[Senate Hearing 112-844]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 112-844
FIVE YEARS OF THE AMERICA COMPETES ACT:
PROGRESS, CHALLENGES, AND NEXT STEPS
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE,
SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
SEPTEMBER 19, 2012
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and
Transportation
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SENATE COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION
ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV, West Virginia, Chairman
DANIEL K. INOUYE, Hawaii KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON, Texas,
JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts Ranking
BARBARA BOXER, California OLYMPIA J. SNOWE, Maine
BILL NELSON, Florida JIM DeMINT, South Carolina
MARIA CANTWELL, Washington JOHN THUNE, South Dakota
FRANK R. LAUTENBERG, New Jersey ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi
MARK PRYOR, Arkansas JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia
CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri ROY BLUNT, Missouri
AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas
TOM UDALL, New Mexico PATRICK J. TOOMEY, Pennsylvania
MARK WARNER, Virginia MARCO RUBIO, Florida
MARK BEGICH, Alaska KELLY AYOTTE, New Hampshire
DEAN HELLER, Nevada
Ellen L. Doneski, Staff Director
James Reid, Deputy Staff Director
John Williams, General Counsel
Richard M. Russell, Republican Staff Director
David Quinalty, Republican Deputy Staff Director
Rebecca Seidel, Republican General Counsel and Chief Investigator
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Hearing held on September 19, 2012............................... 1
Statement of Senator Rockefeller................................. 1
Statement of Senator Klobuchar................................... 4
Prepared statement........................................... 4
Statement of Senator Hutchison................................... 6
Statement of Senator Udall....................................... 52
Statement of Senator Thune....................................... 53
Statement of Senator Cantwell.................................... 56
Statement of Senator Boozman..................................... 58
Witnesses
Norman R. Augustine, retired Chairman and CEO, Lockheed Martin
Corporation.................................................... 8
Prepared statement........................................... 10
Carl E. Wieman, former Associate Director, Science Division,
Office of Science and Technology Policy........................ 14
Prepared statement........................................... 16
Jeffrey L. Furman, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Strategy and
Innovation, Boston University; and Research Associate, National
Bureau of Economic Research.................................... 23
Prepared statement........................................... 25
Dr. Peter Lee, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Research...... 34
Prepared statement........................................... 36
John L. Winn, Chief Program Officer, National Math and Science
Initiative..................................................... 45
Prepared statement........................................... 47
Appendix
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Department
of Commerce, prepared statement................................ 63
Response to written questions submitted to Norman R. Augustine
by:
Hon. John D. Rockefeller IV.................................. 65
Hon. Bill Nelson............................................. 65
Hon. Amy Klobuchar........................................... 65
Response to written questions submitted to Carl E. Weiman by:
Hon. John D. Rockefeller IV.................................. 66
Hon. Bill Nelson............................................. 69
Hon. Amy Klobuchar........................................... 70
Response to written questions submitted to Jeffrey L. Furman,
Ph.D. by:
Hon. John D. Rockefeller IV.................................. 71
Hon. Amy Klobuchar........................................... 74
Response to written questions submitted to Dr. Peter Lee by:
Hon. John D. Rockefeller IV.................................. 76
Hon. Bill Nelson............................................. 78
Hon. Amy Klobuchar........................................... 79
Response to written question submitted to John L. Winn by:
Hon. John D. Rockefeller IV.................................. 80
Hon. Amy Klobuchar........................................... 80
FIVE YEARS OF THE AMERICA COMPETES ACT: PROGRESS, CHALLENGES, AND NEXT
STEPS
----------
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2012
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:37 p.m. in room
SR-253, Russell Senate Office Building, Hon. John D.
Rockefeller IV, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV,
U.S. SENATOR FROM WEST VIRGINIA
The Chairman. Hi, we are a little late, we had a vote.
Actually, it was a pretty important vote that we should get
bridged through March, and the nation will not collapse right
away.
Before I begin, this is probably Kay Bailey Hutchinson's,
that is this good lady's, last hearing as United States
Senator. And, I have six pages which I am not going to read
about her, because my statement is also quite long, my opening
statement.
But, let me just say that we, together, have had about 177
hearings, we have had 28 markups, and we put 100 bills out of
this Committee. That does not mean they have all passed, but
they have all gone to the floor, and there is no way for me to
describe the smarts, the toughness, the tactical instinct,
strategic intuitions, and the tenacity that Kay Bailey
Hutchinson has.
I am a Democrat. She is a Republican. It does not make any
difference. We made this Committee, for the first time that I
can remember, into really a bipartisan Committee. I will admit
you would not know that as you look around today. We have one
very nice person over here, and I am waiting for some other
people to come. But, it is a bipartisan Committee, and it is
known as such. We are known as a Committee which gets stuff
done, and puts out legislation. A large reason for that is Kay
Bailey Hutchinson, and, I for one am going to be incredibly
sorry to see her go, not only as a friend, but as a
professional.
For example, the bill that we are working on today, America
COMPETES, could not have happened without Kay Bailey
Hutchinson. There are a lot of folks on her side who were very
recalcitrant, and she set about to one-by-one horse-collar them
and shake some sense into their heads, and it ended up passing
by unanimous consent.
