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 freshman CS majors published four years ago in the survey. The real news (as we noted back in March) is that for the first time in many years, freshman interest in CS as a major increased and enrollments have stabilized — indicating that perhaps we may have turned a corner. What’s responsible for the turnaround? According to Lazowska:
[B]y far the most important factors are (a) the job market (or peoples sense of the job market), and (b) the level of buzz associated with the field.
Lets start by considering graduate enrollment, rather than undergraduate enrollment. For the past 15 years, the number of Ph.D.s granted annually in computer science has been in the 900-1100 range. Suddenly, though, in the past 2 years, it has climbed to 1800. Why is this? The answer is totally obvious:
In 2001, lots of startup companies went bust.
This dumped onto the job market a number of the best bachelors graduates from a few years before, who now had two or three years of experience under their belts.
This made it hard for some excellent new bachelors graduates of 2001 and 2002 to get the super-exciting jobs they had anticipated they were competing with people whose academic records were every bit as good as theirs, but who also had 2 or 3 years of experience working at a hot startup.
Because these great new bachelors graduates couldnt get exciting jobs, they went to graduate school instead.
And, mirabile dictu, 6 years later, theyre emerging with Ph.D.s.
This is not a news flash it didnt take a genius to predict, a few years ago, that it was going to happen, and it doesnt take a genius to explain it, either.
Similarly for bachelors degrees. Starting in about 2002, there was lots of news about the tech bust. Tech was no longer sexy. Jobs were no longer plentiful. Subsequently, there was a lot of misleading information about the impact of offshoring. And the newspapers never bothered to report that by late 2004, US IT employment was back to the 2000-2001 level we had fully recovered from the bust somehow that wasnt considered newsworthy. So its not surprising that interest in bachelors programs decreased sharply, and that 4 and 5 years later, the number of degrees granted precisely mirrored this decline.
Also, its not surprising that things are turning around. Google is hot. Tech in general is hot. There are startups everywhere. Its clear to anyone that there are plenty of jobs. (By the way, given the incredible state of todays bachelors job market, it doesnt take a genius to predict that the number of Ph.D. graduates in 2014 will show a decline. When you read the scary headlines 6 years from now, remember that you heard it here first!)
Ed also talks about the experience at his institution, the University of Washington, tries to put the “crisis” in computer science in perspective by offering up some comparisons to the other science and engineering disciplines, and emphasizes the bright outlook suggested by various Dept. of Labor workforceprojections (pdf). In typical Lazowska style, it’s a forceful but accurate refutation of the standard story on CS enrollments we’ve seen for the last few years. It’s definitely worth a read (and comment!) over at the excellent CCC Blog (Disclaimer: CCC is an activity of CRA, but that doesn’t make it any less awesome.)
The Emergency Supplemental for FY08 — the last chance to rectify the appropriations shortfall for science caused by the FY 08 Omnibus Appropriation — has been signed by the President and is now law. Though science funding made it into the supplemental — one of the few non-defense items in the bill — the win for the science community is somewhat symbolic. The amount included ($400 million — see here for a breakdown) is only about a third of the total shortfall of the FY08 appropriations, but it is nevertheless a sign that Congress and the White House understand the importance of research funding and are willing to back up their vocal support with some additional funding.
Meanwhile, the FY 09 appropriations process marches on, with some better news for science. As always, stay tuned here for the latest as the appropriations cycle moves forward (or not) this year.
The Coalition for National Science Funding held another successful Science Exposition on Capitol Hill last night and once again CRA played a part. Manning this year’s booth for CRA was Dr. R. Michael Young from North Carolina State University who did a fantastic job showing his work using the underlying technology of video games for more serious educational and research purposes. The exhibit received a great deal of attention from Congressional staff, Members of Congress, and other exhibitors. The event, a sort of science fair for Congress and staff, had 32 booths manned by researchers representing universities and scientific societies featuring some of the important research funded by the National Science Foundation. NSF showed its support for the event with staff coming out en masse including Director of NSF Arden Bement, shown here with Rep. David Price (NC).
