We’re starting to hear from folks on the Hill that it’s looking more like science funding might be included in the initial supplemental when it comes out of the Senate. What’s less clear is how much, though the consensus seems to be “likely less than the science and technology community hopes it will be.” It’s also not clear what the House might do with its version of the supplemental or what would happen if, as the President has repeatedly said, it gets vetoed for including domestic spending.
Another rumor buzzing around DC that the supplemental might actually get split into two bills: an Iraq-only funding bill and an Afghanistan and domestic spending bill. This is politically expedient for the Democrats as the issue of Iraq funding splits the party. By having a separate bill to fund the war in Afghanistan and some domestic programs, it allows the Democrats to vote against funding Iraq without withdrawal timetables but for Afghanistan and domestic program spending that they do support.
We’ll know a lot more in the next week or two as the House and Senate appropriations committees begin their hearings and markups on the supplemental bills. Meanwhile, the science advocacy community continues to be very active in trying to make the case for science funding in the supplemental. Last week’s grassroots effort (which included CRA’s Computing Research Advocacy Network’s involvement) appears to have generated a lot of phone calls to Members of Congress about the issue, and the various coalitions continue to weigh in with their corporate membership to make the case.
It’s expected that the various supplemental bills will hit the House and Senate floors in late April or early May, so keep it tuned here for details.
The latest data from the National Science Foundation reveal that there were more science and engineering graduates in the U.S. in 2006 than there were in 2003 and that there appears to be plenty of opportunity for those graduates in the S&E workforce. NSF and US Newsdetail the results of three recent studies released by NSF that indicate this “strong labor market for scientists and engineers.”
According to the studies, the number of individuals working in science and engineering (S&E) occupations grew by 4.3 percent between 2003 and 2006, while their unemployment rate dropped to 2.5 percent in 2006, its lowest since the early 1990s. “On the supply side, we can say that the current S&E labor force is expanding, new graduates are coming out, and people are able to find employment, or are continuing their education,” says Nimmi Kannankutty, the National Science Foundation (NSF) program manager responsible for compiling the data, which NSF released last month.
CRA’s Jay Vegso has some additional data detailing how computer science graduates appear to be faring in this market. The short answer is: quite well. According to the NSF data, “CS graduates tied for second with health majors for the highest median salary at the bachelor’s level ($45,000) and tied for first with engineering at the master’s level ($65,000).” Both figures are well above the median salaries among all science, engineering and health fields ($39,000 for bachelor’s and $56,000 for master’s).
For a look at all the data, see:
Unemployment Rate of U.S. Scientists and Engineers Drops to Record Low 2.5% in 2006
An Overview of Science, Engineering and Health Graduates: 2006
NSF’s Divison of Science Resources Statistics (SRS)
Here’s a note sent to members of our Computing Research Advocacy Network. You can join, too!:
ACTION REQUEST: Call your U.S. Senators, your Representative in the House, and the White House this week to urge support for science funding in the FY 08 Supplemental.
WHY?: Though the FY 08 Appropriations process ended with an omnibus appropriations bill that eliminated most of the planned increases to science accounts called for in the President’s budget and authorized in the bipartisan America COMPETES Act, we have one last chance to mitigate the damage to U.S. science efforts caused by that decision. Congress will soon consider a supplemental appropriations bill for FY 08 necessary to cover the costs of the ongoing war in Iraq and operations in Afghanistan, in addition to other immediate concerns not addressed in the FY 08 omnibus appropriation. CRA has covered this issue in depth in this space.
Members of the science advocacy community, including CRA, are mounting a strong effort, with the support of some Congressional champions, to address the shortfall for science in FY 08 in the supplemental spending bill. As part of that effort, CRA will be participating in a large-scale, grassroots effort to weigh-in with individual members of Congress about the importance of including additional funding for key science agencies in the supplemental appropriation.
We are asking members of CRAN to call their representatives in the House, their two U.S. senators and the White House on Tuesday, April 8th; Wednesday, April 9th; or Thursday, April 10th to urge support for the inclusion of additional funding for the Department of Energy Office of Science, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institute for Standards and Technology in the FY 08 supplemental appropriations bill.