Now I have short-circuited all of the facts just a bit on
that, but the fact is she worked really hard, because when she
believes in something, she works really hard to get that
something.
She feels the same way about the transportation bill, and
we worked well together on that. That was a huge bill, not
necessarily to the American public, but it will be when those
projects are done. We also did the Federal Aviation
Administration bill, and she is an expert in aviation, being a
trained lawyer, and very experienced in all of these things.
And, there were points in the FAA bill, well, we had a
funny little thing called a slots problem. And to the average
person out in America that is the most important problem that
has ever been brought to the face of the earth. If you live in
San Francisco, or you live in Los Angeles, or in Portland, or
you know, in Seattle, and you get one flight a day from D.C.
Airport, Reagan Airport, out to that airport, and one flight
back that day, you think that is really dissing the west, and
it is.
And, we have had folks on our side who come from the east
who want to protect the status quo. You know the growth of the
population is in the west, and the southwest. And so, the
question of getting people, who did not want to yield more
slots, that is opportunities for coming and going flights for
various airlines at Reagan Airport, became a very big deal
because people need to come here, and we found a solution. And
again, a lot of that was because of the knowledge and the
really ferocious lobbying that Kay Bailey Hutchinson did.
I mean, she is a very nice lady. I do not want to make her
un-ladylike, but she is ferocious when she wants something, and
that is important in this business.
So, Kay Bailey Hutchinson, let me just tell you that I am
very, very sad that you are leaving, and actually let this be
on the record. She is the only Ranking Member, or if I were a
Ranking Member, Chairman, that I have ever sent flowers to on
Mother's Day. Now, explain that. On the face of that it makes
me look pretty serious, but I wanted to do it, because I was
grateful for what she had been doing, and continues to do. So,
Kay Bailey, you just have to accept this thing I have laid upon
you.
NASA, do not get in the way of Kay Bailey Hutchinson on
NASA. Well then you got to watch out for both Kay Bailey and
Bill Nelson with different interests, right?
Senator Hutchinson. No.
The Chairman. Well, to some extent. To some extent, you
each got about 200,000 jobs, right?
Senator Hutchinson. We both support the same thing.
America's preeminence and manned space exploration.
The Chairman. Well, you see she is cerebral. Anyway, I do
not know what you are going to do next, but I do know that it
will be important, and I know it will be done well, and I know
that we will miss you very, very much.
Now, let me go onto our business today. It has been just
over 5 years since the original America COMPETES Act became
law, and less than 2 years since the reauthorization was
enacted.
Hi, Norman, how are you? I have known you quite a long
time, and see you very little. Does not matter, you are very
good.
Both COMPETES Acts have focused on basically three main
goals.
Number one, increasing science and research investments.
Number two, strengthening science, technology, engineering and
mathematics, STEM education, where our record may be uneven,
and developing an innovation infrastructure. These are
inherently all long-term investments.
People expect that when you pass something that has quite a
lot of money in it that you are going to see engineers and
masters just flying out of schools, and colleges, and graduate
schools, and it does not unfortunately work like that. So, not
enough time has really passed to get the full impact of our
2010 bill.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin's original research that led to
Google was initiated with a National Science Foundation grant
in 1994. And, that was nice.
Back in the days when they just did individuals [EPSCoR
grants] as opposed to institutions with infrastructure. And,
that was a conversation that Erich Bloch and I had to have at
some length. Because he liked the old way and I liked the
different way, and eventually with Robert C. Byrd joining in,
we got our way, and (EPSCoR] has been better because of that.
So now, colleges and universities all over rural states and
urban states are getting opportunities for particularly golden
nuggets of research that are being done there to be able to
allow that to go forward.
So, the National Science Foundation did that for Google in
1994. Google did not go public until 2004. Their small share of
$4.5 million National Science Foundation grant led to a company
that today has $200 billion plus, over 50,000 employees. So,
success takes time.
Even with these unknowns, we still must take time to
understand where we are, and what we must do next, which is why
we are here today, and thankfully you are here.
The 2007 Act authorized a doubling of funding for the
National Science Foundation, major research accounts at the
National Institute of Standard and Technology, and the
Department of Energy's Office of Science, within seven years.
Unfortunately, Congress did not follow its own direction,
with appropriation slowing the doubling period down to 15
years. OK, well that is better than 25.
The 2010 reauthorization attempted to find some middle
ground rule with an 11-year doubling path, but again the
appropriations and the President's request levels have not
followed, pushing the doubling out to 18 years.
Without full support for these programs, we are doing our
very best to create a disservice for our economic recovery.
Losing our dominance in science and high-tech fields has led to
a loss of 687,000 manufacturing jobs since 2000. For example,
our global share of global high-tech exports has fallen from 22
percent in 1998 to 15 percent in 2010.
Unemployment rates for STEM occupations trend lower than
those for all college educated individuals, and they earned 26
percent more on average. So, there it is, what an opportunity,
and where are the people to take advantage of it? Huge problem.
That is what America COMPETES is for.
