The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a new astronomical observatory will probe the mysteries of dark matter and anti matter from a perch on the International Space Station
Some of the nation’s leading experts in science, technology and innovation warned the House Science and Technology Committee on Wednesday that the United States is continuing to lose its global pre-eminence in science and engineering, a trend that will have grave economic consequences.
Wednesday’s testimony was based on the findings of Above the Rising Gathering Storm, Revisited: Rapidly Approaching Category 5, a National Academy of Sciences report issued last week that that found the United States sliding because it’s not making sufficient investments in research and technology nor improving K through 12 education quickly enough.
The Sept. 23 report was an update of the 2005 landmark NAS study, Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future.
The initial Congressionally-chartered study led to the America COMPETES Act, which was passed and signed into law with bi-partisan support in 2007. However, the bill’s three-year congressional authorization expires Thursday, Sept. 30. While the House has voted for re-authorization, the full Senate has yet to act.
Remedies include R & D investments, better science and math instruction
The strategies embraced by the original America COMPETES Act, including an eventual doubling of federal investments in research and development, are helping but not rapidly enough, Norm Augustine, the former Lockheed Martin CEO who led the two NAS studies, told the House panel.
The legislation united a wide range of “high risk, high reward” research initiatives at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, NASA, NOAA, the Department of Energy, National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
NASA's Robonaut 2 will explore productive working relationships between humans, robots. Photo credit/NASA
“Our conclusion, I’m sorry to say (in 2005), was that we were on a path whereby we were likely to suffer sustained unemployment at very high levels because Americans simply won’t be able to compete successfully for jobs,” said Augustine.
Recent Global Rankings a Concern
Flanked Wednesday by Craig Barrett, retired chairman and CEO of Intel Corp., Charles Holliday, chairman of the Bank of America, and Dan Mote, president emeritus of the University of Maryland, Augustine offered a list of the latest global rankings that suggests there is much ground to make up.
The United States, said Augustine, ranks:
1. Sixth in innovation-based competitiveness.
2. Eleventh in the fraction of young workers with a high school diploma.
3. Sixteenth in college completion, 20th in high school completion.
4. Twenty first among 17-year-olds in science achievement, 25th among the same age group in math achievement.
5. Twenty-seventh in college graduates who study science and engineering.
6. Forty eighth in the quality of math and science education available to K through 12th grade students.
7. Twenty second in broad band Internet access.
“That is not the America I like to think of us as being,” said Augustine, who listed the nation’s current economic difficulties as significant new obstacle. “That is not the America I want to see for my grandchildren.”
No time to Turn Away
U. S. Rep. Bart Gordon, who chairs the House committee, said the grim picture painted by the Sept. 23 report makes a renewed authorization measure all the more urgent.
“Our marching orders are clear. We must continue what we started, re-commit ourselves to the ideas we laid out in the original America COMPETES Act,” said Gordon. “If this report tells us nothing else, it tells us the worst thing we can do is let our efforts languish.”
The committee’s ranking Republican, Ralph Hall, said it will take more than legislation to address the challenge.
“Much more needs to be done by all of us, not just the federal government to keep and in some cases restore the United States to science and technology innovation prominence across the board,” said Hall. “The private sector needs to step up, students and teachers need to step up. Parents need to step up, and our parents need to step up,”