HOW?: Here’s a handy guide for the effort with all the details for your participation, including a simple script to use when calling. The point of this exercise is simply to register your opinion on this issue with your representatives in Congress and the White House. Calls to these offices are logged daily by issue and Members of Congress are influenced by call volumes in trying to decide how much an issue matters to their district. We expect significant participation from scientists and researchers across the disciplines — we want to make sure computing researchers are heard from, too.
So, please plan to call your representative, senators and the White House this Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday as part of this effort. While the attached indicates you can place the call to the district offices or your representatives’ DC offices, we’ve found through experience that a call to the DC office is more beneficial (more likely to be logged).
Phone numbers to use:
To call White House: (202) 456-1111
To call your Representative and Senators: Look up their contact info at Vote Smart
We’d also like to gauge our members participation, so please send us an e-mail when you call, letting us know who you called and whether you received any response. Please send the email to mnorr@cra.org.
Thanks again for your participation and support of computing research. Your effort will help convey to Congress and the Administration the breadth and depth of support for fully funding these key federal science agencies. Good luck with your calls!
To join the Computing Research Advocacy Network (CRAN) and receive email alerts, please sign up here.
Today’s Washington Post article on the College Board’s decision to stop administering certain Advanced Placement tests has been widely circulated — with some reasonable concern within the computing community. The article appears to suggest that computer science advanced placement tests are on the chopping block. However, that’s not quite an accurate picture. Fortunately, Cameron Wilson at CRA-affiliate ACM — which has become quite involved in the computing education space — has a more complete explanation on the Tech Policy Blog of what’s really going on and why it ultimately could/should be beneficial for the field.
While the economic news coming from most areas has been fairly poor in recent weeks, the American Electronics Association (AEA)Cyberstates 2008 report does have some good job news. Cyberstates 2008, which was released this week, showed job growth in technology and engineering of over 91,000 jobs in 2007. The news isnt all good, however, as that was down from over 130,000 jobs added in 2006.
AEA President Christopher Hansen told Congress Daily that The upside is that technology jobs pay considerably more than most other posts in the private sector and although the labor market remains tight, unemployment rates are below 2 percent across many tech occupations. The bad news, he told the publication, is The tech industry and the country risk an impending slide in U.S. global competitiveness, caused by negligence on the part of our political leaders to adequately invest in scientific research, improve our education system, and allow the best and brightest from around the world to work in the United States. AEA has been a forceful voice, alongside CRA and the rest of the S&T community, calling for fully funding the America COMPETES Act in order to keep job growth in these sectors going and to increase the competitiveness of the US.
Highlights from the Cyber States 2008 report can be found here.
The joint investment announced yesterday by Microsoft and Intel in two university research centers (one at Berkeley and one at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) in order to work on solving the challenges of multi-core computing is all over the news, but there’s an aspect of the story that’s been hasn’t been highlighted sufficiently. The NY Times’ John Markoff picked up on it, however:
Both Intel and Microsoft executives said the research funds were a partial step toward filling a void left by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa. The agency has increasingly focused during the Bush administration on military and other classified projects, and pure research funds for computing at universities have declined.
“The academic community has never really recovered from Darpas withdrawal,” said Daniel A. Reed, director of scalable and multicore computing at Microsoft, who will help oversee the new research labs.
[Dan Reed is also the current Chair of CRA.]
We’ve noted many, many times on this blog our concerns with policy changes at DARPA since about 2001 that have had the effect of pushing university researchers away from DARPA-sponsored research. As we wrote as recently as September 2007, shorter research horizons with an emphasis on go/no-go milestones at relatively short intervals and an increased use of classification at the agency has sharply reduced the amount of DARPA-supported research being performed in U.S. universities. In fact, between FY 2001 and FY 2004 (the last year for which we have good data), the amount of funding from DARPA to U.S. universities fell by half — and informal evidence suggests university shares are even lower today.
While it’s great news that two of the titans of the IT industry are stepping up to fill some of the gap left by DARPA’s withdrawal, their $20 million investment over 5 years represents just a tiny fraction of the DARPA shortfall. The difference in DARPA funding for university computer science between 2001 and 2004 was $91 million annually ($214 million in FY 01 to $123 million in FY 04 in unadjusted dollars), and anecdotal evidence suggests that shortfall may be even larger now. The Microsoft-Intel investment is a bold move and big commitment to address a key challenge in computer science that’s a primary concern for the two companies in the future. But it doesn’t represent a sustainable alternative to filling the hole left in the IT R&D portfolio created by DARPA’s absence.
