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NATIONAL SCIENCE POLICY STUDY, PART IV: MATH AND SCIENCE EDUCATION: ATTRACTING AND GRADUATING SCIENTISTS AND ENGINEERS PREPARED TO SUCCEED IN ACADEMIA AND INDUSTRY
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 1, 1998
U.S. House of Representatives,
Committee on Science,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 10 a.m., in room 2318, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr., Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Chairman SENSENBRENNER. The Committee will be in order. Without objection, the Chair is given permission to recess during the vote today.
I want to welcome everyone here today for this second National Science Policy Study hearing on science, math, engineering, and technology education. Our focus today is on higher education, and specifically the graduate education of scientists and engineers.
The United States has a first-class science and engineering graduate education enterprise. Our colleges and universities are the envy of the world, producing more Nobel laureates in science than any other nation.
Nevertheless, the dawn of the 21st Century is coming and with it a host of new and more complex challenges. Scientists and engineers will need to be prepared for a dynamic and sophisticated workplace, constantly evolving to meet a more competitive global economy.
We already know from some reports that our institutions of higher learning may be coming up short in their task to educate these individuals. This Committee learned a couple of years ago in a hearing on graduate education that, while most science and engineering Ph.D.'s are employed in careers outside of academia, most universities have their heads stuck in the sand and continue to train graduate students exclusively for academic positions. This, in addition to an increase in the amount of time it takes to get a Ph.D. and a proliferation of postdoctoral assignments, should be of concern.
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The looming danger is that we may ultimately be dissuading young people from pursuing careers in science and engineering at a time when the Nation needs them more than ever. In fact, recent statistics on graduate science and engineering programs already show a slight decline in the number of young people who are beginning these programs.
There is evidence that some of the problem is a cultural bias among university professors, deans, and researchers against employment outside of academia. They convey implicit—and sometimes explicit—messages to their students that employment anywhere else is beneath them and their degrees. At the same time, students see the stiff competition for tenure-track academic positions. So it's really no surprise that some of the students decide not to begin the programs in the first place.
A 1995 report of the National Academy of Sciences' Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy, known as the COSEPUP, recommended a few measures to improve graduate education of science and engineers. The report addressed the employment issue and recommended that graduate programs produce more versatile students prepared for careers in both academia and elsewhere.
Enough time has passed since the report was issued for this hearing to be a good forum to find out whether its recommendations have been heeded.
In engineering education, the topic of how we train individuals for the kinds of jobs they will enter is also very timely. From making young people aware of engineering as a profession to training them to design the sophisticated products of tomorrow, engineering education is a critical part of the Nation's technological prowess.
I look forward to hearing the witnesses discuss where we are on these issues as well as what has been happening at colleges and universities since the Academy's report was released.
And before recognizing Mr. Brown, let me say that because this is a Science Policy Study hearing, I will be turning the gavel over to the gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Ehlers, so that I can go down and deal with intellectual property issues in the Judiciary Committee.
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Gentleman from California, Mr. Brown.
Mr. BROWN of California. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I was delighted to hear the Chairman's opening statement. It reflects many things that we have discussed over the years here in the Committee. And until he voiced them in this opening statement, I wasn't aware how similar our views were in many areas.
In light of that, I'm going to ask unanimous consent to put the full text of my opening statement in the record, and I will condense it substantially.
First of all, let me welcome the witnesses here, a distinguished group. And at least to some of them, I am familiar with some of their prior work. I note that Dr. Goodstein is here. And he has authored a number of somewhat provocative articles about the questions that we're discussing here this morning, and I'm looking forward to hearing him elaborate on some of those.
Federal support for academic research over the past 50 years has created the system of research universities, with its special characteristics: institutional prestige tied to the amount of federal research funding received; faculty promotions and tenure tied to success at obtaining research grants; and graduate students supplying much of the labor force for carrying out the research and, as the Chairman indicated, generally being steered along the path of replicating the careers of their mentors in the universities.
The predominant support mechanism for graduate students in science and engineering is the research assistantship, which is funded through grants to faculty members. The National Academy report suggests other mechanisms could be used in order to increase the focus on the educational goals of individual students. Clearly, the federal R&D agencies could change their policies for providing this support. And I would be interested in the views of our witnesses on whether such a change would strengthen graduate education.
In a very real way, graduate education in science and engineering underpins the R&D enterprise of the Nation. It is essential that the best students be attracted to pursue advanced study in these fields and that the education they receive be aligned with a variety of fulfilling career opportunities. The challenge is to identify and implement constructive changes while preserving the obvious strengths in the present system.
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I congratulate the Chairman and look forward to hearing from our witnesses.
[The prepared statements of Mr. Brown and Ms. Johnson follow:]
OPENING STATEMENT
HEARING ON MATH AND SCIENCE EDUCATION: ATTRACTING AND GRADUATING SCIENTISTS AND ENGINEERS PREPARED TO SUCCEED IN ACADEMIA AND INDUSTRY
BY THE HONORABLE GEORGE E. BROWN, JR, RANKING DEMOCRATIC MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE
APRIL 1, 1998
During this Congress, the Science Committee has held several hearings on the status of K–12 science and math education. The predominant theme has generally been: what can be done to effect reform, and thereby, reverse the poor performance of American students. Today, we are turning our attention to graduate education, which I am confident, most would agree is the major strength of the U.S. educational system. The excellence of our graduate education is recognized throughout the world, as reflected in the large numbers of international students who seek admittance to U.S. graduate schools.
Nevertheless, all is not well with graduate education. There is evidence that we are producing more graduates in some fields than there are available positions. And there are changes in the kinds of employment opportunities available, as shown by the declining percentage of graduates finding positions in academe versus industry. This raises the question of whether the PhD degree is preparing students to succeed in the evolving science and technology workforce. The charge is sometimes made that professors train clones of themselves and implicitly disparage careers outside of academe.
During the last Congress, the Committee held a hearing to consider the findings of a National Academy of sciences report on graduate education. This report suggested the need to reconsider support mechanisms for graduate students, to provide better information to students on employment options and trends, and to provide a broader educational experience, including mechanisms, such as internships, to acquaint students with the industrial environment. I would be interested in the views of our witnesses on the recommendations of this report, and in their suggestions regarding the appropriate federal role in improving graduate education.
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Changes to the graduate education system are rightly the principal responsibility of the universities and their faculties, but the federal government can certainly influence what is done. After all, federal support for academic research over the past 50 years has created the system of research universities, with its special characteristics: institutional prestige tied to the amount of federal research funding received; faculty promotion and tenure tied to success at obtaining research grants; and graduate students supplying much of the labor force for carrying out the research.
The predominant support mechanism for graduate students in science and engineering is the graduate research assistantship, which is funded through research grants to faculty members. The National Academy report suggests that other mechanisms, fellowships and traineeships, could be used in order to increase the focus on the educational goals of individual students. Clearly, the federal R&D agencies could change their policies for providing graduate student support. I would be interested in the views of our witnesses on whether such a change would strengthen graduate education.
In a very real way, graduate education in science and engineering underpins the R&D enterprise of the nation. It is essential that the best students be attracted to pursue advanced study in these fields, and that the education they receive be aligned with fulfilling career opportunities. The challenge is to identify and implement constructive changes, while preserving the evident strengths of the system.
Mr. Chairman, I congratulate you for calling this hearing, and join you in welcoming our witnesses. I look forward with interest to their testimony.
OPENING STATEMENT
CONGRESSWOMAN EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON
FULL COMMITTEE HEARING
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4/1/98
Thank you Mr. Chairman for convening this hearing. A progressive and sound math and science education is crucial to educating and graduating future scientists and engineers, most notably African-Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans.
In the science, math, engineering, and technology communities, it is still commonplace to have no African American, Latino, or Native American representation.
Although the U.S. produces nearly one third of all the science and engineering Ph.D.s in the world annually, the statistics are alarming when considering who receives these doctorates.
Whereas Blacks represent 11 percent of the U.S. workforce, they claim only 1.1 percent of physical science doctorates; 1.3 percent of engineering doctorates; and 1.4 percent of computer/mathematical science doctorates.
It is astonishing and alarming that in 1996, the U.S. produced eight African American Ph.D.s in mathematics; 12 in computer science; 15 in physics and astronomy; forty-five in chemistry; four in earth, atmospheric, and marine science; and 74 in engineering.
As related to undergraduate degrees, the total production of African American, Latino, and Native American undergraduates in science and engineering was about 13,800.
I feel that this clearly illustrates that there are few of our African American students in the post-secondary science and engineering educational pipeline. Therefore, if we look at the educational background of these students, I believe that we would find that very few of these students had strong elementary and secondary math and science educations.
We must change this scenario because the U.S. needs scientists and engineers of African American, Latino, and Native American descent. Now, is the time to address this problem because the county's demographics are changing and our lives are becoming intertwined with technology. As a result, scientists and engineers, specifically those who are minorities, will be required in many capacities, not just as researchers and professors in academia, but as leaders in the information technology industry.
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By having individuals as role models in these fields, the U.S. will stimulate youth to be interested in science and engineering while producing a skilled workforce for a strong economy.
I urge all my colleagues to hold discussions in their districts regarding this subject.
Thank you for my time.
Mr. EHLERS [presiding]. Thank you, Mr. Brown. Appreciate those comments.
I'm pleased to welcome everyone to the hearing today. I will have an opening statement as well. And, without objection, the opening statements of any other members will be entered into the record.
Today's hearing, as you well know, is the fourth in a series of hearings the Science Committee is holding on the Committee's National Science Policy Study.
This morning we will focus on a tremendously important aspect of our Nation's overall science and technology enterprise—research universities and engineering schools. Specifically, we will address the current status of graduate research programs in the sciences and both undergraduate and graduate programs in engineering.
By most appearances, the current system of graduate science and engineering training is structurally sound. While producing research results of enormous significance, universities have produced scientists and engineers of the highest caliber. Graduate science and engineering programs at U.S. institutions are a magnet to gifted students from around the world. However, we are beginning to see some cracks in the foundation underlying these academic institutions. Our goal today is to address some of the stress that's being placed on this system.
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The era of perpetual expansion of the academic enterprise is over. Yet, we continue to train scientists at the same rate and in the same way, which is to focus them on careers in academia. This is having a negative impact on some of our young scientists and, in turn, will likely dissuade younger students from pursuing scientific studies. Graduate science programs must adapt to this new environment.