Despite this, our 15-year-olds score lower than the
international average in mathematics and science, and you know
all of that.
We heard, in March, from representatives of several of our
major Federal science agencies and coordinators. And, today's
hearing is a continuation of that conversation.
To start we have Mr. Norman Augustine, who is the former
CEO and Chairman of Lockheed Martin. Mr. Augustine chaired the
2005 National Academy of Science report ``Rising Above the
Gathering Storm'' that helped push Congress toward passage of
the original America COMPETES Act.
We also have Dr. Carl Wieman, is that right?
Mr. Wieman. Wieman.
The Chairman. Wieman, darn, I apologize. Before the
Committee again today. Dr. Wieman came before us, this
Committee, during the nomination to be Associate Director of
the Science of Office and Science Technology Policiy (OSTP). He
served the Nation well, before stepping down earlier this year.
He is a Nobel laureate in physics, and he is a strong proponent
of science and technology education. We are glad you are here,
sir.
Dr. Jeff Furman, the same, we are glad you are here, an
Associate Professor of Strategy and Innovation at Boston
University and Research Associate with the National Bureau of
Economic Research.
Dr. Peter Lee joins us today from Microsoft Research
Redmond Laboratory, which he leads in the search for disruptive
business innovation--excellent phraseology.
Mr. John Winn, Chief Program Officer of the National Math
and Science Initiative joins us as well today. Mr. Winn has
over 35 years of STEM education experience. So, we may have
some things that we want to ask you.
I now turn to my distinguished, lauded----
STATEMENT OF HON. AMY KLOBUCHAR,
U.S. SENATOR FROM MINNESOTA
Senator Klobuchar. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Chairman, I have to go
preside over the Senate. So, I was just going to put my opening
statement on the record, and also just commend Senator
Hutchinson for her great work on the Committee and join you in
your comments. She has been amazing.
I was talking to some of our auto dealers last week and
they remembered the work that we did, and so many, just so you
know, in Minnesota, 1,700 jobs were preserved, and I do not
think it would have happened without you and all of these great
things you have done for the country, and I have loved working
with you, and I know we will talk more about it on the floor at
the end of the year. But, thank you for your service on the
Committee.
Senator Hutchinson. Thank you very much. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Senator Klobuchar follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Amy Klobuchar, U.S. Senator from Minnesota
Thank you, Senator Rockefeller, for holding this hearing, and thank
you to our witnesses for being here today.
I was a co-sponsor of the original COMPETES Act and continue to
support its mission and goals, which are critical to strengthening our
economy and keeping our country competitive on the world state.
We know a thing or two about innovation in Minnesota, the state
that brought the world everything from the pacemaker to the post-it-
note to the pop-up toaster. We're also second per capita for Fortune
500 companies and home to some of the world's most innovative
businesses, like 3M, Medtronic and General Mills.
Minnesota's economy is doing better than the rest of the country,
with our unemployment more than two points above the national average,
because we are committed to innovation and bring our technological
advances to the marketplace.
In today's increasingly competitive global economy, this is where
our focus needs to be as a nation. We can no longer afford to be a
country that just churns money around on Wall Street. What we need to
be now is a country that makes things again. . .be a country with a
competitive edge. . .a country that thinks, that invents, and that
exports to the world.
There are a lot of really important policies in the American
COMPETES Act that are helping us get back to those brass tacks and
that's why I'm so glad we're holding this hearing today.
As you know, I also chair the Subcommittee on Competitiveness,
Innovation, and Export Promotion subcommittee, where I've been focused
on a lot of these issues myself.
I believe we need to be building an innovation agenda for America--
a competitive agenda that can build off of the COMPETES Act and get our
economy moving again.
Amongst other things, this calls for a renewed focus on exporting,
so that more of our businesses can reach the 95 percent of world
customers who live outside our borders.
This calls for a better system for commercializing university
research, so that the next pacemaker or post-it-note isn't just
collecting dust on a laboratory shelf somewhere.
This calls for an increased emphasis on STEM education--the
critical science, technology, engineering, and math courses that are
essential to innovation.
In a 2009 study, the United States ranked 25th out of 34 countries
in science and math education, behind countries like China, South
Korea, and Finland. We must do better.
If we're going to maintain our competitive edge and innovate our
way to the top, we'll need to be proactive--and not just reactive.
We'll need to better equip American students and workers with the
skills and training they need to succeed in the job market.
This was the thinking behind the Innovate America Act, a bipartisan
bill that I introduced last year. It focuses on turning the research
that comes out of our universities into the products that will grow
small business and create jobs. It also rewards community and technical
colleges that strengthen their STEM offerings, so that our students
have the tools to do the jobs in today's economy.
Our Universities and Community Colleges are critical partners in
driving entrepreneurship and innovation. The not only train the workers
that drive our industry, but the research that leads to new products
and technologies.
Research isn't just an academic pursuit--it is an economic
catalyst. By some accounts, R&D generated 50 percent of our nation's
economic growth between 1950 and 1993.
And a majority of that research and development took place in the
university system, which has long been an incubator for startup
businesses. It is our job to support these innovators and entrepreneurs
that bring these products to market and create jobs for Americans.