DARPA has taken some steps to try to bring university researchers, especially younger faculty, back into the fold. In February, the agency also reorganized its IT office structure a bit — merging the Information Exploitation Office (IXO) with the Information Processing Technology Office (IPTO) to create a new Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) under former IPTO Deputy Chuck Morefield. There’s some indication that the office will have a technology focus (which suggests a research emphasis) in addition to a systems focus (which suggests a development-oriented emphasis), so there may be increased opportunities for university researchers to participate in DARPA-sponsored work.
We hope so, because while it’s great to see the IT industry step up and make some commitments to university-led research, the country (and the DOD, and the world) is probably better served by a DARPA that’s re-engaged with the university research community, supporting long-term, DARPA-hard research at a range of institutions on some of the grand challenges in computing….
Research is where its at, Bill Gates said yesterday summing up his (and CRA’s, in fact) message for federal funding priorities in a single sentence to the House Science and Technology Committee. The response came in the final minutes of the hearing when Gates was asked what the priority for federal funding should be given that there is a finite amount of federal money to spend and the large number of potential science and technology areas it could be spent on.
Gates appearance before the committee, his last as Chairman of Microsoft, was in commemoration of the committees 50th anniversary. The theme of the hearing was familiar to those in the science and technology realmCompetitiveness and Innovation. Gates testimony, both written and in response to questions, followed the arguments he and the rest of the S&T community have been making for the last several years: the urgency for improving STEM education at the K-12 level, the critical need for federal funding of basic research, the importance of attracting the best and the brightest from around the world to U.S. universities, the need to increase diversity in STEM fields, and the requirement that we do whatever we can to retain talent in the U.S.
The entire written testimony and a webcast of the hearing are available on the committee web site. In it, Gates, not unexpectedly, highlights the important contributions of information technology and its great potential to aid in solving some of the trickiest problems we face:
Computing and software will also play an increasingly central role in scientific research. We are rapidly moving into an era of data-centric computational science in which researchers across a wide range of disciplines routinely use software and computers as essential tools for investigation and collaboration. The ability to use computers to model complex systems is transforming the way we learn about everything from genomics and biosciences to physics and astronomy. In the future, scientific computing will play a profoundly important role in advances that will help us treat diseases, address climate change, and confront many other critical issues.
…But he raises important questions about whether we’re doing all we can to insure the U.S. remains an innovation leader:
As I hope these remarks reflect, I am optimistic about the potential for technology to help us find new ways to improve peoples lives and tackle important challenges. I am less optimistic, however, that the United States will continue to remain a global leader in technology innovation. While Americas innovation heritage is unparalleled, the evidence is mounting that we are failing to make the investments in our young people, our workers, our scientific research infrastructure, and our economy that will enable us to retain our global innovation leadership.
In particular, I believe that there are two urgent reasons why we should all be deeply concerned that our advantages in science and technology innovation are in danger of slipping away.
First, we face a critical shortfall of skilled scientists and engineers who can develop new breakthrough technologies. Second, the public and private sectors are no longer investing in basic research and development (R&D) at the levels needed to drive long-term innovation.
If the United States truly wants to secure its global leadership in technology innovation, we must, as a nation, commit to a strategy for innovation excellence a set of initiatives and policies that will provide the foundation for American competitive strength in the years ahead. Such a strategy cannot succeed without a serious commitment from and partnership between both the public and private sectors. It will also need to be flexible and dynamic enough to respond to rapid changes in the global economy.
Update: Some press coverage of the hearing from Forbes, the Washington Post, and one in Inforworld (though the latter focuses almost exclusively on Gates’ H-1B testimony).
MicrosoftChairman Bill Gates will testify before the House Science and Technology Committee tomorrow morning to “share his thoughts on efforts needed to further strengthen our countrys competitiveness in the global marketplace, discuss what policies are needed to encourage innovation, and address the role of technology in our countrys economic growth.” (That’s according to the hearing charter (pdf)). The hearing is the first in a series planned by House S&T to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the committee, created in the wake of the shock of Sputnik (an event that also motivated the creation of DARPA and NASA and triggered an rapid increase in federal science funding). Expect Gates to talk about the importance of this federal support for fundamental research in driving the nation’s incredibly successful innovation ecosystem over that time.