Several hundred attendees roamed the room this year including a number of Congressmen, such as Rep. Price and Rep. Vernon Ehlers (MI), shown here with Dr. Young at the CRA exhibit. Other federal agencies who attended were NASA and OMB.
As we’ve noted before in this space, personal visits to members of Congress and their staff are vital to getting the message about the importance of computing research out. If you are coming to Washington and would like to visit your Representative and Senators, let us know and we’ll be happy to help with appointments and provide materials for your use!
A symbolic (and that’s about all) victory for science in managing to get included in the FY 08 Emergency Supplemental Appropriation approved by the House today, though the amounts leave a lot to be desired. Even though the funding levels are pretty anemic, at least some money appeared in the bill. The great majority of other “special interests” that were clamoring to get into the bill didn’t make it.
The House and Senate Leadership agreed on a $400 million bump for science agencies that got shortchanged in the FY 08 Omnibus Approps — a far cry from the $1.2 billion included by the Senate in its version and an even further cry from the levels called for in the COMPETES Act (and ACI, and the Democratic Innovation Agenda).
Here’s how it breaks out:
$62.5 million for Department of Energy’s Office of Science (to “eliminate all furloughs and reductions in force which are a direct result of budgetary constraints”)
$62.5 million for DOE Environmental Cleanup
$62.5 million for NASA
$62.5 million for NSF (a paltry $22.5 million for research and $40 million for EHR and the Noyce Scholarships)
$150 million for NIH (so even when NIH “loses,” it still does better than the ACI agencies…)
The argument given by the House leadership for these funding levels is that these are the only amounts that are truly “emergency” funds. The FY 09 Appropriations bill are supposed to get the agencies back on track. Of course, the likelihood of the FY 09 bills getting finished is quite slim, but that’s the story.
The Senate will pass the measure next week. The President has indicated that he’s likely to sign it, so this is probably the end game for FY 08.
On to FY 09….
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 continues to underexecute its Research, Development, Test and Evaluation programs for two reasons: first, several key program managers’ positions are unfilled because there are few experts in advanced sciences and technology, and second, DARPA’s approval process is delaying contract awards.”
[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 intersection of public policy and technology. After suffering through what is sure to be a tortuous summer with us here at CRA World HQ, Dustin plans to begin law school at Harvard in the Fall. Until then, expect to see plenty of his writing here on the blog as we wring all we can out of him. — Peter]
Ive just finished reading the RAND report, and as Peter points out, its authors take the contrarian position that U.S. science is as competitive as ever. They contend that the U.S. remains on top, and were not in danger of being overtaken because our R&D growth rates are pretty much the same as the rest of the world. According to RAND, there are only a few countries whose R&D growth outpaces ours, such as China and Korea, and all of these countries are starting from next to nothing (from 1993 to 2003, China only had to add $6B per year to grow at 17 percent, while the U.S. was adding more than double that amount annually and growing at 5.8 percent). Journalists interpretation: theres nothing to worry about.
Thats a dramatic oversimplification, because the underlying message of the report is that we should stop looking at R&D as a horse race and that R&D is crucial to the United States future, regardless of what other countries are doing.
The report argues that its nonsense to talk about R&D expenditures as competition between countries, since one countrys scientific advancements will end up increasing the standard of living for everyone in the world who can access its derivative technology. In fact, there are probably network effects to research such that increased funding actually has increasing returns in other words, if theres already a lot of worldwide R&D, then an extra dollar spent on research will allow another scientist to build off of other researchers developments, increasing every scientists productivity. So when other countries (or the U.S. itself) decide to invest more heavily in R&D, U.S. R&D productivity actually improves.
That said, the report also emphasizes the importance of maintaining the U.S.s comparative advantage in R&D. Right now, its relatively cheaper to do science and technology research in the U.S. due to our infrastructure, labor, and funding advantages. But as Harvard economist Richard Freeman points out, if other countries (such as China) overtake us in these areas, their lower wages might actually give them the comparative advantage, thereby severely damaging the U.S. economy as were forced to retool our infrastructure toward different industries. Freeman thinks its likely poorer countries will somewhat succeed in this by specializing in certain subfields and producing a lot of highly educated researchers. But the U.S. will be better equipped to maintain its comparative advantage if we encourage immigration of skilled researchers, increase federal funding, and improve infrastructure for R&D.
