Now that Senator John McCain has supplied his answers to the Science Debate 2008 questions, we can take a look at the similarities and differences between the two candidates on a topic that could determine the United States’ competitive and economic future in the next administration. We highlighted some of Senator Obama’s answers here earlier […]
Senator Barack Obama responded to fourteen science questions asked by Science Debate 2008 regarding how an Obama White House would lead the US in areas vital to our competitiveness and innovation. All fourteen questions and Obama’s answers in their entirety can be found here. Some highlights of most importance to the computing community include: Q […]
Thomas G. Dolan, editorial page editor for Barron’s asserts in an editorial yesterday that federal support for basic research is overrated — what’s really needed to drive innovation in this country are R&D tax cuts for American business and “permanently opening the golden door for foreign scientists and engineers.” And while he’s not wrong that […]
The Chronicle of Higher Ed yesterday covered the release of a National Science Foundation Info Brief on the decline of U.S. funding for academic research for the second straight year, noting that NSF declares the decline “unprecedented for this data series, which began in 1972.” Though federal funding for academic research technically increased from FY […]
A couple of small announcements: First, those of you who attended CRA’s biennial conference at Snowbird last week already heard this call, but for those who didn’t (or who need to be reminded), we want your research highlights! CRA and the Computing Community Consortium are in the process of gathering recent computing research highlights to […]
Last Tuesday, NYT science commentator John Tierney discussed how Congress has recently ramped up enforcement of Title IX among universities’ science departments. Will a “quota system”–an idea Tierney floats in the third paragraph of his piece–be an outcome of Title IX enforcement? So far, the increased enforcement has only consisted of periodic compliance reviews, which […]
Ed Lazowska, Chair of the Computing Community Consortium, has a passionate post today on the CCC Blog about what the latest numbers from CRA’s Taulbee Survey really mean. The news is not, he points out, that computer science bachelors degrees show another year of decline — that was completely predictable from the enrollment statistics for […]
Noah Shactman has an interesting post on the Danger Room Blog at Wired noting that the Pentagon has “reprogrammed” $32 million of DARPA funding, including $2 million from the Information and Communications Technology account because of DARPA’s inability to attract program managers and spend the money allocated it. From the Reprogramming Action (pdf) report: “DARPA […]
[Dustin Cho is CRA’s new summer fellow from the Tisdale Fellowship Program, which has been bringing college students to Washington, DC, for internships that explore current public policy issues of critical importance to the high-tech sector. Dustin is a recent graduate of Yale University with a degree in political science and an interest in the […]
Two recent pieces in The Chronicle of Higher Education riff off a just-released report by the RAND Corporation to make the case that those who have argued that U.S. science and technology dominance is at risk in a globally competitive world are exaggerating. Richard Monastersky writes in “Despite Recent Obits, U.S. Science and Engineering Remain […]