The situation is somewhat different with respect to engineering. Jobs in some engineering fields will likely go unfilled, even though they offer high salaries and promise interesting work, unless universities redesign curricula and rethink traditional educational approaches necessary to prepare tomorrow's engineer.
In addition, the engineering profession must increase its influence on high school and undergraduate students, as too many young people are simply not aware of prospects for engineering as either an academic pursuit or a career.
The failure of our universities' scientific and engineering programs to attract young people to these pursuits could have serious consequences for our Nation. As we enter into an era of worldwide economic competition that is increasingly driven by scientific and technological advances, it will be critical for our Nation's health that we ensure that the research enterprise in this country is kept dynamic, and that it continues to produce both world-class scientists and engineers as well as ground-breaking research results.
An important component of this goal is the ability to attract America's best and brightest to graduate science and engineering programs. I am afraid that we may be failing in this objective, a failure that is masked by our dependence on foreign students.
Too often, science policy in this Nation has been driven by crisis: World War II, the Cold War, and Sputnik. Graduate education in the sciences may not appear to be in a crisis state, though I suspect many young scientists might disagree, but the changes facing this system cannot be ignored. Similarly, we may soon face a situation in which sufficient numbers of engineers do not exist to support the Nation's need for them.
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We have an opportunity to address these issues now and to start finding ways to ensure that the overall science and technology enterprise, which is dependent upon the scientists and engineers produced by our universities, will be able to successfully negotiate the changes facing this enterprise.
Today's witnesses, whom I will introduce in a moment, will help us identify some of the problems graduate programs in the sciences and engineering face, and point us towards some possible solutions.
And, with that, it's a pleasure to ask the panel to take their positions at the witness table and to introduce each of them. Would you please take your places?
It's a pleasure to introduce Dr. David Goodstein, who is currently the Vice Provost of Cal Tech. He's been on the faculty of Cal Tech for over 30 years, in that time launching the new discipline of condensed matter physics with his 1975 book, ''States of Matter,''—as opposed to what we do in Washington, which is a matter of states. He has also served on numerous scientific and academic panels and was a host and project director of a 52-part college physics telecourse.
Recently, and the specific reason he is here today, Dr. Goodstein has become involved in some of the larger issues affecting science; in particular, stressing that profound changes in science are inevitable now that its exponential expansion has come to an end.
Next I'm pleased to introduce Catharine Johnson, who is currently a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University and participated in an earlier roundtable which our Science Policy Study held.
Ms. Johnson is a biomedical graduate student and is the former President of the School of Medicine Graduate Student Association. She has served as a panelist, task force member, and external advisory group member for various AAAS [American Association for the Advancement of Science] and NAS [National Academy of Sciences] activities investigating career planning for graduate students.
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Perhaps the most important panel she participated in, though, was our own early career scientist roundtable last December, which I just referred to. It was her stellar performance at that activity that led us to ask her back again this morning. And I hope that, in spite of all of these extracurricular activities, she is still able to pursue her graduate study.
Next we have Dr. Earl Dowell. And I'm going to turn to my colleague Mr. Etheridge for the introduction of Dr. Dowell.
Mr. ETHERIDGE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for recognizing me for the purpose of introducing one of our distinguished witnesses and a constituent at Duke University. I also want to thank you for convening this hearing to explore issues related to attracting and preparing scientists and engineers for the future job market in academia as well as in industry.
As a former elected state superintendent in North Carolina public school system, I know how important it is to prepare young people early on to get them involved and interested in science and science-related fields so that we can get them in the pipeline early so they can pursue fields later in undergraduate and graduate work. And I still think that's one of the great challenges we still face, and I hope our panelists will touch on that today.
According to U.S. News and World Report, in 1995, Duke University, which is located in Durham, North Carolina, ranked fourth among the top 25 national universities. This university is known and highly respected for the number of students that it has successfully attracted and those who have graduated in science in general but in engineering in particular.
In a recent study in 1996 conducted by the National Science Foundation, it showed that the colleges and universities in North Carolina attracted, retained, and graduated more minority students in the field of science than any of the 26 universities included in that survey.
I am honored to introduce Dr. Earl H. Dowell, a leader in the field of engineering. Dr. Dowell is Dean of the School of Engineering and a J. A. Jones Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at Duke University.
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He received his Bachelor of Science degree in engineering from the University of Illinois and Master's of Science and Doctor of Science from M.I.T. He has served on the faculties of Princeton University and since 1983 at Duke University.
He previously served as Chair of the Public Policy Committee of the ASEE Engineering Deans Council and currently serves as Chair of the council. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics, the American Society of Mechanical Engineering, and the American Academy of Mechanics, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He serves as Vice President and Member of the Board of AIAA, President of the AAM, and an associate editor for several scholarly journals.
Dr. Dowell has received an AIAA Structural Dynamics and Structures of Material Research Award, the Distinguished Service Award of AAM, and the Distinguished Alumni Award of the University of Illinois. He is the author of over 100 journal articles and author and co-author of three books.
Preparing our workers and children to meet the challenges of the next century is one of the most important public policy issues facing this country. And I am pleased we have such a distinguished guest here today with us to discuss some of these issues.
Dr. Dowell has provided excellent leadership in his field. And it is a distinct pleasure for me to introduce you to this group. Dr. Dowell, welcome.
Mr. ROEMER. Mr. Chairman, a parliamentary inquiry?
Mr. EHLERS. Yes?
Mr. ROEMER. Was that an introduction or was that downright bragging about a constituent?
[Laughter.]
Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Chairman, as they say, when it's true, it's fact, not bragging.
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Mr. EHLERS. Well, I was going to comment on that myself, Mr. Roemer. I was going to thank Mr. Etheridge for his introduction and inform the audience that at no extra charge they received a commercial about North Carolina.
I also noticed, however, that throughout the commercial, there was no mention of basketball.
Mr. ETHERIDGE. Next year, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. EHLERS. Next year, right.
Next it's my pleasure to introduce Mr. Michael Peralta, Executive Director of the Junior Engineering and Technical Society. And it's an interesting enterprise, which we'll learn more about in just a few moments.
While relatively new to his current position, Mr. Peralta is also a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, where he is their Director of Professional Education and Technical Activities.
He is also responsible for overall leadership and management of 30 national committees and over 500 domestic and international professional chapters. Mr. Peralta has extensive experience in organizing and coordinating successful educational programs that require the cooperation of many different organizations. I would observe that certainly qualifies you to serve in Congress if you can coordinate that many different activities. So you might consider that.
Next we're pleased to have with us Dr. Phillip Griffiths. He's the Chair of the Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy of the National Academy of Sciences. He is very well-known to those who work in this area and has done a good job in this.
He chaired the 1995 effort of this Committee that produced one of the more important recent studies of our graduate education system, reshaping the graduate education of scientists and engineers. He's the Director of the Institute for Advanced Study since he left Duke University in North Carolina in 1991, where he was Provost and the James B. Duke Professor of Mathematics.
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We are very fortunate that he left when he did because had he not, he also would have had to be introduced by Mr. Etheridge——
[Laughter.]
Mr. EHLERS (continuing). —But who has had more than his share of introductions in this entire Science Policy Study. We're very pleased to have you with us, and we recognize your great contributions.
The rules of the Committee, for those of you who are not familiar with them, are fairly standard: 5 minutes for each of you to offer your initial testimony and then questions from the panelists, 5 minutes per panelist. And we'll take them in order.
So we'll begin with you, Dr. Goodstein.
Mr. GOODSTEIN. Thank you, Mr. Ehlers, Mr. Brown, members of the Committee.
STATEMENT OF DAVID L. GOODSTEIN, VICE PROVOST, PROFESSOR OF PHYSICS AND APPLIED PHYSICS, FRANK J. GILLOON DISTINGUISHED TEACHING AND SERVICE PROFESSOR, CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
Mr. GOODSTEIN. We have in the United States today, on the one hand, a surplus of highly selected and trained Ph.D.'s in science and engineering and, on the other hand, a vast shortage of scientifically and technically educated people.
For 100 years, we turned out Ph.D. scientists at an ever-increasing rate. That was not a problem a long as the absolute number remained small, but extrapolated forward, if the growth had continued, we would have had more scientists than people some time in the next century. That seems a very unlikely result.
Paradoxically, the same system of education and employment that was producing an ever-increasing number of scientists also produced in nearly everyone else a depressing degree of scientific illiteracy. This painful dilemma is deeply rooted in our history.
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The first U.S. Ph.D. in physics was granted around 1870, after the Civil War. By 1900, we were producing about 10 Ph.D.'s per year; by 1930, 100; and by 1970, 1,000. If the trend continued, we would be producing 10,000 a year today, but that did not happen. Instead, the growth stopped abruptly around 1970, and the number has been fluctuating around 1,000 a year ever since. These numbers are for physics, but the same situation applies across the board in all fields of science, mathematics, and technology.
Around 1970, the fraction of the top students in our college and universities who decided to go on to graduate school started to decline, and it has been declining ever since. Our best students, in other words, proved their worth by reading the handwriting on the wall long before anyone else did.
However, at the same time, the excellence of American science attracted students from all over the world, who came here to replace the missing American students. That is why one-half of the students in American graduate schools in science and engineering today are from abroad. And that is also what allowed us in American higher education to pretend for decades after 1970 that nothing had changed.
The problem with all of this is that the institutions of science evolved into their present form during the long period of exponential growth before 1970. They are not adapted for the very different future we must face. There are many examples, but the most important is the way we educate our young.
Science education in America is a mining and sorting operation in which we seek out diamonds in the rough that can be cut and polished into gems just like us, the existing scientists, and we discard all the rest. This system has produced the best scientists in the world, but it is also responsible for the woeful technical illiteracy of the American workforce.
Furthermore, now that the period of exponential growth is over, we find ourselves with a surplus of gems that we can't afford. That is why the internet crackles with the complaints of young Ph.D.'s who can't get jobs doing the research they were trained for.
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In the course of a career, a professor in a research university turns out on the average about 15 Ph.D.'s. Many of these would like themselves to become, in turn, professors in research universities and turn out 15 more Ph.D.'s. After all, these were the gems that were selected at each stage of the mining and sorting operation. Becoming a professor seems to many of them the natural culmination of their successful educations. That is obviously one of the principal engines of the exponential growth that lasted for 100 years in America.
The students are bitterly disappointed when they find out that the jobs that they want aren't there, and their disappointment seeps down through the ranks, turning younger students away from science.