The RAND report also shows that life sciences have received disproportionate federal funding, resulting in a glut of life sciences PhDs and hurting their salaries. In other S&T fields, employment demand has outstripped degree production. The most notable instances of divergence between employment growth and growth in degrees are mathematics/computer sciences and physical sciences, the report explains. Mathematics/computer sciences degrees grew by 4 percent per year [from 1980 to 2000] the highest rate of degree growth in S&E while mathematics/computer sciences employment grew by more than twice that, 9 percent per year.
In fact, the only reason we have comparable R&D growth rates to other countries in federal funding is due to increased life sciences funding non-life sciences S&T growth has basically flatlined. Private investment in R&D has increased, but its no replacement for federally funded academic research: Even though industrial R&D is much larger than academic research expenditures, academic spillovers increase the R&D performed by industry significantly, and have a comparable effect on patents. The report argues that network effects from increased academic research improve the productivity of private R&D.
Since the bulk of the report examines ways to improve the United States R&D, its disappointing that media coverage (and the RAND press release itself) choose to overemphasize the counterproductive message that the U.S. is still the world leader in science and technology. Instead, shouldnt we focus on how to keep it that way?
Two articles this week on women in science and technology fields. The first Why Women Quit Technology Careers in ComputerWorld talks about a trend that we have been watching for awhile. The article notes a study that shows that despite a strong presence in the early stages of science and technology careers, 40 percent of women leave those fields in their 30s and 40s. While having children is a factor for the drop, it is not the most significant one the study found. There were four other factors that were more important in the drop in women.
1. High levels of blatant and subtle misogyny or sexual harassment.
2. Isolation
3. Lack of a career map
4. Rewarding of risk taking as a path to promotion (building a system that doesnt break is not rewarded but high pressure situations involving fixing broken systems are rewarded with promotions)
The study is The Athena Factor: Reversing the Brain Drain in Science, Engineering, and Technology and was conducted through the Center for Work-Life Policy.
The second article, Revenge of the Nerdette in Newsweek shows the other end of the spectrum of women in science and technology. The article talks about a group of girls in college who are fighting the stereotype of nerd and who are completely comfortable being both feminine and very into math and science. The article points out, That comfort level has as much to do with culture as it does with technology. Depictions of geeks as socially awkward math whizzes date back to caricatures in tech-school humor magazines from the 1950s, such as MIT’s Voodoo. But the geeks of MIT were strictly male, as were subsequent takes on the stereotype, such as the nerdy men of 1984’s “Revenge of the Nerds,” and Screech on “Saved by the Bell.” Today’s girl geeks are members of the first generation to have been truly reared on technology. These Nerd Girls are forming clubs, outreach programs, and mentoring programs. Maybe this is the first step to combat the problems found in the Athena study and the upcoming generation will knock down these barriers for a life long career in science and technology fields.
Because the topic is in the news, this is probably also a good opportunity to talk a little about some of the things CRA is doing to help address the factors that lead women to chareer fields. CRA’s Committee on the Status of Women in Computing(CRA-W) does great work in running programs aimed at targeting that sense of the isolation women in IT might feel and trying to help promote a sense of “belonging” at several points in the pipeline. The Grad Cohort program brings hundreds of students together for a kick-off workshop and follow-on activities. The Cohort for Associate Professors Program targets associate professors and has a track for mid-level industry researchers and exposes the participants to role models in various career tracks (academia and industry/government labs) as do the Career Mentoring Workshops. One of the most effective sessions at the CAPP workshop is when the Distinguished Speakers have the opportunity to sit with the attendees one-on-one and review their C.V.s – giving advice on how best to get promoted to the next level. In addition, CRA-W also runs the Collaborative Research Experiences for Undergrads Program with the Coalition to Diversify Computing that brings together groups of women and/or minorities to work on a year-long research topic and fosters a sense of community. The same can be said for the Distributed Mentor Project, which pairs an undergrad for a summer research experience with a mentor (and usually his or her research group).