The committee will webcast the 10 am ET hearing from a URL that will be available here, where you can also find the hearing charter and some related information. We’ll have our reaction to the testimony here following the hearing.
The House of Representatives Budget Committee passed the FY09 budget resolution and a Sense of the House resolution last night reaffirming the importance of S&T funding. The budget resolution provides a large pot of money for the accounts that fund science agencies, including an additional $379 million above the Presidents request for the account that funds NSF. The Sense of the House resolution, a non-binding resolution, says that it is important to fully fund the America COMPETES Act. While this is a good sign of support for science, it’s only the first step that Congress must take to realize these increases as part of the FY 09 appropriations process. And we’ve seen in the past how good first steps don’t necessarily mean the final steps will be equally good. Sense of the House text:
TITLE VISENSE OF THE HOUSE
SEC. 601. SENSE OF THE HOUSE ON THE INNOVATION AGENDA AND AMERICA COMPETES ACT
It is the sense of the House that the House should provide sufficient funding so that our Nation may continue to be the world leader in education, innovation and economic growth; last year, Congress passed and the President signed the America COMPETES Act, bipartisan legislation designed to ensure that American students, teachers, businesses, and workers are pre-pared to continue leading the world in innovation, research, and technology well into the future; this resolution supports the efforts authorized in the America COMPETES Act, providing substantially increased funding above the Presidents requested level for 2009, and increased amounts after 2009 in Function 250 (General Science, Space and Technology) and Function 270 (Energy); additional increases for scientific research and education are included in Function 500 (Education, Employment, Training and Social Services), Function 550 (Health), Function 300 (Environment and Natural Resources), and Function 370 (Commerce and Housing Credit), all of which receive more funding than the Presidents budget provides; because Americas greatest resource for innovation resides within classrooms across the country, the increased funding provided in this resolution will support initiatives within the America COMPETES Act to educate tens of thousands of new scientists, engineers, and mathematicians, and place highly qualified teachers in math and science K-12 classrooms; and because independent scientific research provides the foundation for innovation and future technologies, this resolution will keep us on the path toward doubling funding for the National Science Foundation, basic research in the physical sciences, and collaborative research partnerships, and toward achieving energy independence through the develop ment of clean and sustainable alternative energy technologies.
Well have more on the budget resolution as the process moves forward. Stay tuned!
An effort is under way to influence the National Science Foundation’s FY09 funding early this appropriations season. Reps. Vernon Ehlers (R-MI), Rush Holt (D-NJ), Bob Inglis (R-SC) and Brian Baird (D-WA) have put together a letter to the House Appropriations Chair and Ranking Member to urge support for NSF’s FY09 budget request of $7.326 billion (which represents a 13.6 percent increase over FY08), and they’re looking for more of their colleagues to co-sign. CRA has joined with many others in the science advocacy community in alerting our membership to help encourage more Members of Congress to sign on. But you can help, too! Below is the alert that we sent out to the Computing Research Advocacy Network (interested in joining?). You don’t have to be a member to participate!:
Members of the Computing Research Advocacy Network:
I am writing to ask for your help with a brief opportunity that we have to influence support for increasing funding at the National Science Foundation in the FY09 budget appropriations process in the House of Representatives. Rep. Vernon Ehlers (R-MI), Rush Holt (D-NJ), Bob Inglis (R-SC) and Brian Baird (D-WA) have circulated a “Dear Colleague” letter to all of the Members of the House of Representatives asking them to sign a letter (text provided below) to the Chair and Ranking Member of the House Appropriations Committee urging their support for the agency’s budget request of $7.326 billion for FY09, an increase of 13.6 percent over FY08. As you know, the National Science Foundation (NSF) funds 86 percent of all university-based computing research, so securing a funding increase at this vital agency is crucially important to the computing community. We want to get NSF back onto the doubling track.
