Increasing American Fellowship Support for Scientists and Engineers
Posted on December 6, 2006 Comments (10)
A great research paper is available today from the Brookings Institution: Investing in the Best and Brightest: Increased Fellowship Support for American Scientists and Engineers by Richard B. Freeman. For those interesting in science and engineering education and/or economic policy I recommend it.
The U.S. share of global science and engineering activity is declining, however, and will continue to decline
I agree the declining trend is likely to continue, mainly due to the improvement of science and engineering efforts worldwide, see, for example: Diplomacy and Science Research and – U.S. Slipping on Science – Phony Science Gap?.
Again I agree. I am in danger of confirmation bias since this report basically reinforces what I believe – so of course I find it worthwhile.
Again I agree. This is why so many countries have been devoting significant resources to improving their science and technology infrastructure – the economic benefits of doing so.
Again I agree, this is a trend that is likely to work against the USA scientific and engineering centers of excellence and in favor of others. And actually it is a positive development. It is just one that indicates the USA needs to develop more internal science and engineers (or cede even more of that work to other countries).
Finally something I don’t necessarily agree with. He might be right, but I think it is an open question. And I would split increased funding between k-12 and higher education (though truly I would need to do more research first). It could very well be that k-12 investments create a pool of great candidates for fellowships that would not otherwise be available. And nothing her says how much that would cost (it could be that only 30% of the benefit goes to increased science and engineering graduate success but the overall payoff is so large that even just 30% directly benefiting the target is higher than 100% of the fellowship benefit). Perhaps for the cost of 100 fellowships with smart k-12 initiatives you can create 1000 more science and engineering graduate students down the road. Plus the benefits to raising the level of science and engineering in others can also provide worthwhile benefits.
Related: Engineering Graduates: USA, China, India – Worldwide Science and Engineering Doctoral Degree Data – Proposed Legislation: Graduate Scholar Awards in Science, Technology, Engineering, or Math – Engineering the Future Economy – China challenges dominance of USA, Europe and Japan – Basic Science Research Funding – Science and Engineering in Global Economics – Top degree for S&P 500 CEOs? Engineering – Engineers in the Workplace – Shortage of Engineers?
As I have mentioned before, I work for ASEE on the IT systems in support of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Operation Center (the ASEE portion of the program), along with the other fellowship programs at ASEE). This blog is my own and is not affiliated with ASEE.
Categories: Economics, Education, Engineering, Fellowships, Scholarships, quote, Science, Students
10 Responses to “Increasing American Fellowship Support for Scientists and Engineers”
Leave a Reply
December 14th, 2006 @ 7:34 pm
[…] How much public money to devote to science and engineering fellowships is a political decision that greatly impacts science. Exactly what laws should be adopted to slow global warming is a political decision. The problem is not that politics and science can’t interact but how that interaction takes place. […]
January 22nd, 2007 @ 12:15 am
[…] Excellent reading, the report is full of useful information I have not been able to obsorb yet.[…]
May 9th, 2007 @ 7:19 pm
“Kao today will announce that his family foundation is donating $10 million to establish scholarship funds at six regional universities for students majoring in electrical and computer engineering…”
June 26th, 2007 @ 10:32 am
This chart was included, it shows the number of female awardees by gross field over time (over 50% of awards are to women now)…
August 25th, 2007 @ 1:19 pm
[…] interesting proposal. There has been quite a bit of talk the last few years about increasing government incentives to support students studying science, engineering and math. View the current America Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, […]
October 14th, 2007 @ 7:16 pm
Hillary will increase the number of fellowships to 3,000 per year. She will also increase each award from $30,000 to $40,000 per year…
November 10th, 2007 @ 12:23 pm
This bill started with the same name as the Sowing the Seeds Through Science and Engineering Research Act – though seems to be missing much on fellowships now…
June 10th, 2008 @ 3:23 pm
Even if the declining trend in the US continues I still see us as being a large player for a time to come. I think this is, however, how globalization works and eventually all things, not simply science and engineering, will balance out globably.
June 10th, 2008 @ 6:11 pm
You raise some interesting points but I don’t think just throwing money at K-12 education is going to solve the problem. What the US needs is to have a culture that encourages technological development and education more than celebrity gossip. Unforuntatly you can’t just spend money to change the country to be that way.
September 14th, 2010 @ 11:05 pm
There has been quite a bit of talk the last few years about increasing government incentives to support students studying science, engineering and math. View the current America Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technolog