And it's not just our four year colleges that are leading the way:
Whether it's the University of Minnesota developing solar
thermochemical reactors and other alternative energy research under
America COMPETES Act programs, or our local community colleges like
Dakota County Technical College, which has received NSF STEM funds for
the past two years to encourage retention, training, and placement in
STEM jobs, these programs will help get local workers into local jobs.
We need to continue to support this competitive agenda.
In today's economy, standing still is falling behind. We must
commit to moving forward. That's why today's hearing is so important.
As I said before, I co-sponsored the original COMPETES Act and I
continue to support it today.
But we want to be sure it is as successful and effective as
possible and that's why we're here today--to evaluate the program,
discuss ways to build on its progress and make changes where necessary.
I look forward to hearing from today's witnesses and getting some
good ideas for moving forward. Thank you.
The Chairman. And, your statement is in the record.
Senator Klobuchar. Thank you.
STATEMENT OF HON. KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON,
U.S. SENATOR FROM TEXAS
Senator Hutchinson. Thank you. Well, Mr. Chairman, I have
to say this is a nostalgic time for me as well, and I cannot
think of a better partner to have than you, and I think that
you and I really have done some major things.
You talk about 100 bills that have passed out, but we have
done some really big things, and I do not think there has been
any time when we have not been able to put together our
differences and go forward in a productive way, and get a
movement in a major field.
So, I will not send you flowers, but I do want to throw
bouquets, and say that you have been a joy to work with.
I am just going to reiterate a few of those
accomplishments, before I go onto to talk about America
COMPETES, because America COMPETES is one of those things of
which I am most proud. I think it did make a statement from
Congress at a time when people were saying Congress cannot
agree on anything and we are not looking at the future, we are
just looking at today, we are not being as visionary as we
should be, especially in the Senate, but we did pass America
COMPETES.
And, I want to say that we were guided by Norm Augustine
and his Committee, the ``Rising Above the Gathering Storm''
report that gave us a road map, and Congress, in a bipartisan
way, started the progress on that road map. And, that is the
way it ought to work, and I appreciate so much all you did to
make that happen.
NASA, I think NASA was on the wrong path. Senator Nelson
and I agreed on that. We were devaluing the future in favor of
the present in this Administration, and with the help of the
late Neil Armstrong, Gene Cernan, Jim Lovell--astronauts who
stood up, and with the commitment of Congress, we were able to,
I think, balance the plan that would keep a commercial
opportunity alive for taxiing to the space station, but not at
the expense of the next generation of space exploration which
is beyond low earth orbit, and that was preserved. Again, Mr.
Chairman, I really appreciate your willingness to work on that
with us.
The FAA re-authorization bill, nobody talks about that
being important, but it was huge. It gave our airports and the
FAA the ability to plan enough that we could start building
projects for runways, and safety, and efficiency, in our
airports, and I am really pleased that we could do that,
because it was those slots that were mentioned earlier that
were the hold-up for 5 or 6 years, and we were able to pry that
out.
The Spectrum Legislation that opened more airwaves for our
wireless broadband network as well as providing our National
First Responders more capability to have instant
communications, unfortunately a lesson from 9/11 when
everything got clogged, because we did not have enough wireless
broadband capacity.
And, the Highway bill that included bus safety
legislation--that was so important in taking a major step
forward. Senator Brown and I worked on that, and we got that
through the Committee, and we were able to put that in the
Highway bill.
So, I think we have done some wonderful things, and I have
loved being the Ranking Member of this Committee.
On this bill that we are going to hear about today, America
COMPETES, I do give so much credit to Norm Augustine, and am so
pleased that you could be with us today, because you did lead
the effort with that fabulous Committee, to say we are behind
on STEM education and here is how we think we ought to be going
forward. And, our America COMPETES Act and the re-authorization
of that Act certainly did put us in a better situation.
In the last decade, just to give you one example, growth in
STEM jobs has been three times greater than non-STEM jobs. But
today, only 30 percent of U.S. high school graduates are ready
for college work in science, and 45 percent ready in math.
That is not going to produce the teachers that we need for
the future, nor the scientists and engineers that we need for
the future, to truly compete. Because of our commitment in
COMPETES, the National Science Foundation has played a major
role in STEM education, providing for $1 billion in educational
scholarship programs, so that our professionals and people who
majored in the STEM courses, science, hard science,
engineering, math, would get their teacher certificates and
teach our young people, because they are the ones who can
inspire our young people to be able to see a future in STEM
professions. And, it is with those enlightened teachers that we
know we will have the scientists of the future come out.
We also authorized UTeach, which is a University of Texas
program that allowed our majors in science, engineering and
math to get teacher certificates through electives and, in
their normal course time, be able to get teacher certification
as well as major in these subjects, which has been a huge boon
where it has been used, and I am hoping that in the re-
authorization of America COMPETES we will be able to also fund
the UTeach going nationwide.
And, I think that one good thing that was a step forward is
that Congress spoke, and we did prioritize. Obviously we are in
a budgetary crisis, and we all understand that, and I think we
have to set a top line of spending, that should be 20 percent
or 18 percent, in that range, of our gross domestic product.