Finally for those interested, there is a session planned for our upcoming Snowbird Conference called Practical Solutions to a Continuing Problem: Sexual Harassment and Gender Discrimination. Information on all the CRA-W programs can be found at the CRA-W web site.
Together programs like CRAs and initiatives by groups like the Nerd Girls could help cause a fundamental shift in attitude toward science and technology both inside and outside the fields and allow the best and brightest, regardless of gender, to apply themselves to solve the most fundamental science and technology challenges.
Although Congress, President Bush, and top university chancellors have publicly fretted about the declining health of science and engineering in the United States, a new report argues that the U.S. has maintained its supremacy in those sectors. Further, the report says, the nation should not overreact to overseas growth in technological prowess.
And Daniel Greenberg writes in “Call Off the Funeral: Science in U.S. is Lively and Growing”:
The RAND report stands out because gloomy findings predominate in assessments of American science. In 1985, for example, the chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee for the National Science Foundation expressed exasperation with the din of doom: “Its the same argument every year, about losing the lead.” In 2005, the National Research Councilthe research arm of the National Academy of Sciences and its subsidiariesissued a blockbuster compilation of R&D anxiety, “Rising Above the Gathering Storm,” which still reverberates around Washington as science-policy gospel.
The thing is, I’m not sure there are many within the science advocacy community who would disagree with the primary findings of the RAND report, U.S. Competitiveness in Science and Technology. The report found that the U.S. continues to be the world leader in S&T innovation; that federal support for resarch is generally up over the last decade or so — though that increase is almost all in the life sciences, the physical sciences have been held essentially flat; there is lots of opportunity in the science and engineering workforce; and the U.S. continues to be heavily dependent on our ability to attract the best and the brightest in the world to work and study here.
Not many, if any, in the DC science advocacy community would disagree with those assessments. The concerns, of course, are the trend lines — they are almost all trending the wrong way. (The Task Force on the Future of American Innovation has a good compilation of many of these benchmarks in their Benchmarks of Our Innovation Future II report.) Our competitors worldwide are every day increasing their capacity to compete with us — investing in better facilities, more partnerships, increased investments in key areas — and we’re concerned the U.S. isn’t matching them with anything close to the same intensity. Gene Spafford, one of my Government Affairs Committee members, notes that these pieces also seem to give short shrift to the disruptive effect one or two key discoveries can have — think light bulb, antibiotics, the transitor, controlled fission, the Internet, and more. Right now there is intensive research in genetics, nanotechnology, parallel computation, fusion, alternative energy and several other areas. A major advance in any one of them would be transformative on a large scale. It won’t be incremental. If we’re concerned about our national position as opposed to simply the advancement of science, the we want to somehow ensure that those advances happen here. And that requires having a prepared base and an active set of programs of inquiry.
The U.S. is the global leader in science and technology. It’s true that the U.S. has enough of a lead at this point to “decay gracefully” (as Newt Gingrich describes it). But I’m not sure that’s what most want for this country, or for their children and grandchildren who will have to live in it.
…but don’t get too excited, yet.
The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science today approved (pdf) a nearly 14 percent increase for the National Science Foundation ($830 million over NSF’s lackluster FY 08 number) in its version of the FY 09 CJS Appropriations bill.
While the committee is doing this with the stated goal of getting NSF back on the doubling track called for in the America COMPETES Act, this is just one step along a long and tortuous path appropriations will take to get completed this year. Unfortunately, all the dynamics that were in play last year that led to science getting completely shut out of increases in the final FY 08 Omnibus Appropriations are still in play this year. And frankly, it appears that we are once again headed for a long-term continuing resolution until at least early next year, when lawmakers can assess the new climate after the election and chart a new strategy.