In order for this effort to have significant impact, the letter needs as many congressional signatories as possible. We’re asking CRAN members to please contact your Representative immediately to encourage him or her to sign this letter. Members wishing to sign the letter MUST do so by March 12, so the window of opportunity is brief to make a difference. Please CALL your Representative’s office today to encourage him or her to sign.
The process is short and simple: Call your Representative’s DC office (if you need assistance finding your Congressman’s phone number, please go to the House of Representatives web site or contact Melissa Norr at CRA at mnorr@cra.org or at 202-266-2944). Ask to speak to the legislative assistant who handles science issues for the Member. Explain that you’re a researcher in the Representative’s district, and that much of work performed at your institution is enabled by support from NSF. Urge the Representative to support the increase requested by NSF for FY09, and to demonstrate that support by signing the letter in the Dear Colleague circulated by Ehlers, Holt, Baird and Inglis last Tuesday. That’s it!
As of last Friday, co-signers, in addition to Reps. Ehlers, Holt, Baird and Inglis, include the following representatives:
* Mike Rogers (AL)
* Thomas Allen (ME)
* Alcee Hastings (FL)
* Betty Sutton (OH)
* Phil English (PA)
* Ron Paul (TX)
* Michael McNulty (NY)
* Jim Moran (VA)
* David Loebsack (IA)
Previous efforts have produced more than 100 co-signers. We’d like to reach at least that level this time as well. Remember, Members have until March 12th to sign on, so please call soon.
On behalf of the CRA, many thanks for your help!
— Jeff
P.S. Here’s a text of the letter we want your Congressman to sign:
Dear Chairman Mollohan and Ranking Member Frelinghuysen,
We are writing to thank you for your past support for the National Science Foundation (NSF) and to ask you to continue that support in the FY 2009 appropriations bill. Our request is to uphold the fiscal year 2009 funding level of the American COMPETES Act of $7.326 billion for the National Science Foundation.
In 2007, a pathway was established to double the budget of the NSF over the course of 10 years. The priority recommendation of an esteemed panel of the National Academies, the Rising Above the Gathering Storm report, served as the catalyst for Congress and the Administration to find consensus on the doubling path for the physical sciences. The National Academies’ convincing report warned that the U.S. must invest in fundamental research or our innovation pipeline will deteriorate.
Despite the evidence and overwhelming support for the COMPETES Act, which was signed into law in August 2007, funding for NSF fell short of the ten-year doubling path in both the FY07 and FY08 appropriations cycles. Cumulatively, NSF was funded $500 million below the request in the past two years. Our request – as authorized by the COMPETES Act – adds this amount to the funding request for NSF by the Administration in FY09 ($6.854 billion) in order to restore these deficits. This will put the NSF back on its doubling path.
A renewed commitment to core basic research and educational programs at NSF is essential to meet the enormous promise of scientific innovation, to better train future scientists, engineers, and technicians, and to promote the success of multidisciplinary initiatives, including biotechnology and nanotechnology. We now need to make substantial investments in the physical sciences and engineering. NSF is the core agency for these endeavors.
Past investments in NSF have contributed greatly to major technological advances in areas and industries that are critical for U.S. economic growth and defense. We respectfully request that you continue the flow of such advances in the FY09 budget by funding NSF at $7.326 billion.”
—
Jeffrey S. Vitter
Frederick L. Hovde Dean of the College of Science
Purdue University
Update: A list of additional signers as of March 6, is below. Update 2: The letter has 126 signers as of March 17. The total list is below. Thank you to everyone who contacted their Congressmen.
Rumors Swirl Around Supplemental
/In: American Competitiveness Initiative, Funding, FY08 Appropriations, FY09 Appropriations /by MelissaNorrWe’re starting to hear from folks on the Hill that it’s looking more like science funding might be included in the initial supplemental when it comes out of the Senate. What’s less clear is how much, though the consensus seems to be “likely less than the science and technology community hopes it will be.” It’s also not clear what the House might do with its version of the supplemental or what would happen if, as the President has repeatedly said, it gets vetoed for including domestic spending.
Another rumor buzzing around DC that the supplemental might actually get split into two bills: an Iraq-only funding bill and an Afghanistan and domestic spending bill. This is politically expedient for the Democrats as the issue of Iraq funding splits the party. By having a separate bill to fund the war in Afghanistan and some domestic programs, it allows the Democrats to vote against funding Iraq without withdrawal timetables but for Afghanistan and domestic program spending that they do support.