That has been the average through the years, but that is not
the average right now. It is 26 percent. That is too high.
But, when we set that cap, we need to make sure we are
funding priorities that are seedcorn for the future.
STEM courses, education, research, and NASA exploration are
all areas, that are seedcorn for the future, and I hope that
when I am gone, that you, Mr. Chairman, and this Committee, and
all of the Members of the Congress will prioritize our
spending, so that we are setting that cap at a low level, which
we need to do, but prioritizing the future and the investment
going forward. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, and I will turn to
Norman Augustine, retired Chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin
Corporation.
STATEMENT OF NORMAN R. AUGUSTINE, RETIRED CHAIRMAN AND CEO,
LOCKHEED MARTIN CORPORATION
Mr. Augustine. Mr. Chairman, and members of the Committee,
thank you very much for this opportunity to appear today. With
your permission, I would like to note that I have had the great
privilege of appearing as a witness before Senator Hutchinson
many times over the years, and it truly has been a great
privilege.
I should also note that I am not representing any
organization today. I am here as a private citizen. Finally,
with the Committee's permission, I would like to submit a
statement for the record.
The Chairman. Of course.
Mr. Augustine. The America COMPETES Act, in my opinion, is
of the utmost importance. It is about jobs, jobs for all
Americans.
Jobs, of course, provide the basis for the quality of life
that our citizens enjoy. Jobs provide the revenues that our
government needs if it is to provide the services that our
citizens have come to expect, everything from national
security, to healthcare, to maintaining the infrastructure and
more.
As has been noted, the America COMPETES Act began with a
bipartisan request from both Houses, it was passed by
overwhelming majorities of both Houses, and indeed it, I think,
today represents one of the finest examples of bipartisanship,
and bipartisanism is something we have not frequently had the
opportunity to observe in recent years.
The National Academy study to which you have referred is of
course known as the ``Gathering Storm'' study and report. We
examined, at your request, America's competiveness outlook, and
the bottom line was that the outlook was not very good. In
fact, we were clearly losing ground to others.
The Academy has highlighted two areas deserving highest
attention. The first of these concerns public K through 12
education, and the second, as you know, addressed basic
research.
But, during the last few years, a new challenge has arisen.
It is a challenge that, frankly, we never thought of when we
did the work on the ``Gathering Storm'' report. It certainly,
as far as I know, never occurred to any of the members,
certainly not myself. It is that new challenge upon which I
would like to focus my verbal remarks today.
What I refer to is the impact events of the last few years
have had on America's great research universities. The
``Gathering Storm'' report cited our universities as one of the
principal advantages that America has in competing globally
along with our free enterprise system and our democracy. The
Times of London has said that the top five universities in the
entire world are all in America, as are 18 of the top 25.
Today, unfortunately, that position is in grave danger of
being lost. The reversal of the economy and the decline in tax
revenues, particularly at the state level, have resulted in our
universities receiving the lowest fractions of the operating
budgets from the state funds in over a quarter of a century.
The fact is that we have been privatizing our public
universities. One consequence of this is that we have shifted
the burden of education, higher education, to the students, and
to the younger generation. This is threatening the American
dream.
Over the past decade, tuition and fees have increased 85
percent on average across the country, and that is after
financial aid has been included. In many states, such as
California, the increases far exceed that amount.
This has not gone unnoticed in other nations--the
challenges our universities are having. Fixing faculty
salaries, even cutting salaries, laying off junior faculty,
increasing teaching loads, and so on. In other countries they
are trying to identify the most outstanding individuals in this
country, such as the gentleman who sits next to me, to try to
attract these people to their own universities.
Not long ago, I was in another country visiting a
university that had just hired 14 new senior faculty members.
Of those, 13 came from U.S. universities. But, as if that were
not enough, there is more.
Most universities have barely changed in the past few
hundred years. They largely consisted of a student, a
professor, a book, a blackboard, and a piece of chalk. Today,
the students carry the library around in their pocket, they do
not need the blackboard and the chalk, and their professor may
be thousands of miles away.
It is this wave of technological change that is engulfing
our higher education system, and providing not only great
challenges but also great opportunities--if we can manage it
correctly.
Stanford University recently, as an example, put three
courses on the web. They had 350,000 students sign up for those
courses within a few days. Those students came from 190
different countries. The courses offered no degrees, but they
also charged no tuition.
What can our government do with regard to a higher
education? I think there are many things. I will cite just a
few. Many are contentious, even within the higher education
community.
Certainly one is to substantially increase support for
basic research. Another is to be sure that government grants
fully fund the research that they call for. Another is to
refrain from using earmarks in awarding research contracts and
grants. Another is to provide more need-based financial aid to
students who are being excluded from educational opportunities.
I am aware, of course, as you pointed out, that our nation
faces a very severe budget problem. However, my business
background has taught me that, even in times of great duress
when you have to cut overall budgets, and indeed I think we
face such a situation in this country, we increase the budgets
in some very critical areas, particularly those with long-term
implications.