There are some who have blamed these problems on a shortage of federal funds for research. Many have argued that we should double our national investment in science, and that may well be true. But I do not think it is the solution to the problems I am taking about.
In my view, if funding for science were suddenly doubled, we would just tack on 3 more years of exponential growth and be back exactly where we are now. Increased funding is not the answer to this problem.
Nevertheless, it may take government leadership to find a way out of our dilemma because I can assure you the scientists don't have a clue. The students have grasped the problem and acted on it.
Undergraduate enrollments in physics in the United States are said to be at their lowest levels since Sputnik 40 years ago and this at a time when an undergraduate major in basic science is the best possible preparation for a career that may lead into any number of technological directions over a period of decades of rapid change. We are squandering our intellectual capital just when we should be investing in the future.
The problem, to reiterate, is that science education in America is designed to select a small group of elite scientists. An unintended but inevitable side effect is that everyone else is left out.
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As a consequence of that, 20,000 American high schools lack a single qualified physics teacher, one-half of the math classes in American schools are taught by people who lack the qualifications to teach them, and companies will increasingly find themselves without the technical competence they need at all levels from the shop floor to the executive suite.
To solve this problem will take nothing less than a reform of both education and society. We must have as our goal a Nation in which solid scientific education will form the basis of realistic career opportunities at all levels, in industry, government, and in education itself, from kindergarten to graduate school.
As long as we train a tiny scientific elite that cares not at all about anyone else and everyone else wears ignorance of science and mathematics as a badge of honor, we are putting our future as a Nation and as a culture in deep peril.
The far-reaching changes that I think we must have will be difficult to bring about. Along the way, the present cultural structure of prestige, snobbery, and mutual disdain between scientist and non-scientist, academic and nonacademic, may have to break down, no doubt to be replaced by a different one of unpredictable design.
It may be necessary to have new curricula and new academic degrees. However, it will take more to accomplish than just changes in the academic world. The workplace and the attitudes of managers, administrators, and citizens will have to change, too. We have work to do and, unfortunately, no clear plan for how to do it.
I would like to end with a word of caution. Although I'm convinced that we cannot go on with a system of education designed exclusively to produce an elite of research scientists, I also believe that producing research scientists is the one thing we do well and that we must go on doing well.
The American Ph.D. is the envy of the world, the jewel in our crown, the only part of our system of education that the rest of the world admires. No matter what we do to reform American education, we must preserve and cherish that jewel. Whatever the future brings, we will go on needing American scientists to be the best in the world.
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Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Goodstein follows:]
Insert offset folios 79-83
Mr. EHLERS. Thank you very much for your testimony.
Let me interrupt the proceedings here for just a moment to welcome with great pleasure the newest member of this Committee and one of the newest Members of Congress, Mrs. Capps from California, recently elected.
Ms. CAPPS. Thank you
Mr. EHLERS. We're delighted to have you on this Committee, and we look forward to your participating. And we're awaiting your Subcommittee assignments as well and just be happy to work with you in every way possible.
I might also add if there's ever any doubt in your mind as to how to vote, I'll be happy to advise you. Thank you very much.
Next witness is Ms. Johnson.
STATEMENT OF CATHARINE E. JOHNSON, GRADUATE STUDENT, DEPARTMENT OF BIOLOGICAL CHEMISTRY, JOHNS HOPKINS SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
Ms. CATHARINE JOHNSON. I would like to thank Congressman Ehlers and the Committee on Science for inviting me here today and especially for seeking out the perspective of young scientists. We care passionately about the future and the institution of science, but we really rarely have an opportunity to voice these concerns.
The perspective that I will voice today is not merely derived from my own experiences but results from independent surveys conducted by student associations at two different institutes.
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American science is in a state of rapid evolution. As our economy is increasingly driven by research and development, scientific education and policy take on greater strategic importance.
The current system of graduate education is designed to replenish the ranks of academic faculty, but as the scientists' sphere of influence in our society expands, this system does not adequately prepare young scientists for the future.
Typically a young scientist spends nearly a decade after college and before finding what we call a real job. And I'd like to add here that a postdoctoral position, which is a federally funded training position, is not a real job.
During this decade, we are supported by federal funds through research fellowships and teaching and research assistantships. And most of our time is spent generating data that serves as the basis of a faculty adviser's publications.
Generally each faculty adviser's research program is sustained by the work of several, often as many as ten, young scientists. Thus, the current system for training young scientists also provides the primary source of labor for academic research.
This reliance of young scientists as a labor force focuses the system on the needs of the research faculty, rather than the educational needs and interests of the students.
Degree requirements are vague, and fulfillment of these criteria is judged by the faculty. To expediently obtain a degree, therefore, it's in the students' best interests to pursue conservative research projects well within their advisers' area of expertise.
To distinguish themselves, however, students must produce increasingly publishable and increasing amounts of data. This increases the time to degree, which adversely affects both the recruitment and the retention of young scientists in the field.
In one institution, 73 percent of the students in a graduating class that felt their degree took too long to obtain. In another student survey at a separate institution, one in three students reported that the time to degree and the time that it would take them to get a real job was adversely altering their career plans and their interest in science.
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Many young scientists today look forward to careers dedicated to scientific inquiries, but most view themselves and their career options more broadly. In one survey, 69 percent of students reported interest in nonacademic careers. And in another, 38 of students, again of a graduating class, had already chosen to pursue interests in careers not focused on research, careers such as teaching, law, policy, business, and journalism.
Not surprisingly, nearly 70 percent of students at all levels desired opportunities to take course work and explore their interests in these other fields, but such opportunities are rarely available today, largely due to the time constraints put on the young scientists to generate data.
Unfortunately, when asked if the faculty are supportive of these students, fewer than one-half responded yes. This must change. The current scientific establishment, funding institutions, the faculty, and graduate programs must recognize the importance of nonacademic scientists in society.
Currently, the option of a Master's degree is available to many young scientists—and this is especially true in the life or biomedical sciences—only as a consolation prize for those who fail to meet the strict course and exam requirements. Increasingly, there is a call for highly educated and trained scientists whose primary interest is not the direction of basic scientific research.
The reinstitution of independent Master's of Science programs will allow young people to pursue their scientific interests without requiring the extensive time of training for a career in scientific research.
How can we encourage young people today, then, to pursue careers and their interests in science? Scientists share an abundance of natural curiosity and an aptitude for solving problems. Undoubtedly, these qualities must be encouraged and developed from an early age.
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While addressing the current shortcomings in K through 12 education is necessary, it alone is not sufficient to change the declining interest in young Americans in science and math.
My generation is very entrepreneurial in spirit. In exchange for a loss in professional security, we expect careers accented by exciting transitions, opportunities, and experiences. Our professional future differs dramatically from previous generations. We can rely neither on adequate pensions nor on federal entitlements.
In the face of these practical concerns and competing professions, such as medicine, law, and business, what incentives do scientific careers offer? Science promises an interesting career of intellectual challenge, but it is not alone in this respect.
There are significant disincentives, however, for pursuing science. During the extensive training period—and, remember, it's nearly a decade after college and before getting a real job—during that period, we accrue no pension. We are granted poor benefits. Usually we do not contribute to Social Security. And, most importantly, we earn just above minimum wage.
With 10 years post-secondary education, I currently earn about $6 an hour. And I ask you all if you would really encourage your children to pursue a career that had that in its future.
In order to recruit and retain young scientists, graduate studies must better compete with other interesting, satisfying, and lucrative professional options.
In summary, I have four recommendations. We need to expand the career paths of young scientists. We need to increase the scientific flexibility and reduce the time to degree. We need to revalidate the Master's programs. And we need to reduce the opportunity costs for pursuing advanced degrees in science and math.
Finally, the American system of graduate education produces highly-trained scientists and engineers of unparalled quality. We must continue to educate the preeminent scientists but also must produce scientists trained to educate the new roles of science.
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The current system of graduate education, however, is too narrowly focused on training specialists in a market that increasingly requires generalists. We must, therefore reexamine the scope of graduate education and prepare young scientists to fully participate in challenging opportunities that lie ahead.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Catharine Johnson follows:]
Insert offset folios 84-92
Mr. EHLERS. Thank you very much.
Dr. Dowell?
STATEMENT OF EARL H. DOWELL, Sc.D., DEAN AND J. A. JONES PROFESSOR OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING AND MATERIALS SCIENCE, SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING, DUKE UNIVERSITY
Mr. DOWELL. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Vice Chairman, it's my pleasure to be with you this morning.
I think you already heard about my duties at Duke from Congressman Etheridge. So I won't expand upon those but simply say that I am here representing the Engineering Deans Council, which is a group of some 300 deans in engineering in these United States, as well as the American Society for Engineering Education, whose 10,000 members are vitally involved in engineering education throughout this country.
Science and engineering are facing significant challenges. And you heard about a few of those from the previous witnesses. Among those that I would highlight are the following: attracting young people into this exciting enterprise, preparing them for careers in both academe and in industry, giving them the depth but also the breadth to participate in multidisciplinary teams, and the people skills to be involved in a multi-national economy where business relationships cut across country boundaries is very much the norm.
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First of all, let me give some background with respect to engineering education and engineering degree production in this country. Ph.D. production is at an all-time high in engineering. As you've heard, about one-half of those folks are citizens initially of other countries. What is less well-recognized, perhaps, is that the bulk of them remain in this country, become citizens, pay taxes, and vote. So the predominant pattern is that Ph.D.'s in engineering are, in fact, U.S. citizens, although some of them take a bit longer than others.
The other thing that I would highlight for you is that about two-thirds of those Ph.D.'s have worked in industry for many decades with the balance in academe. It's also the case that Bachelor's degrees in engineering today are very much in demand in engineering and some fields of applied science.
The fact is that our seniors, in fact, are receiving bonuses for signing with companies. And they're not quite of the NBA standard, but they are $5,000, $10,000, as much as $30,000 to sign, to agree to take a $40,000 salary or perhaps a higher one. And that's a pretty heady result for a 22-year-old and their parents.
On the other hand, it is also true that enrollments in engineering education, undergraduate enrollments, have declined modestly over the last several years, some 15 percent, although that seems to have stabilized at the present time given the job market and its strength.