We’ll know a lot more in the next week or two as the House and Senate appropriations committees begin their hearings and markups on the supplemental bills. Meanwhile, the science advocacy community continues to be very active in trying to make the case for science funding in the supplemental. Last week’s grassroots effort (which included CRA’s Computing Research Advocacy Network’s involvement) appears to have generated a lot of phone calls to Members of Congress about the issue, and the various coalitions continue to weigh in with their corporate membership to make the case.
It’s expected that the various supplemental bills will hit the House and Senate floors in late April or early May, so keep it tuned here for details.
S&E Supply Up, Unemployment Down in 2006, Says NSF
/In: People /by Peter HarshaThe latest data from the National Science Foundation reveal that there were more science and engineering graduates in the U.S. in 2006 than there were in 2003 and that there appears to be plenty of opportunity for those graduates in the S&E workforce. NSF and US News detail the results of three recent studies released by NSF that indicate this “strong labor market for scientists and engineers.”
CRA’s Jay Vegso has some additional data detailing how computer science graduates appear to be faring in this market. The short answer is: quite well. According to the NSF data, “CS graduates tied for second with health majors for the highest median salary at the bachelor’s level ($45,000) and tied for first with engineering at the master’s level ($65,000).” Both figures are well above the median salaries among all science, engineering and health fields ($39,000 for bachelor’s and $56,000 for master’s).
For a look at all the data, see:
Grassroots Effort to Urge Support for Science Funding in Supplemental
/In: American Competitiveness Initiative, Funding, FY08 Appropriations, Policy /by MelissaNorrHere’s a note sent to members of our Computing Research Advocacy Network. You can join, too!:
ACTION REQUEST: Call your U.S. Senators, your Representative in the House, and the White House this week to urge support for science funding in the FY 08 Supplemental.
WHY?: Though the FY 08 Appropriations process ended with an omnibus appropriations bill that eliminated most of the planned increases to science accounts called for in the President’s budget and authorized in the bipartisan America COMPETES Act, we have one last chance to mitigate the damage to U.S. science efforts caused by that decision. Congress will soon consider a supplemental appropriations bill for FY 08 necessary to cover the costs of the ongoing war in Iraq and operations in Afghanistan, in addition to other immediate concerns not addressed in the FY 08 omnibus appropriation. CRA has covered this issue in depth in this space.
Members of the science advocacy community, including CRA, are mounting a strong effort, with the support of some Congressional champions, to address the shortfall for science in FY 08 in the supplemental spending bill. As part of that effort, CRA will be participating in a large-scale, grassroots effort to weigh-in with individual members of Congress about the importance of including additional funding for key science agencies in the supplemental appropriation.
We are asking members of CRAN to call their representatives in the House, their two U.S. senators and the White House on Tuesday, April 8th; Wednesday, April 9th; or Thursday, April 10th to urge support for the inclusion of additional funding for the Department of Energy Office of Science, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institute for Standards and Technology in the FY 08 supplemental appropriations bill.
HOW?: Here’s a handy guide for the effort with all the details for your participation, including a simple script to use when calling. The point of this exercise is simply to register your opinion on this issue with your representatives in Congress and the White House. Calls to these offices are logged daily by issue and Members of Congress are influenced by call volumes in trying to decide how much an issue matters to their district. We expect significant participation from scientists and researchers across the disciplines — we want to make sure computing researchers are heard from, too.
So, please plan to call your representative, senators and the White House this Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday as part of this effort. While the attached indicates you can place the call to the district offices or your representatives’ DC offices, we’ve found through experience that a call to the DC office is more beneficial (more likely to be logged).
Phone numbers to use:
To call White House: (202) 456-1111
To call your Representative and Senators: Look up their contact info at Vote Smart
We’d also like to gauge our members participation, so please send us an e-mail when you call, letting us know who you called and whether you received any response. Please send the email to mnorr@cra.org.
Thanks again for your participation and support of computing research. Your effort will help convey to Congress and the Administration the breadth and depth of support for fully funding these key federal science agencies. Good luck with your calls!
To join the Computing Research Advocacy Network (CRAN) and receive email alerts, please sign up here.