Still, the CJS Committee deserves kudos for continuing to find a way to highlight the importance of science funding and for giving the community a good starting point from which to argue for continued support throughout the remainder of the appropriations process. We’ll have all the details of that process here, so stay tuned.
The Chronicle of Higher Ed has more (though that link might be temporary).
The next couple of weeks will be busy ones here at CRA World Headquarters. On June 18, the Congressional Robotics Caucus will be holding its second briefing, this time on Industrial Robotics. (CRA is on the Robotics Caucus Advisory Committee.) The lunch briefing will feature Jeff Burnstein of the Robotic Industries Association, Richard Seif and Chris Bailey of the Lincoln Electric Company, and John Dulchinos of Adept Technology. In conjunction with the Caucus event, CRA’s Computing Community Consortium will be hosting three days worth of robotics workshops. All the details on the CCC endeavor can be found on the CCC blog.
CRA is also gearing up to participate in the Coalition for National Science Funding’s Annual Science Exposition on June 25. This year we will be represented by Dr. R. Michael Young from North Carolina State University. Dr. Young will visit his Congressional delegation during the day and then host an exhibit of his research in the early evening. The exhibit is Cognition and Computation: Exploring the Sciences of Computer Games for Serious Applications. Details from last years event are here. If you have any interest in showing your work at a future CRA event, let us know!
Please use the Category and Archive Filters below, to find older posts. Or you may also use the search bar.
The Real Story on CS Enrollments
/In: Computing Community Consortium (CCC), People, R&D in the Press /by Peter HarshaEd 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 freshman CS majors published four years ago in the survey. The real news (as we noted back in March) is that for the first time in many years, freshman interest in CS as a major increased and enrollments have stabilized — indicating that perhaps we may have turned a corner. What’s responsible for the turnaround? According to Lazowska:
Ed also talks about the experience at his institution, the University of Washington, tries to put the “crisis” in computer science in perspective by offering up some comparisons to the other science and engineering disciplines, and emphasizes the bright outlook suggested by various Dept. of Labor workforce projections (pdf). In typical Lazowska style, it’s a forceful but accurate refutation of the standard story on CS enrollments we’ve seen for the last few years. It’s definitely worth a read (and comment!) over at the excellent CCC Blog (Disclaimer: CCC is an activity of CRA, but that doesn’t make it any less awesome.)
Supplemental Signed By President
/In: American Competitiveness Initiative, Funding, FY08 Appropriations, FY09 Appropriations /by MelissaNorrThe Emergency Supplemental for FY08 — the last chance to rectify the appropriations shortfall for science caused by the FY 08 Omnibus Appropriation — has been signed by the President and is now law. Though science funding made it into the supplemental — one of the few non-defense items in the bill — the win for the science community is somewhat symbolic. The amount included ($400 million — see here for a breakdown) is only about a third of the total shortfall of the FY08 appropriations, but it is nevertheless a sign that Congress and the White House understand the importance of research funding and are willing to back up their vocal support with some additional funding.
Meanwhile, the FY 09 appropriations process marches on, with some better news for science. As always, stay tuned here for the latest as the appropriations cycle moves forward (or not) this year.
Another Successful Capitol Hill Science Fair
/In: CRA, Events, People, Research /by MelissaNorrScience Appears in Final FY 08 Emergency Supplemental, But Only Just Barely
/In: American Competitiveness Initiative, Funding, FY08 Appropriations, Policy /by Peter HarshaA symbolic (and that’s about all) victory for science in managing to get included in the FY 08 Emergency Supplemental Appropriation approved by the House today, though the amounts leave a lot to be desired. Even though the funding levels are pretty anemic, at least some money appeared in the bill. The great majority of other “special interests” that were clamoring to get into the bill didn’t make it.
The House and Senate Leadership agreed on a $400 million bump for science agencies that got shortchanged in the FY 08 Omnibus Approps — a far cry from the $1.2 billion included by the Senate in its version and an even further cry from the levels called for in the COMPETES Act (and ACI, and the Democratic Innovation Agenda).
