Tackling the Threat to U.S. Scientific Competitiveness

The scientific leadership that has been at the heart of American economic leadership for the past century is being challenged more broadly than ever before. As the U.S. government moves to shore up our financial institutions, it must also address these challenges, which similarly threaten our economic prosperity.

The challenges stem from educational and economic competition in the sciences and technology, and new developments are unfolding constantly. Other nations are producing more scientists than we are, and increasingly their economies are offering better job opportunities.

China now has more college students in the top 10 percent of its higher education classes than the United States has college students. China and India together graduate more than a million technical students each year.

The contrast of those countries' educational experiences to our own is underscored in Robert Compton's documentary 2 Million Minutes (a reference to the average time a student spends on high-school education). The film compares how Indian, Chinese and U.S. students use that precious time. Needless to say, the comparisons do not bode well for the United States.

Even skilled Indian and Chinese workers who have come to America are leaving. USA Today recently cited immigration expert Vivek Wadhwa of Duke University who predicts that by 2014 about 100,000 skilled Indian workers, and an equal number of skilled Chinese workers, now in the United States will have left - motivated primarily by immigration delays in the United States, family ties, and increasing career opportunities in other countries.

That exodus, coupled with the decline in U.S. educational standards, is threatening on its own, but it also coincides with greater economic progress overseas and the continued off-shoring of our high-tech manufacturing base.

China's gross domestic product will grow by 7.5 percent this year and India's by more than 5 percent, according to USA Today. Meanwhile, the U.S. GDP may shrink by 2.6 percent, according to the International Monetary Fund.

In a recent New York Times column, Tom Friedman illustrates the problem: Applied Materials, a U.S. company, has 14 plants that make solar power panels, yet none are located in the United States: five are in Germany, four in China, and one each in India, Italy, Spain, Taiwan and Abu Dhabi. Other nations have made it a priority to encourage solar power use and manufacturing, while the United States lags far behind. "In October," he writes, "Applied will be opening the world's largest solar research center -- in Xian, China. Gotta go where the customers are. So, if you like importing oil from Saudi Arabia, you're going to love importing solar panels from China."

And the competition is extensive when it comes to solar power. The attached chart, provided by U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, depicts worldwide shipments of solar photovoltaics - in megawatts. The United States accounts for about 5% of the total, well behind Japan, Europe, and the rest of the world.

In the second half of the 20th century, scientific and technological advances are estimated to have been responsible for well over 40 percent of U.S. prosperity. As a result, we enjoyed the highest standard of living in human history. Today, however, the United States is coasting on that post-war boom rather than retooling in the face of significant scientific and technological challenges from the world community.

What America has been especially good at in the past two decades is allowing the financial sector to expand and shed regulations, permitting greed and dishonesty to flourish. According to former Nixon speechwriter Kevin Philips, author of the fascinating book Bad Money, that radical restructuring has promoted speculation, debt and profits at the expense of production, manufacturing and wages. Now, with the collapse of the financial sector, we are left without either.

What can we do to counter these trends?

1. Reform Wall Street. Recent news reports revealed that Wall Street has spent more than2 billion lobbying Congress over the past few years and used the lobbying process to kill the regulatory structure that served America well since the Great Depression. It's time to re-regulate.

America's future can be great, but it depends on preserving our preeminence in science and technology. It won't happen otherwise.

James M. Gentile, Ph.D., is president and CEO of Research Corporation for Science Advancement, America's second-oldest foundation (www.rescorp.org.).