Now, how are we preparing these students that, in fact, are in our colleges of engineering? When I talk to deans of engineering around the country, they talk in terms of improved infrastructure, laboratories, computer facilities, communication facilities, career enhancements for the faculty who are asked to do a great deal today, much more perhaps than I was asked to do when I was an assistant professor some years ago. And they also speak of interactions between industry and academe, which are increasing in number.
Thirty years ago when I was an assistant professor, I was told interacting with industry was not a good thing because that would deter me from getting tenure. I was also told when I went to NSF that I would not get a grant if I had interaction with industry. Today I'm told I must have interaction with industry if I want a grant from NSF. And my successors over the years as deans have suggested that's a good thing for tenure as well.
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There are several federal programs which I would highlight to you and for you. One is funded by the NSF. It's a Visiting Scholars Program, where faculty from one institution who have developed new technology for teaching, learning, and research are asked to conduct workshops all across the country. It's a sharing of best practices, if you will.
The NSF also has an Action Agenda for Systemic Engineering Educational Reform, which features new technology for teaching; learning; improved curricula content; and, again, networking of colleges to share resources and share successes as well as commiserate about failures, which hopefully are only temporary.
Communication and information technology has made much of this possible. And now we find centers all across the United States in engineering which are not only multidisciplinary, but multi-university and have partners from industry and partners from the government.
As examples, I would cite some from my own institution. We have an NSF ERC, or Engineering Research Center, which involves 5 universities, 50 companies, and which treats the diagnosis of heart disease and also deals with its therapeutic treatment as well.
And I have a short video, which I think we are going to see in a moment, which is the first pictorial depiction of the beating heart. This capability has not been available to us or to physicians in the past.
And what you see here is the left ventricle computer-enhanced, which is what the physician would see. This picture is taken from an ultrasound scanner, which is outside the body. There is no surgery required whatsoever. And we simply put the patient under the machine without touching him or her. And the physician can immediately see what is taking place in real time in the heart.
There's also a company that makes these devices, which has gone to market this year. And for $250,000, you can buy one. And an amazing number of hospitals around the country are doing so.
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Thank you for that video.
There are other centers that we have which also involve multi universities and companies, at Duke in computation/communication; in land mine detection and removal, a current topic of some interest; and also in drug delivery. But all across these 300 schools of engineering in the United States, you can find other examples in other areas of technology which are equally exciting and which are equally attractive to students.
Now, what are these centers conveying to our students? First of all, they're teaching them how to work in teams, in multidisciplinary teams, in multi-university teams, and also in multi-generational teams because these teams include high school students, undergraduates, graduate students, postdoctoral students, as well as faculty. So these students are seeing the maturing process from high school all the way through the postdoctoral years.
So I think we're doing some things well, but there are still challenges. Lifelong learning is one of them. And there are many others that we have yet to face. And one of them is educating our citizens, as the first witness indicated. We need a technologically literate citizenry in the United States. There's no question about that.
In summary, I would thank the Congress for its leadership over the years in investing in engineering and science. I think it's been a very wise and prudent investment. It's one that's been enormously productive. And I'm sure as a result of these hearings, further advances will occur.
And thank you again very much for allowing me to be here today. And if there are any questions, I'd be happy to respond. Thank you.
[The prepared statement and attachments of Mr. Dowell follow:]
Insert offset folios 93-100
Mr. EHLERS. Thank you for your testimony.
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Mr. Peralta?
STATEMENT OF MICHAEL L. PERALTA, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, JUNIOR ENGINEERING TECHNICAL SOCIETY, INC
Mr. PERALTA. Good morning. Again, I am Mike Peralta, the Executive Director of the Junior Engineering Technical Society. And on behalf of JETS, I wish to thank the members of the Committee of Science for holding these important hearings. I am certainly honored and excited that JETS was selected to discuss its role in pre-college engineering education. And I'd like to thank Dr. Dowell for his presentation because with JETS, that's really what we focus on is teams and multidisciplinary, especially with the high school students.
As Dr. Dowell was saying, engineering education is shifting to accommodate industry needs by training college-level students to work in a multidisciplinary, team-oriented environment. As a result, students entering college must be able to learn and work in nontraditional ways. JETS has taken a leadership role in supporting the shift.
JETS programs enhance high school classroom instruction by giving students an opportunity to apply their knowledge of concepts to real engineering situations. Students who enter college after participating in JETS programs understand the environment they are entering and are better prepared to do well in it.
My testimony is going to review a little bit about how JETS works to expose high school students in a fun and creative way, to engineering as a career, and help students understand better the importance of engineering and technology in their lives.
As some of the panelists have said, the education received by today's youth is the single most critical element in ensuring that a talented workforce will be available tomorrow. America's future will depend on the decision-makers involved with technical issues.
Now, many of these people will be engineers and technologists, others will be business and political leaders. But, however, regardless of the career field they pursue, our future leaders must be able to deal rationally with complex technical challenges and with their impact on social, economic, and political issues.
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Now, addressing these challenges effectively requires talent, dedication, and enthusiasm, and the ability to work in a team environment. These leaders, the employees of tomorrow, are currently today's high school students.
As everybody has heard, the TIMSS result was recently announced, the Third International Math and Science Study for 12th graders. TIMSS is the largest comparative study ever undertaken that compares math and science achievement on an international level. Including the United States, students from 21 nations participated.
Unfortunately, here our 12th graders performed rather poorly, scoring higher than only 2 nations. The TIMSS results for 8th graders was released last year, placed the U.S. students 28th in math and 17th in science among 41 countries.
Now, American students must meet these highest standards. And I don't think we can expect anything less. We must, therefore, ensure that our educational system has world-leading standards and expectations. We must nurture interest in, and enthusiasm for, technical subjects and develop a love for accomplishing the difficult.
Our Nation is now more actively seeking to transform our outmoded educational system into one that addresses the needs of our Nation in a global environment and to do so as quickly as possible. Key to any improved system is the need to have students understand how problems are solved, what academic and personal skills are needed to solve them.
A basic founding of JETS is that we believe that self-esteem comes not from being told that you can accomplish anything but through actually accomplishing challenging work. It is this principle that our programs are built.
As a background, JETS was established in 1950 at Michigan State University, incorporated in 1957. We have been in Alexandria for about a dozen years. And we're an independent nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization.
As with any small organization, we started in one State. Currently we're in about 45 States around the country. We serve about 25,000 students a year and have our programs in about 2,500 high schools, in 125 college and university campuses in just about every State.
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Just as engineering universities are beginning to develop curriculum and structures that address the need for multidisciplinary, more real-world experiences, JETS has a process and a set of procedures and products available for high schools that encourage and support these methods of learning.
I'm going to talk a little bit now about some of our national programs. One of our programs is called TEAMS, Tests of Engineering Aptitude in Mathematics and Science. It's our premier program. It is an rigorous competition. It's open to teams of eight high school students. And each addresses a real engineering problem in open-book, open-discussion team format.
TEAMS enables students to work with applied multidisciplinary problems, team development strategies and higher-order thinking skills, and to better understand the impact of technological issues on society.
The TEAMS competition, which is a pretty tough exam—I've tried to take it a couple of times. It has questions covering mathematics; chemistry; physics; biology; really, the whole gamut of math and science education.
Again, the program itself is 19 years old, has about 2,500 teams participating each year in about 45 States as well as the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Our other national program is more of a hands-on competition. It's called our National Engineering Design Challenge. It's a 9-year-old initiative, attracts about 200 schools in about 20 different States. And student teams—again, ''team'' is the key word here—design, build, and demonstrate a working model of a new product.
To increase student interest and social understanding, the projects normally are consumer product-based and emphasize universal design. Teams compete on a regional level with local winners advancing to a national competition in Washington, DC., which is actually going to be held here May 1st and 2nd. Let me put that plug in.
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Students must design their solution, build it, and demonstrate it in a formal panel in front of a panel of engineers. Again, a key feature of the NEDC is that the students must plan and organize themselves and are completely responsible for all aspects of the engineering process.
We do connect them with that, their teachers and advising engineers, who provide them guidance. However, the effort must be the students', and the students must design and construct the solution and not the engineers.
Some of the products that the students have worked on in the past include: a replacement for a highway flag person, a page turner for a disabled person, a retriever-grabber mechanism, a device to move grocery bags up stairs with only 6 pounds of force, and a medicine dispenser.
Now, this program attracts students with a broad range of abilities, primarily those whose interest is more in the hands-on and applied technology areas. It demonstrates the roles of engineers and technicians in product development and manufacturing and encourages students to consider a technology-based career. Again, we are tied into the university and industry. Most of our programs are run on a university campus or at a corporation.
One of our other programs is our National Engineering Aptitude Search. It is an academic self-assessment that JETS host institutions can offer on their campuses.
The NEAS+ test helps students determine their strengths and weaknesses in areas that are critical to engineering study. It's a test. It tests mathematical understanding, scientific reading and reasoning, and practical problem-solving. We have about 5,000 students that are involved in this program a year, each year.
And, again, over the years we have found that high scores on the NEAS+ tests do correlate significantly with success in engineering school as measured through grade point average and completion of matriculation in engineering.
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We do also have another program that targets under-represented groups in engineering. It's called our UNITE program. It's a summer school initiative. The program is funded by the U.S. Army Research Office and is coordinated by JETS on five campuses around the country. Again, it serves students from the local geographic area, statewide. There are also some programs that recruit nationally.
Now, these students complete a rigorous 4- to 6-week academic program which gives them some skills prior to their entering engineering school.
Since the program's inception in 1980, about 3,500 students have been involved. An interesting fact is of the UNITE graduates, about 79 percent have enrolled in college, 70 percent enter an engineering curriculum, and about 80 percent of these students graduate in their chosen major.
Unfortunately, since we're talking about funding here, the U.S. Army Research Office recently cut the funding to this successful program. And especially in light of a recent study from the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering saying that African Americans, Latinos, and American Indians constitute 28.5 percent of the college-age population but less than 6 percent of the engineering workforce, programs like UNITE, with a history of success, should be expanded and emulated, not canceled.
Our final program that JETS works on is we distribute quite a bit of guidance information to parents, engineers, and students who contact us. And we distribute about 200,000 pieces of guidance information a year around the country.
Again, as I summarize here, I want to say that the strength of JETS is really the linkage between nationally developed programs and activities that are conducted locally.
JETS programs can be combined in many ways to meet the needs of the local groups. Some host institutions offer all the JETS programs, some only a couple.
