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03.11

The Changing Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Workforce

This article is excerpted from NSF Director Dr. Subra Suresh's remarks to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), 7 January 2011, in which he addressed some of the persistent issues affecting U.S. competitiveness and asked the members of the Council to "think about how NSF can help keep the United States in play internationally."

One of the most critical steps is to revitalize our nation's STEM pipeline.  Again, we are looking into what the National Science Foundation (NSF) specifically can do in the short term. The misalignments of gender and ethnic/racial demographics in the pipeline relative to the population at large define our future prospects for scientific and economic vitality and leadership as well as national security.

Our future STEM workforce will affect the quality of work that NSF will be able to fund. This will determine NSF's ability to restore and sustain American leadership in science.

The up-and-coming global contenders in STEM-based innovation will be talented, well-trained and tenacious. So let me walk you through some data that point to what the situation is.

U.S. universities produced nearly 50,000 (or, exactly 49,562, to be precise) research doctorates in 2009, the highest number ever reported by NSF's Survey of Earned Doctorates.

S&E doctorates were up 1.9 percent over 2008, owing entirely to growth in numbers of female recipients. Doctorates were up from 2008 in seven of eight major fields of science. And S&E graduate enrollment continued to rise, from 1999, reaching a new peak of almost 600,000 in the fall of 2006. But, at every juncture in this pipeline, many are deflected and take other paths.

There are at least three major areas of opportunity and concerns that need to be addressed in this pipeline.

First, the good news. There are signs that in some areas we are improving the initial supply. Here's the data. Last year, 72 percent of U.S. high-school valedictorians were girls. And that number appears to be increasing. Women outnumber men in attaining college degrees by 20 percent; and many more women than men receive graduate and law degrees.¹

But the loss of talented young people remains. So, while an increasing percentage of girls and young women enter S&E disciplines, there is a large drop-off in their participation in graduate and post-graduate studies, and this is nothing new. More loss occurs as fewer women choose S&E careers. This is a very complex issue with many factors, but there is one key factor and that's raising a family. And the recent Berkeley report provides specific data in this regard.² If this weren't bad enough, we have an increasing supply-slope difference between men and women.

Further, women take 7 to 10 percent longer than men to complete STEM doctorates.³ But NSF's Science & Engineering Indicators gives us reason for some optimism, which I show in the next slide.

In 2008, women earned 50 percent of STEM bachelor's degrees and 46 percent of STEM master's degrees. You see this in the left bar and second-to-left bar. But, at the doctoral level it drops off to 41 percent. Now, if you look at the 2006 workforce, women comprised only 26 percent of employed scientists and engineers, so you can see the significant drop taking place. Of course, the numbers [between degrees (2008) and workforce (2006)] are off by two years because of the way the data was collected. While not shown on the slide, in 2006, minorities were 24 percent of the employed STEM workforce. However, if we exclude Asians, who are overrepresented in STEM relative to their minority status, the percentage of the employed STEM workers is quite a bit lower.

So, the percentage of STEM degrees earned by minorities trends downward for all S&E fields as we climb the academic ladder: So in the case of gender, we have a very good news with supply but bad news with retention. In the case of underrepresented minorities in the STEM workforce, both the supply and the retention are not very good at the present time. Beginning with minorities comprising 28 percent of S&E bachelor's degree recipients, they fall to 24 percent of master's degrees, and they fall further by comprising only 21 percent of doctoral degrees. The results are severely uneven across disciplines. So, one problem with aggregation in the 2006 STEM employment data is that it isn't so apparent that disciplines have been differentially successful in adapting structurally to the pipeline's changing composition. Digging deeper into the data, we realize that concerted research-based efforts to enhance inclusive recruitment, mentoring and retention of minorities and women can work. So, we are looking at a number of things that NSF already does where we can provide input to address this particular issue.

While trends point to increasing supply at least in some of these areas, there are areas where we have concerns with supply and retention, and we feel that this requires significant attention. We cannot wait too long.

Looking to the future, by 2040 to 2050, we will be a country of a majority of minorities. We have a significant issue in engaging them, at the present time, in the S&E enterprise and education. We have to be careful about interpreting some of these data and take corrective action; we and NSF cannot wait another 20 or 30 years to act.

So, there are three sources of the supply pipeline that we can talk about. One is the gender issue. The other is the participation of underrepresented minorities. The third issue relates to some key global trends. So let me address them now.