The distinguishing feature, I believe, is whether
appropriations are for consumption or whether they are for
investment. And, it is my belief that higher education,
secondary education, and basic research, are indeed investments
that will pay large returns for our country's citizens.
With that, I would encourage you to renew the America
COMPETES Act, because it addresses exactly those issues that
will have such a large impact on our country in the decades
ahead.
Thank you, very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Augustine follows:]
Prepared Statement of Norman R. Augustine, Denver, Coloraro: retired
Chairman and CEO, Lockheed Martin Corporation
Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, thank you for inviting
me to appear before you today and in particular to do so in the
presence of such a distinguished group of colleagues.
I should begin by noting that I am not here representing any of the
organizations with which I have been associated, but rather appear
simply as a private citizen. I have chosen to devote a considerable
part of my retirement to what I consider to be among the very most
important issues affecting the future of America: namely, its
competitiveness. This is a topic that has enjoyed strong bipartisan
support--support that has made it possible to implement some of the
recommendations that have been offered by organizations such as the
Council on Competitiveness and the National Academies of Science,
Engineering and Medicine in their document commonly referred to as the
``Gathering Storm'' report.
The quality of life of America's citizens is to a considerable
degree founded upon their opportunity to find and hold quality jobs.
Further, it is those jobs, and the firms that provide them, that
generate the tax revenues which enable our government to provide the
services upon which our citizens so heavily depend, including national
security, protection against terrorists, healthcare, a modern physical
infrastructure, and much more.
In fact, it is about jobs that I would like to speak today.
Underlying any such discussion is the truly remarkable change that has
taken place in the employment market in the past few decades and now
seems to be accelerating. This change, in my judgment, has been brought
about largely by two developments in science and technology. The first
of these is the highly expanded use of modern commercial jet aircraft
that make it possible to move things, including people, around the
world at nearly the speed of sound. The second is the revolution in
information systems that has made it possible to move knowledge . . .
ideas, data, text . . . around the world literally at the speed of
light.
A problem with a computer in New York can now be resolved by
contacting an expert in Bangalore. A CAT-scan recorded in Chicago can
be read by a radiologist in Sydney or Mumbai--while you wait. A surgeon
in New York can remove the gall bladder of a patient in Paris using a
remotely controlled robot. A video made in California can contribute to
riots halfway around the world.
It is a world in which distance no longer matters. Americans no
longer simply compete for jobs with their neighbors around the block,
but rather with their neighbors around the globe. If one needs a car,
it can readily be obtained from Japan, Germany or Korea. If one needs
software, it can be written in India and sent, in a few milliseconds,
back to the U.S. If one needs flowers, they can be delivered overnight
from Holland.
The critical question, of course, is how well we as a nation are
adapting to this new reality. That is in fact the question that was
asked approximately seven years ago of the National Academies on a
bipartisan basis by members of this body and the House of
Representatives. The essence of the Academies' assessment as contained
in the Gathering Storm report is that ``Without a renewed effort to
bolster the foundations of our competitiveness, we can expect to lose
our privileged position. For the first time in generations, the
Nation's children could face poorer prospects than their parents and
grandparents did. We owe our current prosperity, security, and good
health to the investments of past generations . . .''
Intel's Howard High's comments in this regard are fairly
representative: ``We go where the smart people are. Now our business
operations are two-thirds in the U.S. and one-third overseas. But that
ratio will flip over in the next ten years.'' Or, in the words of
DuPont's then-CEO, Chad Holliday, ``If the U.S. doesn't get its act
together, DuPont is going to go to the countries that do.'' Bill Gates
has said, ``We are all going where the high I.Q.'s are.''
The Academies' report offered 20 explicit, actionable
recommendations to reverse the current decline in competitiveness, the
top two which, in priority order, were to repair the U.S. K-12 public
education system and to significantly increase the Nation's investment
in basic research. The reason for this emphasis, as viewed by the
members preparing the report, is that the K-12 system is currently the
weakest link in producing the Human Capital needed for Americans to
compete for jobs in a global economy, and investment in basic research
is the enabler that leads to the Knowledge Capital that underlies a
substantial portion of job creation. Worthy of note, the U.S. has long
enjoyed a significant advantage in the availability of Financial
Capital with which to underwrite innovation; however, Financial Capital
today travels at the speed of light, without regard to political
borders, as it seeks opportunities.
In one of the Gathering Storm reports the National Academies
itemized factors that it considered to play a major role as
corporations determine where to establish new research laboratories,
engineering facilities, factories and logistics centers. Although the
factors were by no means of equal importance, in ten of the twelve
factors the U.S. was ranked as inferior to representative rapidly
developing nations. The categories included, for example, the cost of
labor . . . an area where Americans are accustomed to receiving wages
that exceed global averages by factors of as much as ten or even more
for assembly workers and five to ten for scientists and engineers.
Given these considerations, many researchers who have studied the
revolution in competitiveness have concluded that the United States'
competitive advantage will have to reside in superior innovation: that
is, creating new knowledge through leading-edge research; transforming
that knowledge into goods and services through world-class engineering;
and being first to the marketplace with those goods and services
through extraordinary entrepreneurialism.