Reports of AP CS’ Demise are Greatly Exaggerated
/In: Computing Education, Misc. /by Peter HarshaToday’s Washington Post article on the College Board’s decision to stop administering certain Advanced Placement tests has been widely circulated — with some reasonable concern within the computing community. The article appears to suggest that computer science advanced placement tests are on the chopping block. However, that’s not quite an accurate picture. Fortunately, Cameron Wilson at CRA-affiliate ACM — which has become quite involved in the computing education space — has a more complete explanation on the Tech Policy Blog of what’s really going on and why it ultimately could/should be beneficial for the field.
AEA Cyberstates 2008 Report Released
/In: American Competitiveness Initiative, Funding, FY08 Appropriations, FY09 Appropriations /by MelissaNorrWhile the economic news coming from most areas has been fairly poor in recent weeks, the American Electronics Association (AEA) Cyberstates 2008 report does have some good job news. Cyberstates 2008, which was released this week, showed job growth in technology and engineering of over 91,000 jobs in 2007. The news isnt all good, however, as that was down from over 130,000 jobs added in 2006.
AEA President Christopher Hansen told Congress Daily that The upside is that technology jobs pay considerably more than most other posts in the private sector and although the labor market remains tight, unemployment rates are below 2 percent across many tech occupations. The bad news, he told the publication, is The tech industry and the country risk an impending slide in U.S. global competitiveness, caused by negligence on the part of our political leaders to adequately invest in scientific research, improve our education system, and allow the best and brightest from around the world to work in the United States.
AEA has been a forceful voice, alongside CRA and the rest of the S&T community, calling for fully funding the America COMPETES Act in order to keep job growth in these sectors going and to increase the competitiveness of the US.
Highlights from the Cyber States 2008 report can be found here.
Microsoft-Intel Investment in University Research Motivated by DARPA’s Lack of Support
/In: Policy, R&D in the Press, Research /by Peter HarshaThe joint investment announced yesterday by Microsoft and Intel in two university research centers (one at Berkeley and one at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) in order to work on solving the challenges of multi-core computing is all over the news, but there’s an aspect of the story that’s been hasn’t been highlighted sufficiently. The NY Times’ John Markoff picked up on it, however:
[Dan Reed is also the current Chair of CRA.]
We’ve noted many, many times on this blog our concerns with policy changes at DARPA since about 2001 that have had the effect of pushing university researchers away from DARPA-sponsored research. As we wrote as recently as September 2007, shorter research horizons with an emphasis on go/no-go milestones at relatively short intervals and an increased use of classification at the agency has sharply reduced the amount of DARPA-supported research being performed in U.S. universities. In fact, between FY 2001 and FY 2004 (the last year for which we have good data), the amount of funding from DARPA to U.S. universities fell by half — and informal evidence suggests university shares are even lower today.
While it’s great news that two of the titans of the IT industry are stepping up to fill some of the gap left by DARPA’s withdrawal, their $20 million investment over 5 years represents just a tiny fraction of the DARPA shortfall. The difference in DARPA funding for university computer science between 2001 and 2004 was $91 million annually ($214 million in FY 01 to $123 million in FY 04 in unadjusted dollars), and anecdotal evidence suggests that shortfall may be even larger now. The Microsoft-Intel investment is a bold move and big commitment to address a key challenge in computer science that’s a primary concern for the two companies in the future. But it doesn’t represent a sustainable alternative to filling the hole left in the IT R&D portfolio created by DARPA’s absence.
DARPA has taken some steps to try to bring university researchers, especially younger faculty, back into the fold. In February, the agency also reorganized its IT office structure a bit — merging the Information Exploitation Office (IXO) with the Information Processing Technology Office (IPTO) to create a new Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) under former IPTO Deputy Chuck Morefield. There’s some indication that the office will have a technology focus (which suggests a research emphasis) in addition to a systems focus (which suggests a development-oriented emphasis), so there may be increased opportunities for university researchers to participate in DARPA-sponsored work.
We hope so, because while it’s great to see the IT industry step up and make some commitments to university-led research, the country (and the DOD, and the world) is probably better served by a DARPA that’s re-engaged with the university research community, supporting long-term, DARPA-hard research at a range of institutions on some of the grand challenges in computing….
