concern about how long the relatively high impact of U.S. publications can continue given the buildup of the foreign science and engineering (S&E) communities overseas. Furthermore, it is known that the Federal research investment is strongly linked to the U. …