With regard to Human Capital, in the most respected international
test U.S. students now rank in 14th place in reading, 17th in science
and 25th in mathematics. Needless to say, this is not a formula for
success in the jobs race. Yet, the U.S. spends more per public school
student than all but two other nations. The issue is not what we spend,
but how we spend it. The most important two actions we could take to
improve the situation are to bring the Free Enterprise System to K-12
education and to assure that every classroom has a teacher who
possesses a core degree in the subject being taught. Teaching our
children should be the most respected profession in America.
Turning to the subject of creating knowledge, significant growth in
basic research funding followed the initial passage of the America
COMPETES Act; however, investment in this endeavor has once again
waned, particularly when inflation is included. Federal funding of
basic research at universities and university research centers declined
by 5.6 percent during the past year.
Margaret Thatcher described the importance of basic research in the
following terms:
``. . . although basic science can have colossal economic
rewards, they are totally unpredictable . . . the value of
Faraday's work today must be higher than the capitalization of
all shares on the stock exchange. . . . The greatest economic
benefits of scientific research have always resulted from
advances in fundamental knowledge rather than the search for
specific applications . . . transistors were not discovered by
the entertainment industry . . . but by people working on wave
mechanics and solid state physics. [Nuclear energy] was not
discovered by oil companies with large budgets seeking
alternative forms of energy, but by scientists like Einstein
and Rutherford . . .''
Today, the iPhone, internet, GPS, solar power, nuclear power and
far more owe their very existence to the work conducted over many years
by scientists pursuing such fields as solid-state physics and quantum
mechanics. It is likely that none of these scientists were thinking
about such devices when they performed their work . . . but this is the
nature of basic research.
Although I emphasize the importance of science and technology in
these remarks, I would hasten to add that the single most important
academic subject we can teach our children is how to read, since that
is the basis of almost all learning. But it is also important to
provide our youth, including our scientists and engineers, with a sound
understanding of history, literature and ethics so that they can use
their talents for the good of humankind.
Nonetheless, a number of studies have found that between 50 percent
and 85 percent of the growth in America's GDP in recent decades can be
attributed to advancements in science and engineering. Similarly, it
has been shown that about two-thirds of the growth in U.S. productivity
can be attributed to advancements in these same two disciplines. The
challenge is not, per se, to increase jobs for scientists and
engineers; only four percent of the U.S. workforce is composed of
scientists and engineers. Even doubling that number would not have an
overly profound impact on the U.S. employment outlook. The point is
that that four percent disproportionately generates jobs for the other
96 percent of our citizenry.
A recent study reported in the Journal of International Commerce
and Economics states that (in 2006) the 700 engineers working on
Apple's iPod were accompanied by 14,000 other workers in the U.S. . . .
and nearly 25,000 abroad. Floyd Kvamme, a highly regarded entrepreneur,
has said that ``Venture capital is the search for good engineers.''
Steve Jobs told the president of the United States that the reason
Apple employs 700,000 workers overseas is because it can't find 30,000
engineers in the U.S. Data presented in the Chronicle of Higher
Education reveal that during the past 30 years, an era of burgeoning
importance of science and technology, the percentage growth in
engineers ranks 27th among the 31 fields of study listed.
Perhaps the great irony is that America is never again likely to
suffer a shortage of engineers. America's corporations have found a
solution to that challenge which satisfies their shareholders. Simply
stated, ``If engineers are not available in America, simply move the
engineering work abroad where there is in fact a rapidly growing body
of qualified individuals.'' Similarly, in a world where distance does
not matter, research can be moved abroad, and so can prototyping,
manufacturing and logistics. In fact, an additional reason for doing so
is to be near to one's customers and it has been estimated that by the
mid 2020s there will be twice as many middle-income consumers in China
as there are inhabitants in America. It has further been estimated that
within a decade 80 percent of the world's middle class will reside in
what are now categorized as developing nations.
It is occasionally argued that America is producing too many
scientists. That, of course, is true. If one sufficiently under-invests
in research then one will indeed have too many scientists. ``If one
does not purchase gasoline, there will be no need for cars.''
Today, only about 15 percent of U.S. youth who actually graduate
from high school (and nearly one-third do not) have the credentials to
even begin a college curriculum in engineering. Of those who do begin,
about 60 percent do not finish their studies in the that field.
Additionally, the unfortunate fact is that U.S. youth show a surprising
disinterest, even disdain, with respect to the study of science and
engineering, notwithstanding their fascination with video games,
television, automobiles and most other products of science and
engineering.
A recent study by the National Science Foundation notes that in
terms of the fraction of baccalaureate degrees that are granted in the
field of engineering, the U.S. now ranks 79th among the 93 nations
included in the study. The nation most closely resembling the U.S. in
this regard in both engineering and science is Mozambique. The only
countries that rank behind the U.S. are Bangladesh, Brunei, Burundi,
Cambodia, Cameroon, Cuba, Gambia, Guyana, Lesotho, Luxembourg,
Madagascar, Namibia, Saudi Arabia and Swaziland.
