CRA Chair Jim Foley sat for an extended interview with CNET News.com on the state of the IT research enterprise in the US. Here’s the intro:

James Foley is worried.
As chairman of the Computing Research Association–a group made up of academic departments, research centers and professional societies–his job at CRA is to improve computing research and education. But Foley sees troubling trends in the nation’s system for nurturing and training new information technology scientists.
The number of doctorate degrees awarded in the United States has dropped not only in computer science and engineering, but also in noncomputer science and engineering fields in general. And top U.S. undergraduate computer science departments are seeing enrollments fall.
Some industry analysts argue that the country already has a glut of Ph.D.s. But to Foley, also a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing, the educational declines may very well contribute to an economic malaise. He wants to excite youngsters about computers, in part through better-trained teachers. Foley would also pump up federal research funding and give young scholars independent funding.
CNET News.com recently spoke with Foley about computer science education, the flow of programming work offshore and how the computer science profession in America can weather the trend toward offshoring.

Read the whole interview here.