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Again, JETS programs have been carefully developed and are continuously revised to meet the most rigorous reviews possible. JETS programs can stand alone, and each can serve a different market and need.
I'd like to end by saying take a look at that quote up there by Tennyson saying—talking about the vision of the world and all the wonder that it would be. And I think part of what we do at JETS is help these students, these high school students discover the—try to discover the wonders of engineering.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement and attachments of Mr. Peralta follow:]
Insert offset folios 101-112
Mr. EHLERS. Thank you very much, Mr. Peralta.
Next, Dr. Griffiths.
STATEMENT OF PHILLIP A. GRIFFITHS, Ph.D., CHAIR, COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, ENGINEERING AND PUBLIC POLICY, NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, NATIONAL ACADEMY OF ENGINEERING, INSTITUTE OF MEDICINE, AND DIRECTOR, INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED STUDY
Mr. GRIFFITHS. I would like to begin by thanking you, Mr. Ehlers, Mr. Brown, and the other Committee members for the opportunity to speak before you this morning.
As Mr. Ehlers mentioned, I serve as Chair of COSEPUP, the Committee of Science, Engineering, and Public Policy, at the National Academy of Sciences and Engineering. One of COSEPUP's main interests is in the graduate education of scientists and engineers. And I commend you for including graduate education in your review of science policy.
As you know, if we are to maintain American leadership in science and engineering, we need to give our students the best possible preparation for that leadership.
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COSEPUP issued a report on this topic in 1995. A good deal has happened in the 3 years since then. And I'd like to offer a brief update on the report and where we are today.
At the risk of being a bit provocative, I would like to begin by listing several myths about how we prepare scientists and engineers for their careers and then some facts. Following this, I will discuss a number of significant issues facing graduate education and then offer some recommendations on how these might be addressed.
Myth Number 1 is that most Ph.D.'s spend their careers in academic positions. The so-called standard career model is that young Ph.D.'s move to jobs where they can continue the research they began under their professor in graduate school. Eventually they acquire research assistants of their own, who then become clones of themselves.
Myth Number 2 is that there is high unemployment and underemployment among Ph.D.'s.
Myth Number 3 is that we are training far too many Ph.D.'s for the available jobs and if we don't somehow set some limits, we'll be up to our pocket protectors in Ph.D.'s.
Now let me offer some facts as best we know them. The cloning model is accurate in many cases, but it isn't the norm. In fact, more than one-half of all Ph.D.'s go on to jobs where academic-style research is not a primary activity, such as business, government, and teaching. And this proportion has been and continues to grow, has been growing steadily over the past 20 years. And that continues.
Second, unemployment rates for all scientists and engineers have actually declined slightly in the last several years. The overall rate, which is less than 2 percent, is about one-third of the general unemployment rate. For new doctorates, the percentage who are unemployed ranges from 2 to 5 percent depending on the field.
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And third, according to the most recent data, enrollments in graduate school in engineering programs are declining. So the growth in Ph.D. population may be moving toward some sort of equilibrium.
The upshot of these facts, as we predicted in our report, is that we do not see the need for a major restructuring of graduate education or the imposition of some form of population control. New Ph.D.'s have reacted to the needs of the marketplace either by not entering a graduate program or by seeking nonacademic employment.
However, we do need substantial reshaping of graduate education. And this need can be seen in several other problems. One is that while new Ph.D.'s are generally finding employment, they often find it in the form of postdoctoral study, a temporary research position, or a non-regular faculty job.
The number of new doctorates in such temporary positions ranges from 17 percent in chemical engineering to 53 percent in earth and space sciences. So a queue has formed in front of desirable tenure-track positions. And that queue is getting longer.
A second problem is the lengthening time to degree. As Provost at Duke University, I was impressed by the discipline imposed by having a fixed period of time to degree in our professional schools of law, business, and medicine, this despite the fact that most of the arguments for having a longer time to degree given by the scientific community were present in these areas as well.
A third problem has to do with the needs of employers. During our study, employers told us that while they are generally pleased with the results of U.S. graduate education, they find shortcomings in three areas: communication skills, including teaching and mentoring abilities; appreciation of applied problems, particularly in an industrial setting; and teamwork, especially in multidisciplinary settings. So there is a misalignment between the way our students are educated and the work many of them are expected to do.
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Here is a comment from a representative of a multinational corporation, ''Skills like project management, leadership, planning and organizing, interpersonal skills, adoptability, negotiation, and written and oral communication are critical. If you walk on water technically but can't explain or promote your ideas and your science, you won't get hired. If you do get hired, your career will stall.''
The world in which Ph.D.'s work is changing fast. Major industrial sectors have reshaped their businesses and their R&D activities. Whole new fields of research are emerging from computer networking to biotechnology.
Employers want students to be deeply educated in their field, but they also want them to have knowledge of other fields and even cultures. But most graduate education programs encourage students to focus on narrow specialty.
In addition, more research is being done by multidisciplinary teams. This is the norm in such fields as fluid dynamics and neurobiology. As a result, employers place higher value on scientists and engineers who can communicate, collaborate, and work across disciplines. Again, this does not match well with a typical graduate program.
How did this misalignment between the education and employment come about? The most important portion of federal funding for graduate education is the research grant to the principal investigator.
Under a research grant, the PI gains research assistance by hiring graduate students, who, in turn, gain valuable hands-on experience. The downside is that students have little flexibility to learn skills or subjects beyond their specialty. So we are faced with a disconnect between the purpose of federal funding and the needs of employers.
In our report, we recommended several measures to adjust this misalignment between education and employment: first, to make graduate education programs more flexible and provide more options for students. More degree and course options can produce graduates with broader perspectives and more career options.
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Second, experiment with various kinds of training and education grants. Our goals here are to promote versatility and perspective, to limit unnecessary time spent in graduate school, and to give students more control over their education.
Third, provide better career information and guidance for students. If graduate students are going to have more choice, they need more current and complete information on which to base their choices, including a national database on employment options and trends. Better information can also improve the system's ability to correct imbalances in supply and demand.
I've said that a great deal has happened since the release of the grad. ed. report. And let me give some examples. Here in the Capital, the National Academy of Sciences held a national convocation on graduate education where faculty and students from dozens of universities came to learn from each other.
The Academy also published two guidance manuals, one to help students make career choices and the second to suggest to faculty how they can be better mentors for students.
Graduate education is receiving more attention at universities, which are trying many reforms. These include increased program breadth, combined degrees, interdisciplinary programs, internships in industrial labs, workshops in management and education, career-planning resources, and databases on where their graduates go.
In government, we see interesting programs at both NSF and NIH. The IGERT Program, Integrated Graduate Education and Research Training Program, at NSF provides opportunities for inter and multidisciplinary research, increased breadth, linkage to industry, and broader skills development.
NIH is providing more funding for interdisciplinary work and encouraging universities to provide more career placement information. Other federal agencies, such as DOE, DOD, NASA, and USDA, support graduate students through research grants. But here we have seen less focus on education.
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This may be because mission agencies are focused on research results, rather than the linkage of education to research. However, that linkage to education is an essential element of research, and it should not be neglected.
I think I can speak for my fellow Committee members in saying how pleased we are with these innovations in graduate education. If I've pointed out problems today, I have done so in the hope that we can make a great system even better. Our challenge is to retain the best features of that system while making it much more responsive to the Nation's needs.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement and attachments of Mr. Griffiths follow:]
Insert offset folios 113-124
Mr. EHLERS. Thank you, Dr. Griffiths. And thank you to all of you. That's excellent testimony that we've received this morning.
I, first of all, want to, without objection, place in the record all your written testimony since many of you deviated from the written testimony so the record will show both.
A number of questions. And since I'm limited to 5 minutes, I probably won't get through all of them in the first round. We'll start with Dr. Goodstein.
The situation you describe—you have described very accurately. But a question I have is: How does the current situation in the sciences that you portray differ from the situation that has existed for a number of years in, let's say, the humanities?
Mr. GOODSTEIN. I think the situation differs and the humanists have faced this problem for longer and learned to live with it; whereas, the scientists have not. The scientists have not come to grips with the fact that the world has changed from what it was before the 1970's and are still trying to perpetuate a situation that existed in those days. The humanists have learned their lesson. We have not.
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Mr. EHLERS. But how does that affect graduate education? Is there something the humanists are doing differently in their graduate education programs that the scientific community should emulate or is there no crossover there?
Mr. GOODSTEIN. Well, the situation, as I understand it, in humanities—and I must say I'm not an expert. Cal Tech is not a place where Ph.D.'s are granted in humanities. But the situation has changed radically from what it was before the 1970's.
For example, I believe at the University of Wisconsin, which was the chief engine of the professorate in history, had at one time something between 400 and 600 graduate students in history. It's now down to a handful. So those programs have cut back in response to the existing situation.
In the sciences, instead, we have kept up the numbers, partly by importing foreign graduate students, partly by extending postdoctoral positions. And these strategies have allowed us to keep up the same level of research as we had before and to pretend that things had not changed.
The humanists, by and large, don't work with their graduate students in the same way that scientists do. Seminars are rare in the humanities and almost universal in the sciences. Science is a cooperative business, and research in humanities is not.
So there are really fundamental differences that make it impossible for the sciences simply to emulate what happened in the humanities and become just like them.
Mr. EHLERS. Let me pose a question to both you and Ms. Johnson. I've talked to a number of students over the past couple of decades. I used to teach myself. And they were very concerned about getting a job in physics.
And my advice to them was study something you enjoy and something you are good at, but be aware of what may happen to you after you get your degree. But pursue something that you like and that you're good at and see what develops. You may end up with a totally different job.
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Is that still appropriate advice today or not?
Ms. CATHARINE JOHNSON. Absolutely. I think that that's the only advice you can give young people. I think that the problem arises when the culture—and, again, I'm not in physics. I can really only speak to the culture in the life sciences. But what prevents people from then being comfortable with not having their dream job but still pursuing their scientific interests and possibly using those skills in another way is that the culture that they're working in during their training really sets up any other career as secondary, as something indicative of their failure.
So yeah, absolutely, I think that's good advice, but the current system doesn't reinforce that advice explicitly.
Mr. GOODSTEIN. Yes. I think not enough of us are giving that advice. Do it if you love it, but do it only because you love it, not because it's going to guarantee you a successful career as a professor in a research university.
I would also like to invite Cathy Johnson to come to Cal Tech, where we pay our graduate students a lot better than $6 an hour.