Here’s how it breaks out:
The argument given by the House leadership for these funding levels is that these are the only amounts that are truly “emergency” funds. The FY 09 Appropriations bill are supposed to get the agencies back on track. Of course, the likelihood of the FY 09 bills getting finished is quite slim, but that’s the story.
The Senate will pass the measure next week. The President has indicated that he’s likely to sign it, so this is probably the end game for FY 08.
On to FY 09….
DARPA Management Issues Cost Agency $32 Million
/In: Funding, Policy, R&D in the Press /by Peter HarshaNoah 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:
If I had to guess, I’d say the latter reason might have something to do with the former, too.
It’s certainly possible that the same policy changes at DARPA that have made it more difficult for university researchers to work on DARPA problems have also made DARPA a less-desireable place to spend a few years, but that’s just my speculation….
A Closer Look at the RAND Report on U.S. Competitiveness in S&T
/In: American Competitiveness Initiative, Funding, Policy, R&D in the Press, Research /by MelissaNorr[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 intersection of public policy and technology. After suffering through what is sure to be a tortuous summer with us here at CRA World HQ, Dustin plans to begin law school at Harvard in the Fall. Until then, expect to see plenty of his writing here on the blog as we wring all we can out of him. — Peter]
Ive just finished reading the RAND report, and as Peter points out, its authors take the contrarian position that U.S. science is as competitive as ever. They contend that the U.S. remains on top, and were not in danger of being overtaken because our R&D growth rates are pretty much the same as the rest of the world. According to RAND, there are only a few countries whose R&D growth outpaces ours, such as China and Korea, and all of these countries are starting from next to nothing (from 1993 to 2003, China only had to add $6B per year to grow at 17 percent, while the U.S. was adding more than double that amount annually and growing at 5.8 percent). Journalists interpretation: theres nothing to worry about.
Thats a dramatic oversimplification, because the underlying message of the report is that we should stop looking at R&D as a horse race and that R&D is crucial to the United States future, regardless of what other countries are doing.
The report argues that its nonsense to talk about R&D expenditures as competition between countries, since one countrys scientific advancements will end up increasing the standard of living for everyone in the world who can access its derivative technology. In fact, there are probably network effects to research such that increased funding actually has increasing returns in other words, if theres already a lot of worldwide R&D, then an extra dollar spent on research will allow another scientist to build off of other researchers developments, increasing every scientists productivity. So when other countries (or the U.S. itself) decide to invest more heavily in R&D, U.S. R&D productivity actually improves.
That said, the report also emphasizes the importance of maintaining the U.S.s comparative advantage in R&D. Right now, its relatively cheaper to do science and technology research in the U.S. due to our infrastructure, labor, and funding advantages. But as Harvard economist Richard Freeman points out, if other countries (such as China) overtake us in these areas, their lower wages might actually give them the comparative advantage, thereby severely damaging the U.S. economy as were forced to retool our infrastructure toward different industries. Freeman thinks its likely poorer countries will somewhat succeed in this by specializing in certain subfields and producing a lot of highly educated researchers. But the U.S. will be better equipped to maintain its comparative advantage if we encourage immigration of skilled researchers, increase federal funding, and improve infrastructure for R&D.
The RAND report also shows that life sciences have received disproportionate federal funding, resulting in a glut of life sciences PhDs and hurting their salaries. In other S&T fields, employment demand has outstripped degree production. The most notable instances of divergence between employment growth and growth in degrees are mathematics/computer sciences and physical sciences, the report explains. Mathematics/computer sciences degrees grew by 4 percent per year [from 1980 to 2000] the highest rate of degree growth in S&E while mathematics/computer sciences employment grew by more than twice that, 9 percent per year.
In fact, the only reason we have comparable R&D growth rates to other countries in federal funding is due to increased life sciences funding non-life sciences S&T growth has basically flatlined. Private investment in R&D has increased, but its no replacement for federally funded academic research: Even though industrial R&D is much larger than academic research expenditures, academic spillovers increase the R&D performed by industry significantly, and have a comparable effect on patents. The report argues that network effects from increased academic research improve the productivity of private R&D.