Given the increased global democratization and interconnectedness, and economic prosperity in developing nations, STEM graduates will have many more career options and residency choices.

Not long ago, one fought hard to come to the United States to pursue graduate education and then to stay. I know; I did. And there are a few others here who did the same thing. We may be witnessing the beginning of a potentially rapid shift. We don't have enough data to make any conclusions, but there are some indicators. Many more students can choose to stay in their country of birth to study and permanently reside. That will have a huge impact on the scientific enterprise of this country. It will have a huge impact on NSF: on the quality of research that NSF sponsors and on the quality of research that comes up for NSF sponsorship.

In 1977, I came to this country after earning my first degree. In my graduating class, across all areas of engineering, there were some 250 students. More than 80 percent of the 250 students had an opportunity to come to the United States to pursue graduate studies. Pretty much all of them took it, and all of those remained in the U.S. And all of them became either U.S. citizens or permanent residents, playing a significant role in research, academia, industry, business and start-ups. Now, look at the change 30 years later. Each of the Indian Institute of Technology campuses still graduates approximately 250 students. Last year, more than 80 percent of the same school and cohort had the same opportunity to come to the U.S., but only 16 percent took it. And it's not the top 16 percent. And this is just one campus, one data point in one small institution, but it points to a potential trend in emerging countries.

For the past 50 to 60 years, at least, the U.S. "opportunity beacon" made us the unquestioned destination. Personally, that's why I called it "home."

NSF data released this year show that foreign S&E graduate students in U.S. institutions increased in 2006, after a two-year post-9/11 decline. The good news is that foreign students on temporary visas increased from 22 percent to 25 percent of all S&E graduate students from 1993 to 2006.

In 2007, the number of S&E doctorates earned by temporary residents rose to a new peak: 13,700. This next slide shows the citizenship of these S&E graduate students, where they come from. The five countries are expectedly: China, then India, then South Korea. South Korea's population is tiny compared to India (but the numbers are almost the same), then Taiwan, and Canada followed by Turkey, Thailand, Japan, Mexico and Germany.

Now, three-quarters of the foreign recipients of U.S. S&E doctorates in 2004 to 2007 reported that they intended to stay in the U.S. after graduation. However, between 2000 and 2007, the percentage reporting definite plans to stay decreased for all of the top five countries.  Again, there is no trend yet, but this points to a potential trend.

So, the bottom line? There are many opportunities outside the U.S., and this could have a huge impact on our scientific enterprise.

The U.S. graduate institutions are still well situated. Of the top 20 universities in the world, as of a 2008 evaluation, only 3 are outside the United States. And, of the top 50, just 14 are outside the United States.⁴ But, if you look at some specific data, there is a lot of cause for concern. Let me point to the Commission on the Future of Graduate Education. Their documents show how fragile the ascendancy can be. In 1977, 82 percent of doctoral degrees awarded in the U.S. were granted to U.S. citizens. In 2007, this figure had gone down from 82 percent to 57 percent. That's a significant decline.

And for PhDs awarded in engineering in 2007, only 29 percent went to U.S. citizens. This was down from 56 percent in 1977. Today, in the physical sciences, only 43 percent of the degrees went to U.S. students; that's down from 76 percent in 1977.

For the full transcript of Dr. Suresh's comment, visit: http://www.nsf.gov/news/speeches/suresh/11/ss110107_pcast.jsp#note1

Notes:

1. Bennett, Jessica, and Jesse Ellison. 2010. "Women Will Rule the World." Newsweek. July 6. Retrieved online on 12/2/2010 at http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/06/wormen-will-rule-the-world.html.

2. Berkeley Center on Health, Economic & Family Security and Georgetown Law's Workplace Flexibility 2010. (2010, December.) Family Security Insurance: A New Foundation for Economic Security. Retrieved online on 12/2/2010 at http://www.law.berkeley.edu/files/chefs/
   family_security_insurance_2010_Final_web.pdf

3. Council of Graduate Schools. 2008. Ph.D. Completion and Attrition: Analysis of Baseline Program Data from the Ph.D. Completion Project. Washington, DC: Council of Graduate Schools.

4. Cole, Jonathan R. 2010. The Great American University: Its Rise to Preeminence, Its Indispensable National Role, Why It Must Be Protected. New York: Public.

Comments may be submitted to todaysengineer@ieee.org.