But fundamentally she is correct. The driving force that keeps us from changing the system in any fundamental way is that graduate students are very high-quality, very cheap labor for turning out research. And we're extremely reluctant to give up that source of high-quality, cheap labor.
Mr. EHLERS. Well, what I was getting at in an indirect way is perhaps it's not the educational system that's wrong but the advice we give our students and the expectations we set out for them.
And I went through in a different era. I received my doctorate in the 1960's. And we could write our own ticket when we got out. But I'm surprised to hear Ms. Johnson's comments because, even then, those who went into industrial research and other fields were not looked down upon.
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It was a choice many made, even before they started the graduate programs. They either thought they would enjoy the university atmosphere or they would enjoy something else. Apparently that's not as true today as it was back then.
But I certainly appreciate the insight that both of you have offered. And, Ms. Johnson, my views on the Master's degree when I was a graduate student are identical to the views you hold now. The education system hasn't changed during those 40 years.
But in the institution I attended, the Master's degree was a consolation prize if you couldn't make the Ph.D. And I know of only one student who went to graduate school while I was there, the 4 years I was in graduate school, who came there with the intention of getting a Master's degree. And I thought that was deplorable because I think there's a major role to be played by those with Master's degrees.
Thank you. My time has expired. And next we'll turn to Mr. Brown.
Mr. BROWN of California. Let me emphasize or re-emphasize my feelings about the value of the testimony that each of you have made.
I thought at first that Dr. Goodstein and Dr. Griffiths were going to be at opposite ends of the spectrum, but, actually, there's a great deal of coincidence in what you've said. I think you choose to emphasize slightly different aspects of it, but I think you're on the same track.
The comment I would like to make about what this hearing represents and what your testimony represents is that it's an effort to engage in what we might call continuous productivity improvement in a complex system, sort of the Demming philosophy applied to graduate training in science and engineering.
And while I think that what we're seeing, what you're telling us here, does not necessarily reflect a conscious effort to be guided by productivity enhancement. Essentially you're achieving the same thing. And the Committee in reviewing what's happening here and pointing up things that need to be improved and things that are working well is also playing a role here.
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By coincidence I guess, more than anything else, I noted in I think last week's Book Review section of the Post that there is a new biography of Dr. Demming, which I haven't read yet, but it focuses on some of these issues of what he contributed to productivity improvement in the industrial world.
And there is also a reprint of Abraham Maslov's ''Eupsychian Management,'' which was really the first effort, preceded Demming, actually, to describe the concept of teamwork in an industrial setting and how we can enhance the cooperative mode, rather than the competitive or autocratic modes, in an industrial organization.
I read Dr. Maslov's book when it first came out, but I'm looking forward to reading the reprint because he, as most good scientists, are expected to learn from his mistakes. And he takes a book that he wrote 30 years ago and reissues it with his comments about where he was wrong and where he was right. And I think that's very helpful for a scientist.
He's a psychologist, incidentally, not a physicist. But he made a very strong effort to use his psychological background to improve industrial processes in this one case. Most of the rest of his stuff is described as ''third wave psychology'' and other some odd derogatory terms, but it isn't all bad.
Let me ask you, Dr. Goodstein, since I'm a little more familiar with your gadfly role, if you've had any success in changing the culture at Cal Tech.
Mr. GOODSTEIN. The culture at Cal Tech is not something easily changed. I first became concerned with this problem around 1970, when the problem really struck, when the period of exponential growth ended.
Mr. BROWN of California. Yes.
Mr. GOODSTEIN. And I wrote a white paper, which I passed out among my colleagues saying—pointing out this long period of exponential growth, 100 years in America, 250 years in Europe, that was coming to an end—it was visibly ending—and recommending that we do something about it to set an example for the rest of the country.
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And my colleagues could not disagree with my analysis of exponential growth because all of them had taken courses in differential equations and they knew that the positive exponential is nonphysical and must be discarded in solving any real problem.
But they disagreed with my suggested solution that we at Cal Tech do something about it. They said the correct solution was for everybody else to go out of the Ph.D. business and for Cal Tech to go on exactly as we had been.
And, of course, that is the reaction I've had at every university I've ever spoken about the problem. And that's basically the reaction of the COSEPUP Committee under Phil Griffiths. These cultures are extremely difficult to change.
And I have been critical of the COSEPUP report because it seemed to me a committee of the winners saying, ''Let's not change the rules of the game.'' Nevertheless, the fact that they were motivated that way doesn't mean that they came to the wrong conclusions.
I tend to agree with the COSEPUP Committee and with Phillip Griffiths about what one ought to do about these problems.
Mr. BROWN of California. Have I used up all of my time?
Mr. EHLERS. You have a little more time. Go ahead.
Mr. BROWN of California. As has been pointed out by Ms. Johnson and others of you, apparently there is some positive forces at work amongst the younger generation in that they're adapting to this situation, instinctively perhaps, without necessarily being constrained by the faculty and the university environment, which I think is all to the good.
But what I'm trying to get across here is a framework in which all of this can be seen as an adaptive process that enhances the creativity and productivity of the society.
And we all have a responsibility for this. I hope you will agree with me on that and not let us assume that the universities have to carry the load or you assume that the politicians have to carry the load. We all have to carry this load.
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Thank you.
Mr. EHLERS. Thank you, Mr. Brown.
I would just observe during my career, I decided that there's no other group in society which is more liberal about other people's affairs and more conservative about their own than faculty members. And it precisely fits the pattern you discovered. Let everyone else—you know, they should change, but we have to stay the same.
Mr. Gutknecht?
Mr. GUTKNECHT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And, again, congratulations to you and the staff for putting together a distinguished panel to share with us today.
I was struck—and I must say this parenthetically—that in listening to all of the testimony, virtually all of the testimony, that I didn't hear many of you saying what we really need is another federal program to help solve some of these problems. And I think as a member of the Budget Committee, I must say that's refreshing to have people come to Washington and not say that.
One of the things that did come up—and I'd like all of you perhaps to chew on this and perhaps give us some advice. One of the things I think every Member of Congress, our office, hears a lot from is with regard to visas. And I think it was touched on in the testimony earlier.
And because we get calls from—particularly in my District, we get calls from one of the medical schools in my district about foreign students who would like to come and do some advanced work.
And I guess the question for all of you if you'd just perhaps share with us: Should we consider making it easier for foreign students to come here for advanced technical and scientific study? Because it is a bit problematic for some who would like to come. And we try to be helpful, but the INS is not always as helpful as we'd like.
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Anybody want to be first? Ms. Johnson, then we'll let you go first since your mouth is full of water.
Ms. CATHARINE JOHNSON. I was going to pass on the opportunity to go first, but I'm not a great study of the visa issue. And I think that my approach to the question tends to be that we need to—we really do have a problem in this country promoting American youngsters' interests in science and scientific degrees and careers and that I think that a lot of the changes that have formed the bulk of the testimonies you've heard today will improve the education and training of young scientists and will improve the recruitment of young Americans into those slots.
I think that in the terms of actual numbers, we need—because if you make it easier for foreign students, what you're really asking is: Do we need to think about limits of the numbers?
And I think that perhaps one way to really address that is to get data, current data, on what happens to young scientists who are in the pipeline now out to the public. And it has to be easily understood. It has to be on the university Web sites. It really has to be accessible to those people who it will affect.
Right now those data really are not available. So I think that even makes it more difficult to answer your question. But I think that making it easier to actually increase the number of foreign students and post-docs right now would definitely make it more difficult to actually implement the changes that we all today have spoken about that need to be made.
Mr. GUTKNECHT. Anybody else?
Mr. GOODSTEIN. I would just like to say that science is a profound—the culture of science is profoundly international. The sense is that ideas, scientific ideas, have no nationality. They come from everywhere.
And we in the United States profit from having the brightest young people from all over the world come to the United States for part of their education. In the best of cases, they'll go back to their own countries with a fond memory of the education they received in America that will serve us well in the future. And they make very real contributions to our own learning and research and education in the American universities.
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We in dealing with foreign students, post-docs, and the like have real problems. For example, the Department of Labor forces us to come up with prevailing wage information to ensure that we're not paying our foreign post-docs less than comparable Americans are being made, but they make us compare postdoctoral salaries to industrial salaries and things like that. There are real anomalies that cause problems within the universities.
But as far as the visa situation is concerned, well, many of our students graduate with Ph.D.'s under visas that give them 18 months of practical training and require them to go back for 2 years to their country of origin.
There is an underground industry of lawyers whose job it is to convert those visas into green cards. And I'm not an expert on this because I've never had to face the situation myself, but I understand that they do it with some success. This is a peculiar situation, but it's part of the real world.
Mr. DOWELL. If I could comment on that? Universities are a little schizophrenic about that issue because at the underwriter level, at many fine universities, we are trying to become more international and we're trying to increase the number of students from abroad and increase the number of our students who are studying abroad at some time during their undergraduate career.
Our business school has just issued a press release announcing apparently that they now have 30 percent of their students who are international. And they consider that a great mark of their advance.
While in engineering and science, I think because we've had a large proportion of students from other countries for many years, we've sort of taken it for granted and even worried about whether there are too many.
But my own take on that is when the international students don't want to come to the United States any longer to study in science and engineering, that's when we really need to worry.
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A few years ago when the Pacific Rim countries and their economies were going very well and they were creating their own Ph.D. programs in engineering and science, they were drawing back from this country professionals who had been here for 20 and 30 years. In some cases, they become citizens.
Now with the Pacific Rim economy no longer quite as strong as it was, but that seems to have diminished or at least stabilized. But there are other issues, and I think basically it's a very healthy thing that people from abroad see science and engineering education in the United States as a very good thing and a very attractive prospect for their careers.
Mr. EHLERS. The gentleman's time has expired.
Ms. Morella?
Mrs. MORELLA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you for conducting this very important hearing. And I want to thank all of you who have testified. You have given us great insight.
I also have been disturbed, as all of us have, at the TIMSS report. And I know that you mentioned that. As a result of that and because I was devastated by the idea that from fourth to eighth grade there's a tremendous dropping off of interest in math, science, and what ultimately would lead to engineering, I have introduced legislation just recently.
And what it would do is it would establish a blue ribbon commission that would review the existing research base on math education leadership, including the status of math education in the United States relative to international competitors. It would propose professional development priorities to assure that the teaching of math at all educational levels in the United States is strengthened, propose a new direction and some new ideas to assure that our students will get a first-class education.
