Sample Speeches

The Perfect Storm
Presented By Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson, Ph.D.
President, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

National Society of Black Engineers
Dallas, Texas

Wednesday, March 17, 2004

A similar multiplicity of adverse forces is descending, right now, throwing our future as the world's scientific and technological leader into question. Our nation's scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and technologists are retiring at a rate faster than our universities are educating new people to replace them. Simultaneously, the quality of our K-12 science curriculum is declining, fewer Americans are seeking degrees in science and engineering, and it is getting more difficult for foreign-born students to enroll in American institutions, or many of them are staying home, because of educational and other opportunities where they live, or are being drawn elsewhere.

What will be the consequences? Technology always has been the driver of economies (consider the competitive advantages accruing to a tribe of early humans with boats, for instance, over another without that technology). The United States must retain its scientific and technological capacity, if the nation is to remain competitive.

Our scientific and technological infrastructure remains unequalled, and American plans for the path of scientific and technological progress in this new century are staggeringly ambitious. Just consider three areas comprising what I call the Golden Triangle - information technology, biotechnology and nanotechnology - and, three recent events and developments which have occurred within the past few months:

•  Last November, IBM held an industry leadership forum in San Francisco where the focus was on "on-demand" computing, the ability to receive computing cycles, and their attendant capabilities, at the time and to the extent they are needed - i.e. anytime-anywhere computing capability for solutions to problemsólarge and small.

•  Last September, Dr. Elias A. Zerhouni, Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), laid out a series of far-reaching initiatives known as the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research. It is intended to transform the nation's medical research capabilities and to speed the movement of research discoveries to improve health. It recognizes and is predicated on the genomics/revolution and the application of other sciences, and engineering, to the life sciences.

•  And, also, in November of last year, Congress sent to the President the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act of 2003, establishing the National Nanotechnology Initiative, and authorized spending nearly $4 billion over the next four years for research and development in this evolving field.

Those are only three of many major developments proffered by our leading scientific strategists, and supported by our business and political leaders. These plans, however, will require a sufficient supply of educated and talented scientists and engineers to unveil the discoveries to power innovation and to develop and to translate laboratory results into the marketplace. Many countries - Taiwan , South Korea , Japan , China , India , and others - are investing heavily in science and technology. More importantly, they are investing in their human resources in science and engineering.

Our nation's science and engineering workforce, actually, is quite small, relative to our total population. The National Science Board calculates it at about eight percent of all workers, or 11 million people out of a total civilian labor force of about 140 million. Of that 11 million, only about 3.3 million engage in core science and engineering occupations, mostly as engineers, computer scientists, and mathematicians. Many of the rest of these highly educated individuals apply their special abilities in other fields where scientific and technological skills are valuable assets, such as converting the results of research and development into innovative products, processes, and services.

Many of these individuals, educated in the 1960s and 1970s are reaching retirement age. Why care - when many scientists and engineers are experiencing unemployment? I will tell you why - by reminding you of my earlier comments. In discussing these issues, I am not talking about matching specific people with specific jobs, but, rather, I am talking about national capacity - the capacity to innovate, to create new industries, to create new jobs, to provide for our national security, to be a global leader. New blood is needed for this, or we will decline, especially in the face of national capacity building in other countries.

The problem we face with today's graying science and engineering workforce is quite a turn-around from the heady days of the 1960s. President Kennedy's call to land an American on the moon before the end of the 1960s inspired and mobilized countless young people to seek advanced technological education, and some in this room, I expect. Data on earned doctorate degrees compiled annually by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago document the extraordinary growth in such degrees awarded in the United States in the decade of the 1960s. They tripled, from just over 10,000 in 1961 to nearly 32,000 in 1971.

Now, I choose the moon landing - the Apollo program - as the backdrop for my remarks, because the space program is a good example of the challenge we face. President Bush recently charged the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) with two dramatic new missions: to return to, and to colonize, the moon; and to land Americans safely on Mars. Yet, a report last year from the U.S. General Accounting Office revealed that 15 percent of NASA's current scientific and engineering staff is already eligible to retire and the number will increase to 25 percent by 2008. NASA's Administrator, Sean O'Keefe, testified before the Congress last year that agency scientists and engineers aged 60 and older outnumber those under 30 by a factor of nearly three to one. Similar challenges confront every governmental science agency, as well as many private technological enterprises and the academic community.

At the same time, our universities are producing fewer highly educated scientists and engineers. The latest Survey on Earned Doctorates, covering the academic year ended June 30, 2002, confirms that the 400-plus universities in the United States that conferred doctorates in 2002 awarded two percent fewer than in 2001, and six percent fewer than in 1998. The total of 39,955 doctorates awarded in 2002 was the lowest since 1993.

The same survey revealed that the largest declines in the universe of awarded doctorates occurred in the physical sciences and engineering. Between the 2001 and 2002 academic years, engineering doctorates declined by nearly eight percent and physical science doctorates dropped more than four percent.

When compared with the academic year 1997, engineering doctorates have declined a staggering 17.1 percent and physical sciences doctorates are off by 14.4 percent.

One modest silver lining is the fact that more women and minorities are achieving doctoral level degrees - but not nearly enough are in science and engineering. While women received 45 percent of all doctorates granted in 2002, they accounted for only 27 percent of the physical science doctorates, and 18 percent of those in engineering.
While U.S. racial and ethnic minority groups earned nearly 19 percent of all doctorates awarded to American citizens in 2002, the two largest minority groups - African-Americans and Hispanics - were underrepresented when it came to the physical sciences and engineering. And, the percentage of doctorates earned by American citizens of all races were alarmingly low in those same categories. Only 39 percent of engineering doctorates went to citizens of the United States ; U.S. citizens earned just 55 percent of physical sciences doctorates.

These data reveal an important talent stop-gap which our nation has always used to make up for any specialized needs: foreign-born students who earn degrees in the United States and those who earn degrees abroad but come here for employment.

The trend in hiring foreign-born individuals to fill scientific and engineering positions in this country was quite robust until September 11, 2001. However, in the aftermath of 9/11, it is much more difficult for foreign-born students to gain entry to the United States to pursue advanced degrees, due to much more stringent visa processing procedures. And, in the workforce, there are positions (such as sensitive security positions) which must be held only by U.S. citizens.