The Next Generation of Science Policy-Makers

by Chris Quigg, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory

Donald Kennedy ("Aftermaths," Editorial, 29 Nov., p. 1679) is wise to advocate new means of encouraging science and technology training for future policy-makers in the United States. The National Defense Education Act is an informative model, not least for its expansive view of the critical skills the United States would require. By focusing on educating the next generation of public servants, however, Kennedy addresses only a part of the United States' intellectual deficit and only part of our opportunity.

In an era of dazzling opportunities across many scientific disciplines, our country has been disinvesting (1). Federally supported R&D shrank in 2000 to less than 0.7% of the gross domestic product--a level last seen before the Soviets launched Sputnik. A laudable bipartisan effort to double the NIH budget has nourished biomedical research and training, but a steady attrition of investment has weakened the physical sciences and engineering. The Department of Energy's funding for the physical sciences has decreased by 20% since 1993. The number of graduate students has dropped proportionately, with U.S. students minorities in many departments.

While continuing to welcome foreign students and sustaining our enormously beneficial position as graduate school to the world, we must take new steps to encourage and support the advanced graduate studies of U.S. citizens in science and engineering. An ambitious new program of graduate fellowships--let us call them Benjamin Franklin fellowships--would show students that our country values science and technology and would spur them toward creative public service. Graduate students we attract during this decade will help shape the world for half a century, so it would be shortsighted to target a few specialties. It would be better by far to attract more of our best students to the most interesting sciences and to inspire them, like Benjamin Franklin, to range over pure and applied science, engineering, and even statecraft!

Reference
1. "Federal Investment in R&D," a project memorandum prepared for the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology by the RAND Science and Technology Policy Institute and the AAAS (see www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1639.0/).

Related articles in Science:
Aftermaths
Donald Kennedy
Science 2002 298: 1679. (in Editorial) [Summary]