What you're talking about in terms of graduate education obviously has to build on what's been happening all along that line. I'm going to ask you your opinion of doing something like that in a very expeditious manner but also ask you about: Why is it that—what are other countries doing?
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I mean, I know that we talk about the fact that graduate education that we offer is obviously superior in that 50 percent of our students are international students. And that is increasing.
What are other countries doing to inspire their students that we're not? I was fascinated, Ms. Johnson, to hear about, and also Dr. Goodstein, to hear about the status of faculty. I mean, very often students are placating and are working to help their faculty member write papers or some facet of teaching assistance. And I'm wondering if it is also sort of a culture that is a problem that we have.
And then I notice in Mr. Peralta's statement here, too, with regard to the fact that what in high school I think are right here, high school students who can work in teams, can apply academic content to real-world non-routine problems, can integrate content from various fields, will outperform other students.
This doesn't seem to be that we're talking about math and science skills, but, rather, we're talking about how to approach problems. Is this where we're going wrong?
A myriad of questions, but your response to any of those items that I've referred to? Maybe if we—whoever wants to start.
Ms. CATHARINE JOHNSON. Go ahead.
Mr. GOODSTEIN. One of the questions you asked is: What's being done in other countries?
Mrs. MORELLA. Yes.
Mr. GOODSTEIN. I can speak to that with some narrow authority. I spend a great deal of time in Italy, where I've had a long-term research collaboration. And I've had some actual graduate students of my own at the University of Rome.
The system there is different from ours in fundamental ways. A student who graduates who gets the equivalent of a doctorate at the University of Rome, their doctorate is not as good as ours. We really are the best in the world at producing Ph.D. scientists.
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Nevertheless, a student who produces a doctorate at the University of Rome is normally expected to go into high school teaching. That's the usual fate of doctorates.
There are very few. The cream of the crop, the very best can become apprentices to the academic world, where they go on for some years as poorly paid or unpaid assistants until they get absorbed into the system and start to compete for professorships. But the vast majority of them go into teaching in high school.
And one consequence of this system is that the Italians believe that they have the best pre-college education in Europe, possibly in the world. And they probably do. But their system fails at the university research level in comparison to ours.
I mean, all of these systems have strengths and weaknesses. And our strength is in turning out Ph.D. scientists. Their strength is in turning out high school teachers.
Mrs. MORELLA. That's a tremendous asset. You can turn out the high school teachers to inspire the others. It was recently we had Bill Nye, the Science Guy and then subsequent to that, I had a bill on women in science, engineering, and technology. And one of the people testifying in engineering said: What we really need is Kate Sal, the Engineering Gal. And I thought that made some sense.
Ms. Johnson, you had a comment?
Ms. CATHARINE JOHNSON. I would also like to comment on the differences that you asked about in other countries. And I think that through my exposure working with colleagues in the lab, who 70 percent are not American, you get a real understanding for how other countries' systems of education all through, from early grade school education all through graduate education, differs.
And I agree with Dr. Goodstein that the reason that those students come and post-docs come to America to do their research and graduate training here is because we really do have the best system for producing Ph.D.'s who are then hoping to go on and become faculty.
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But where we fail is in allowing students at an earlier stage in the pipeline who have an interest to meet some sort of middle ground, to pursue their interest to some extent, and then not spend so many years in training. But to go back and teach high school education really seems like a waste.
So there is no early exit clause for students in our system. And what happens, then, is that a general population, people don't pursue science unless they have an extreme interest.
So we have a general public, as Dr. Goodstein talked about earlier during his testimony, who really are scientifically inept and only a specialized few who are not integrated during the normal work hours with the other elements of society.
And I think that affects largely the culture of children in the country because their parents and their teachers are not that scientifically astute.
Mrs. MORELLA. I think Dr. Griffiths would like to comment.
Mr. GRIFFITHS. One of the points that David made about in Italy the students who come through the graduate education system there are going into high school I think brings up what to me is one of the central issues in graduate education in this country, namely that we should have greater differentiation among the missions, if you like, of our graduate schools.
For example, a month ago I was on a review committee of a university where the math department has chosen quite consciously to make as its primary objective training their Ph.D.'s to go to teach in 4-year colleges and community colleges. It's not a major research program, but it's certainly a respectable one. And they came to the conclusion that this was a niche that they could fill that was important and they could do it well. In fact, they do it well.
I think one of the issues that COSEPUP certainly felt fairly strongly about was the federal support of graduate education being five-sixths of it through the research assistantship because the focus on the primary mission of graduate schools being to train academic research scientists is certainly very much enhanced by the way in which graduate education is funded through research assistantships because that's what these things, in effect, do.
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We did a lot of experiments along the following lines that suppose some of that funding was shifted to block grants to departments. And their criteria for awarding a block grant would be the department would bring in a proposal about how they were going to prepare their students in a variety of ways; for example, how they were going to shorten the time to degree, how they were going to get much better information and advising to the students about nonacademic research careers, things of that kind, or, alternatively, more of the support of graduate education could be given directly to the students.
The students themselves provided with proper information I think are well able to vote with their feet and go to those programs that are going to give them the kind of preparation they see as most advantageous for their future careers.
So I think one thing that the Federal Government can do is simply stand back and look at how graduate education is supported through federal funding and ask: Is this, in fact, the best use of our funds as far as the educational objectives of our graduate education system go?
Mrs. MORELLA. I know my time is up, Mr. Chairman, but if you would just kind of like nod affirmatively if you think that there—if you could give support to the bill that I mentioned, which would look at a commission in terms of what's happening to us and what we need to do. Gee, Mr. Chairman, I see everybody nodding affirmatively.
[Laughter.]
Mrs. MORELLA. Thank you. Thank you. I yield back.
Mr. EHLERS. A few relatively imperceptible nods in that. Thank you for your questions.
We will start a second round of questions since the bell to vote on the Floor has not yet rung and we hope we can continue until approximately 12:00 if there are sufficient questions to permit that.
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Just a few observations on some of the questions and the testimony we received. The graduate students in science and engineering going into high school teaching, I personally think it would be very good assuming they have some teaching ability, but a handicap you have in America—and I don't know if this is true in Italy or other European countries, but I cannot go and teach in the high school, even though I taught for 22 years at college and university level, because I don't have a teaching certificate.
First I have to go back and take some teaching courses. Now, some of them would have value for the situation. Some I think would not. But that's something that we have to recognize as well.
Two other factors I want to bring out and just ask everyone's comment, anyone who wishes to comment. The point I raised earlier about just suggesting students go to school, take what you enjoy, what you're good at, and just see where the job market sends you, I ignored one very important aspect. And that didn't emerge in the discussion either. And that is: Does it justify the Nation putting that kind of money into your education if you are not going to enter a research field? And that's something I think we should consider.
Another point I wanted to raise—and Ms. Morella raised that already in mentioning her bill—it seems to me in terms of our situation that we are throwing away roughly one-half of the potential candidates for graduate schools and advanced degrees in the sciences and engineering because we get so few women enrolling and so few minorities.
And that again is a cultural issue. I don't believe in any way it's a cultural issue in the institutions of higher education, but it is an issue in our culture as a whole.
And that's something that should be addressed. I know it's—in the medical field, it's changing fairly rapidly. Engineering I think has made some progress in getting more minority and female engineers. The so-called hard sciences, the natural sciences, tend to be last in that.
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I'd appreciate comments from anyone on what we can do to encourage greater participation. And, in particular, how can we get at changing the culture.
I like—what was your statement, Connie?—Kay Sal, the engineering gal?
Mrs. MORELLA. Yes, yes.
Mr. EHLERS. Yeah, I think that would be a good——
Mrs. MORELLA. Kate Sal, the Engineering Gal——
Mr. EHLERS. Yes.
Mrs. MORELLA. Or Technology Gal or Science Gal or Math Gal.
Mr. EHLERS. Yeah. You might be a good candidate for that with all of your enthusiasm.
In any event, I would appreciate comments from anyone on the panel. Mr. Peralta?
Mr. PERALTA. Yes. In addressing your question, especially with the high school students, where some of this pipeline begins, you know, one of the strengths of our programs is making the connection with the professional, making the connection with the high school and the mentor.
With our programs, we have approximately 35 percent participation by women and about 23 percent participation by under-represented groups in engineering. And I think part of the success of that lies in the connection with the mentors, you know, bringing the mentor in to work with the student on a weekly/monthly type basis, especially with our engineering design challenge and our TEAMS competition.
One of the things that we're looking into especially is the continuity. You know, you have students who are involved in programs in high school. They go to college. They're involved in programs in college. They get out of college. They graduate. They work. They're involved in their professional society. And we link them back, make sure that the continuity is there.
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And those are the things that we're trying to work on.
Mr. EHLERS. Dr. Dowell, any particular programs you have along this line?
Mr. DOWELL. Well, it is certainly a very important issue. In engineering, we have gone from essentially zero women in engineering 30 years ago to roughly 20 percent of our undergraduate students in engineering are now women and something less than that in the Ph.D. programs.
And that's been our plateau for the last decade. But now we see a gradual increase from that point forward. I think that's due to a number of factors. The NSF, for example, has had a number of programs which emphasize mentoring, improved participation of under-represented groups, including women in engineering. I think that's had an impact.
I think the general tenor of higher education has been to include more under-represented groups in our enterprise, and that's had a good impact. But we have a long, long way to go, I'm afraid. We still have much to do in that area.
Mr. EHLERS. Do you know——
Mrs. MORELLA. If the gentleman would yield? They don't all stay either. You know? It's another figure that's kind of interesting. Once they do graduate, you get them in, they feel somehow isolated or for some reason don't stay.
Mr. DOWELL. That's true. I have a daughter, by the way, who has a Ph.D. in physics and who graduated from the University of Michigan and then went on to M.I.T. And she's married to a Ph.D. physicist.
So from that, I've had some insight on a family basis as to what Marla has gone through. And it has been rough. She's had people ask her, ''Why are you in physics? Aren't you displacing the male?'' She actually, literally had a faculty member at a distinguished institution ask her that question.
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So that is still a problem. That is still a set of issues. We're making progress, but not everybody is on board yet.
Mr. EHLERS. It's interesting. I also have a daughter named Marla, who went into English literature and library science.