Gates Tells Congress to Support Research
/In: American Competitiveness Initiative, Computing Education, Diversity in Computing, Funding, FY09 Appropriations, People /by MelissaNorrResearch is where its at, Bill Gates said yesterday summing up his (and CRA’s, in fact) message for federal funding priorities in a single sentence to the House Science and Technology Committee. The response came in the final minutes of the hearing when Gates was asked what the priority for federal funding should be given that there is a finite amount of federal money to spend and the large number of potential science and technology areas it could be spent on.
Gates appearance before the committee, his last as Chairman of Microsoft, was in commemoration of the committees 50th anniversary. The theme of the hearing was familiar to those in the science and technology realmCompetitiveness and Innovation. Gates testimony, both written and in response to questions, followed the arguments he and the rest of the S&T community have been making for the last several years: the urgency for improving STEM education at the K-12 level, the critical need for federal funding of basic research, the importance of attracting the best and the brightest from around the world to U.S. universities, the need to increase diversity in STEM fields, and the requirement that we do whatever we can to retain talent in the U.S.
The entire written testimony and a webcast of the hearing are available on the committee web site. In it, Gates, not unexpectedly, highlights the important contributions of information technology and its great potential to aid in solving some of the trickiest problems we face:
…But he raises important questions about whether we’re doing all we can to insure the U.S. remains an innovation leader:
Update: Some press coverage of the hearing from Forbes, the Washington Post, and one in Inforworld (though the latter focuses almost exclusively on Gates’ H-1B testimony).
Gates to Testify Before Congress on Innovation
/In: Events, People, Policy /by Peter HarshaMicrosoft Chairman Bill Gates will testify before the House Science and Technology Committee tomorrow morning to “share his thoughts on efforts needed to further strengthen our countrys competitiveness in the global marketplace, discuss what policies are needed to encourage innovation, and address the role of technology in our countrys economic growth.” (That’s according to the hearing charter (pdf)). The hearing is the first in a series planned by House S&T to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the committee, created in the wake of the shock of Sputnik (an event that also motivated the creation of DARPA and NASA and triggered an rapid increase in federal science funding). Expect Gates to talk about the importance of this federal support for fundamental research in driving the nation’s incredibly successful innovation ecosystem over that time.
The committee will webcast the 10 am ET hearing from a URL that will be available here, where you can also find the hearing charter and some related information. We’ll have our reaction to the testimony here following the hearing.
FY09 House Budget Resolution
/In: American Competitiveness Initiative, Funding, FY09 Appropriations /by MelissaNorrThe House of Representatives Budget Committee passed the FY09 budget resolution and a Sense of the House resolution last night reaffirming the importance of S&T funding. The budget resolution provides a large pot of money for the accounts that fund science agencies, including an additional $379 million above the Presidents request for the account that funds NSF. The Sense of the House resolution, a non-binding resolution, says that it is important to fully fund the America COMPETES Act. While this is a good sign of support for science, it’s only the first step that Congress must take to realize these increases as part of the FY 09 appropriations process. And we’ve seen in the past how good first steps don’t necessarily mean the final steps will be equally good. Sense of the House text:
Well have more on the budget resolution as the process moves forward. Stay tuned!
Help Urge Congress To Support Increases in Science, Computing Research
/In: American Competitiveness Initiative, Funding, FY09 Appropriations /by MelissaNorrAn effort is under way to influence the National Science Foundation’s FY09 funding early this appropriations season. Reps. Vernon Ehlers (R-MI), Rush Holt (D-NJ), Bob Inglis (R-SC) and Brian Baird (D-WA) have put together a letter to the House Appropriations Chair and Ranking Member to urge support for NSF’s FY09 budget request of $7.326 billion (which represents a 13.6 percent increase over FY08), and they’re looking for more of their colleagues to co-sign. CRA has joined with many others in the science advocacy community in alerting our membership to help encourage more Members of Congress to sign on. But you can help, too! Below is the alert that we sent out to the Computing Research Advocacy Network (interested in joining?). You don’t have to be a member to participate!:
Update: A list of additional signers as of March 6, is below.
Update 2: The letter has 126 signers as of March 17. The total list is below. Thank you to everyone who contacted their Congressmen.
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