Since the bulk of the report examines ways to improve the United States R&D, its disappointing that media coverage (and the RAND press release itself) choose to overemphasize the counterproductive message that the U.S. is still the world leader in science and technology. Instead, shouldnt we focus on how to keep it that way?
Dichotomy of Women in S&T
/In: CRA, Diversity in Computing /by MelissaNorrTwo articles this week on women in science and technology fields. The first Why Women Quit Technology Careers in ComputerWorld talks about a trend that we have been watching for awhile. The article notes a study that shows that despite a strong presence in the early stages of science and technology careers, 40 percent of women leave those fields in their 30s and 40s. While having children is a factor for the drop, it is not the most significant one the study found. There were four other factors that were more important in the drop in women.
1. High levels of blatant and subtle misogyny or sexual harassment.
2. Isolation
3. Lack of a career map
4. Rewarding of risk taking as a path to promotion (building a system that doesnt break is not rewarded but high pressure situations involving fixing broken systems are rewarded with promotions)
The study is The Athena Factor: Reversing the Brain Drain in Science, Engineering, and Technology and was conducted through the Center for Work-Life Policy.
The second article, Revenge of the Nerdette in Newsweek shows the other end of the spectrum of women in science and technology. The article talks about a group of girls in college who are fighting the stereotype of nerd and who are completely comfortable being both feminine and very into math and science. The article points out, That comfort level has as much to do with culture as it does with technology. Depictions of geeks as socially awkward math whizzes date back to caricatures in tech-school humor magazines from the 1950s, such as MIT’s Voodoo. But the geeks of MIT were strictly male, as were subsequent takes on the stereotype, such as the nerdy men of 1984’s “Revenge of the Nerds,” and Screech on “Saved by the Bell.” Today’s girl geeks are members of the first generation to have been truly reared on technology. These Nerd Girls are forming clubs, outreach programs, and mentoring programs. Maybe this is the first step to combat the problems found in the Athena study and the upcoming generation will knock down these barriers for a life long career in science and technology fields.
Because the topic is in the news, this is probably also a good opportunity to talk a little about some of the things CRA is doing to help address the factors that lead women to chareer fields. CRA’s Committee on the Status of Women in Computing(CRA-W) does great work in running programs aimed at targeting that sense of the isolation women in IT might feel and trying to help promote a sense of “belonging” at several points in the pipeline. The Grad Cohort program brings hundreds of students together for a kick-off workshop and follow-on activities. The Cohort for Associate Professors Program targets associate professors and has a track for mid-level industry researchers and exposes the participants to role models in various career tracks (academia and industry/government labs) as do the Career Mentoring Workshops. One of the most effective sessions at the CAPP workshop is when the Distinguished Speakers have the opportunity to sit with the attendees one-on-one and review their C.V.s – giving advice on how best to get promoted to the next level. In addition, CRA-W also runs the Collaborative Research Experiences for Undergrads Program with the Coalition to Diversify Computing that brings together groups of women and/or minorities to work on a year-long research topic and fosters a sense of community. The same can be said for the Distributed Mentor Project, which pairs an undergrad for a summer research experience with a mentor (and usually his or her research group).
Finally for those interested, there is a session planned for our upcoming Snowbird Conference called Practical Solutions to a Continuing Problem: Sexual Harassment and Gender Discrimination. Information on all the CRA-W programs can be found at the CRA-W web site.
Together programs like CRAs and initiatives by groups like the Nerd Girls could help cause a fundamental shift in attitude toward science and technology both inside and outside the fields and allow the best and brightest, regardless of gender, to apply themselves to solve the most fundamental science and technology challenges.