My time has expired, but just very quickly following up my previous question, what are they doing in China and Russia and countries where they're getting 50 percent and more of the science and engineering students from either—they have very few minorities, but more than one-half of their students are female in many cases. Do they have special programs or is it just totally accepted culturally?
Mr. GOODSTEIN. The 50 percent is true in physics. Here in physics, it's something under 10 percent. And we have tried for many years to change it with no success at all. Instead, the 50 percent number is true in France and Italy. I learned that 70 percent of the Portuguese Physical Society are women.
And my young colleagues from Italy, the people that I work with, come here on visits. And they can't figure out what's going on. The cultural difference is inexplicable.
Mr. EHLERS. Yes. All right. Well, my time has expired. Mr. Brown, do you have any additional questions?
Mr. BROWN of California. I'm not sure I have any questions, but I do have some comments that may elicit some questions. We have discussed a range of problems here, not just higher education, but some have indicated the ways in which the problems in higher education might contribute to solutions to the problems in lower education, for example.
And one of the reasons why we don't get more interest amongst Ph.D. graduates, for example, in teaching is that teaching is not a highly respected or well-paid position.
Probably in Italy—I don't know, but I do know in Japan teaching is a highly respected and well-paid activity. And it's not difficult to attract people into that area. And, as a consequence, they don't have the problems with the failure to motivate and train people in the elementary and secondary level for future careers in science. And apparently they don't have that problem in Italy.
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Now, I would like to suggest that some of the scientific and engineering societies put on their agenda the question of how to improve the status of education at the lower level.
And it may involve some unpopular things, like breaking down some of the structural barriers, such as rather rigid tenure situations and so forth, and doing something to stimulate innovation and reward for successful innovation.
I have never thought of the engineering societies particularly as being radical innovators, but I see that's changing. And this may be something that we can encourage.
I notice in Mr. Peralta's organization, the civil engineers have some—and I was not aware of the full extent of the kind of activities that you have described here. And I think that's highly commendable. And I hope that you can infect some of the senior civil engineers in your society with the idea that this kind of change is important.
Incidentally, I have a niece who has become a civil engineer, the first woman in my family to pursue an engineering career. And she's doing very, very well.
Dr. Goodstein, I had an interesting opportunity last month to meet two or three Chinese scientists. I've had opportunities to meet with the Chinese Academy on occasion, and it's been very good.
These were leaders of the Academy, but they were even more distinguished. One of them was the Chairman of the National Legislature Science and Technology Committee. And they are, therefore, influential politically as well as scientifically in their country.
They have benefited from the U.S. system of education in that their professor was Professor Chen, formerly at Cal Tech. And Professor Chen, of course, was kicked out of this country, took all of his engineering and scientific knowledge and went over and jump-started the Chinese engineering and scientific activities in the field of missiles, something that we really should have discouraged. And these gentlemen were the fruits of that mistake on our part 40 years ago.
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I don't know whether you knew Professor Chen or not, but he apparently was a very good teacher because these gentlemen were very broadly based, good scientists, interested in social policies and political policies. And they are already leaders of the society. And we'll hope that they get some benefit out of exposure to a United States-trained Chinese scientist whom we rejected at one point.
Thank you.
Mr. EHLERS. Thank you, Mr. Brown.
Ms. Rivers?
Ms. RIVERS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And I apologize to the panel for not being here earlier. I had several constituents in my office.
I came today with a specific question in mind. And I'm not sure if the general thrust of the hearing has been around that. But I had an opportunity to meet with a large group of constituents from Asian Rim countries, Chinese, Japanese, Filipino.
And in the course of a discussion on other issues, a Chinese engineer who works for one of the big three automotive companies suggested he's working on an electric energy electric car project. He's the chief engineer on it.
And his argument to me was he cannot hire homegrown scientists, that, in fact, we are not producing the kinds of scientists needed to do this highly technical work.
And I wanted to joust with him a little bit about that having—representing two universities in my District, but I was so taken aback by his comments that I thought I'd better check this out. And then when I saw what our hearing was about today, I thought: Here's a perfect way to check this out.
So particularly, Dr. Goodstein and Dr. Dowell, I would love to hear from you on this and then from others that would want to comment. Do we, in fact—are we graduating mostly foreign-born students and not enough of our homegrown talent?
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Mr. GOODSTEIN. We are doing very well, as has been discussed earlier at this hearing. We're doing very well at educating students from all over the world, but we are certainly still turning out our share of superb American students.
The number is not increasing as fast as it used to be. It may even have dropped down to something approaching a constant. Nevertheless, they are coming out. Our concern is that we keep them coming out. But I don't think that his complaint was justified.
Ms. RIVERS. Is the demand outstripping? You say the number is constant. Is the demand growing while the number of graduates——
Mr. GOODSTEIN. I think—I don't think the demand is growing any more. There was a long period during which the demand was growing. That ended some decades ago.
The demand will be relatively constant. There will be fluctuations, various fluctuations, in the short term, but over a very long term, the demand will be relatively constant. It will grow with the population.
But I do think that we are still doing a superb job at turning out American scientists and engineers.
Ms. RIVERS. Great. Dr. Dowell?
Mr. DOWELL. I would just distinguish in engineering between the Ph.D. programs and the undergraduate programs. For Ph.D.'s, Ph.D. production in engineering in this country is at an all-time high. About one-half of those individuals are from other countries. The other one-half, of course, are from the United States. And that number is also at an all-time high, which isn't perhaps quite as widely known.
So I think in terms of historical norms, we're doing well in terms of Ph.D. production. And they are finding jobs, roughly two-thirds in industry, roughly one-third in academe.
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With respect to undergraduate engineers, those with a Bachelor's degree, that number has declined from a peak of about 5 years ago by about 15 percent. So those are the facts and the numbers.
The other thing I would say is I think it depends enormously on the field of engineering and the subfield and the industry. There are undoubtedly surpluses in some cases and shortages in others. And I don't think you can make one sweeping statement.
Hopefully one of the things we do in engineering education and science education is we train people broadly enough that they can adapt from one industry to another and one subspecialty to another. If we train them for one very narrow subspecialty or we indoctrinate them into the view that that's the only thing they can do the rest of their lives, I think we're doing a disservice to those students and now using these talents to their full effect.
Ms. RIVERS. Would others like to comment on that, on the question?
[No response.]
Ms. RIVERS. The second question I have comes from a conversation I had again over the weekend with undergraduates at the University of Michigan, who suggested that—we were talking about science and moving forward. And I would be very interested in hearing Ms. Johnson's views on this, but these students suggested that it's much more lucrative to go into medicine or law than to go through what it takes to get a science or engineering Ph.D., to do a post-doc for $18,000 at a time when most people are then married, beginning to have children. They simply can't afford to take care of their families and go through what it takes to go the full way with science.
Do you think that's true? And how do we change that?
Ms. CATHARINE JOHNSON. I couldn't ask for a better reiteration of my constituents' own main point. That is usually the comment, as people know, that I'm going off to do this. They say, ''Oh, don't forget to mention this. You know, make sure they understand this.'' It's the main concern of young scientists today, really.
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And I went—as an undergraduate, I also was a student at Johns Hopkins, where there's a large proportion of the students that go into other professional graduate programs. And, again, that's a main concern.
Our generation really is concerned about, financially concerned about, the future. And when you've gotten to the point you're a successful, bright, well-educated college student, you have a lot of choices. And finances have to be one of the things that you consider.
I don't necessarily think that there needs to be drastic changes in the ways that graduate students, say, are funded, but when you look at the long period of time that you're forced to spend at these low wages before you get to the point where you can start contributing to Social Security and you can start accruing a pension and you have poor benefits and often, actually, for these graduate students who are female, it really affects their retention in programs because if they want to have kids, the benefits really become a problem.
So I completely agree with those students that you were speaking with. It's a big problem today.
Ms. RIVERS. But you have suggestions about how we could alter that?
Mr. EHLERS. I'm sorry. The gentlewoman's time has expired.
Ms. RIVERS. Oh, I'm sorry.
Mr. EHLERS. And we do have a vote called. We have 10 minutes remaining.
Ms. Johnson, did you have any questions?
Ms. JOHNSON of Texas. Just very quickly. To follow up what you're saying, we have two black women here. One is a Ph.D. in nuclear physics, Dr. Frazier. And Dr. Clark is a Ph.D. She's from Michigan State. And Dr. Clark is from Rutgers, a Ph.D. in science education, undergraduate degree in engineering.
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And they have real problems in finding opportunities at that level. That's a long time to study in difficult areas not to be sure of some kind of security once one graduates.
Do you see any change, anybody on the panel, in that coming?
Mr. EHLERS. Does anyone wish to respond? Ms. Johnson?
Ms. CATHARINE JOHNSON. Continuing on my previous comment, I don't see any change, but I think that's actually one area that really needs to be changed in graduate education.
I don't think that young people would be quite so reluctant to enter into advanced studies if that incredible length of time was shortened. So, even if that's the only thing that changes, just shortening the training time until they were in tenure-track or industrial positions or whatever profession they choose, whatever sector they chose to get a job in, then, if it was 6 years total, instead of 10 to 14, I think that you'd find many more young people, especially women, pursuing those careers.
And, of course, there are always issues of mentoring as well.
Mr. EHLERS. Thank you very much.
I had several other questions I was going to ask, especially the part of the panel that—the end of the panel never gets quite as many questions. But I'm reluctant to keep you here. It's going to take at least 15 to 20 minutes to get to the Floor and vote and come back. And we have approached the witching hour.
So why don't we leave it since we have your phone numbers if any of us have further questions or we wish to address you in writing, if you'd be willing to respond, we appreciate that, rather than keeping you here while we go vote and carry on.
Thank you very much. It's been extremely helpful. I appreciate the comments, find it as bit distressing to hear from Dr. Griffiths that some 53 percent of those in the earth sciences are going to have trouble getting positions since I have a son who is a graduate student in geophysics.
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But other than minor distressing points such as that, it's been very beneficial and certainly helped us in our study and our science policy work and particularly as we address the issues of math/science education.
It's been a very stimulating session. And thank you very much for taking the time to come here and address us.
Mr. GOODSTEIN. Thank you.
Ms. CATHARINE JOHNSON. Thank you.
Mr. GRIFFITHS. Thank you.
Mr. PERALTA. Thank you.
Mr. DOWELL. Thank you.
Mr. EHLERS. The hearing stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:49 a.m., the Committee was adjourned, to reconvene at the call of the Chair.]