Chronicle, Citing RAND Report, Claims U.S. S&T is A-OK
/In: American Competitiveness Initiative, Policy, R&D in the Press /by Peter HarshaTwo 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 Robust“:
And Daniel Greenberg writes in “Call Off the Funeral: Science in U.S. is Lively and Growing”:
The thing is, I’m not sure there are many within the science advocacy community who would disagree with the primary findings of the RAND report, U.S. Competitiveness in Science and Technology. The report found that the U.S. continues to be the world leader in S&T innovation; that federal support for resarch is generally up over the last decade or so — though that increase is almost all in the life sciences, the physical sciences have been held essentially flat; there is lots of opportunity in the science and engineering workforce; and the U.S. continues to be heavily dependent on our ability to attract the best and the brightest in the world to work and study here.
Not many, if any, in the DC science advocacy community would disagree with those assessments. The concerns, of course, are the trend lines — they are almost all trending the wrong way. (The Task Force on the Future of American Innovation has a good compilation of many of these benchmarks in their Benchmarks of Our Innovation Future II report.) Our competitors worldwide are every day increasing their capacity to compete with us — investing in better facilities, more partnerships, increased investments in key areas — and we’re concerned the U.S. isn’t matching them with anything close to the same intensity.
Gene Spafford, one of my Government Affairs Committee members, notes that these pieces also seem to give short shrift to the disruptive effect one or two key discoveries can have — think light bulb, antibiotics, the transitor, controlled fission, the Internet, and more. Right now there is intensive research in genetics, nanotechnology, parallel computation, fusion, alternative energy and several other areas. A major advance in any one of them would be transformative on a large scale. It won’t be incremental. If we’re concerned about our national position as opposed to simply the advancement of science, the we want to somehow ensure that those advances happen here. And that requires having a prepared base and an active set of programs of inquiry.
The U.S. is the global leader in science and technology. It’s true that the U.S. has enough of a lead at this point to “decay gracefully” (as Newt Gingrich describes it). But I’m not sure that’s what most want for this country, or for their children and grandchildren who will have to live in it.
House CJS Committee Approves Big Increase for NSF…
/In: American Competitiveness Initiative, Funding, FY09 Appropriations /by Peter Harsha…but don’t get too excited, yet.
The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science today approved (pdf) a nearly 14 percent increase for the National Science Foundation ($830 million over NSF’s lackluster FY 08 number) in its version of the FY 09 CJS Appropriations bill.
While the committee is doing this with the stated goal of getting NSF back on the doubling track called for in the America COMPETES Act, this is just one step along a long and tortuous path appropriations will take to get completed this year. Unfortunately, all the dynamics that were in play last year that led to science getting completely shut out of increases in the final FY 08 Omnibus Appropriations are still in play this year. And frankly, it appears that we are once again headed for a long-term continuing resolution until at least early next year, when lawmakers can assess the new climate after the election and chart a new strategy.
Still, the CJS Committee deserves kudos for continuing to find a way to highlight the importance of science funding and for giving the community a good starting point from which to argue for continued support throughout the remainder of the appropriations process. We’ll have all the details of that process here, so stay tuned.
The Chronicle of Higher Ed has more (though that link might be temporary).
Computing Community Gets Opportunities to Show Off for Congress
/In: Computing Community Consortium (CCC), CRA, Events, Research /by MelissaNorrThe next couple of weeks will be busy ones here at CRA World Headquarters. On June 18, the Congressional Robotics Caucus will be holding its second briefing, this time on Industrial Robotics. (CRA is on the Robotics Caucus Advisory Committee.) The lunch briefing will feature Jeff Burnstein of the Robotic Industries Association, Richard Seif and Chris Bailey of the Lincoln Electric Company, and John Dulchinos of Adept Technology. In conjunction with the Caucus event, CRA’s Computing Community Consortium will be hosting three days worth of robotics workshops. All the details on the CCC endeavor can be found on the CCC blog.
CRA is also gearing up to participate in the Coalition for National Science Funding’s Annual Science Exposition on June 25. This year we will be represented by Dr. R. Michael Young from North Carolina State University. Dr. Young will visit his Congressional delegation during the day and then host an exhibit of his research in the early evening. The exhibit is Cognition and Computation: Exploring the Sciences of Computer Games for Serious Applications. Details from last years event are here. If you have any interest in showing your work at a future CRA event, let us know!