In the past America has been able to excel in science and
engineering in considerable part because of its ability to attract
outstanding foreign-born individuals to our universities and encourage
them to remain and contribute to the creation of domestic jobs. In
fact, about two-thirds of those receiving doctorates in engineering
from U.S. universities have been foreign-born. However, this
circumstance is beginning to change as opportunities for scientists and
engineers expand abroad. Foreign graduate students now indicate much
more frequently an intent to return to their native countries upon
receiving their degrees and gaining a few years experience in the U.S.
Our nation's policies regarding such matters as the granting of H1-B
visas are exacerbating this problem.
Some individuals, particularly strong believers in the free-market
system, simply say, ``Let the free-market solve the problem.'' But the
problem is that the free-market is solving the problem . . . it is just
not doing so in a fashion that most Americans will like.
So what should we do? The answer is straightforward: we as a nation
must compete. And that, of course, is what the America COMPETES Act is
all about. Renewing the COMPETES Act is of the utmost importance. I
cannot over-emphasize that fact. But as a mathematician might say, it
is a necessary but not sufficient condition. We must also follow-
through. In that regard, a very good beginning took place under the
administrations of both President Bush and President Obama. Upon
initial passage of the America COMPETES Act, investment in basic
research increased, as did scholarships for future STEM teachers. ARPA-
E was established, albeit under-funded. However, with the decline of
the economy much of that progress has now waned. Meanwhile, U.S.
corporations continue to spend over twice as much on litigation as on
basic research; the pressures of the stock market cause U.S. firms to
discount future investments such that research funding is greatly
diminished; firms remain burdened with high medical costs and what
recently became the highest stated corporate tax rate in the world.
When the Gathering Storm study was first published, as its chairman
I was often asked to speak to government gatherings in other countries,
ranging from Australia to Saudi Arabia to Singapore to Canada. Not only
were these nations listening, many took action. Today, America's
continuing decline in competitiveness is due not only to our own lack
of aggressive action but to the fact that others are accelerating their
competitiveness strategies.
When the Committee preparing the Gathering Storm report issued its
second assessment five years after the first report, it concluded that
America had fallen even further behind during the intervening period,
noting, for example, that another six million students had dropped out
of U.S. high schools during that period, placing themselves in
positions of little opportunity to obtain quality jobs or to contribute
to the creation of jobs for others.
But as if these challenges were not sufficient, an altogether new
problem has arisen since the Gathering Storm report was prepared. This
new challenge deals with an issue that, to the best of my knowledge,
was unforeseen by any of our committee's members--most assuredly not by
myself.
We had noted in our report that our Nation's great research
universities were among America's most significant assets in the
crusade to create jobs--along with our freedom and our free enterprise
system. It is noteworthy that it is our universities that produce the
talent we need to compete as well as much of the knowledge. Even today,
according to The Times of London, the top five universities in the
entire world and 18 of the top 25 are located in the United States.
But these same institutions are now endangered. The share of their
operating expenses funded by state governments is rapidly declining and
now represent the lowest fraction of such resources in a quarter of a
century. In three decades state financial support of higher education
as a fraction of personal income has, on average, declined by 71
percent. One result is, for example, that at the highly regarded public
universities in California, tuition and fees have grown by 240 percent
in the past dozen years. Throughout the Nation tuition and fees at
public universities have increased by an average of 85 percent over the
past decade, net of financial aid.
Faculty have on average seen their salaries decline by 1.2 percent
during the past year--not including the effect of inflation; layoffs
are not uncommon among junior faculty; and teaching loads are
increasing. This reduction in state support is, in effect, privatizing
our public universities--with much of the cost being shifted to the
students--thereby fundamentally threatening the continuation of the
American Dream. On the other hand, it may be appropriate for our
universities to reconsider their own priorities and even their raison
d'etre. According to USA Today, major college football coaches receive
an average compensation of $1.47 million per year, ``a jump of nearly
55 percent in six seasons.''
Such developments have led institutions of higher education in many
other nations to prepare lists of exceptional faculty members in the
U.S. whom they might attract to their countries. One foreign university
that I recently visited had added 14 new senior faculty . . . of whom
13 came from America. The attractiveness of such offers is facilitated,
in the case of engineering, by the fact that 40 percent of U.S. faculty
members were born abroad.
But there is still more. A tsunami of an altogether different kind
is now beginning to engulf America's universities. For some two
centuries higher education around the globe has largely consisted of a
professor, a library, a blackboard and a piece of chalk . . . seemingly
managing to resist change with a truly remarkable tenacity. But now,
when distance no longer matters, students carry entire libraries in
their pockets and have access to extraordinary professors located
throughout the world. Not long ago three courses at Stanford were
offered online and 350,000 students from 190 countries promptly signed
up. Although no degrees were offered, no tuition was sought.
It seems foregone that America's universities are going to have to
remake themselves, and how well they are able to do so will have either
a profound positive or negative impact on America's overall
competitiveness. As this occurs, it will be of the utmost importance
for government at all levels to recognize this challenge and, among
other things, provide adequate funding of basic research; appropriately
fund operating budgets; pay the true cost of research grants; increase
need-based financial aid; and enable private universities to continue
to build their endowments.
Several years ago while I was testifying before a committee of the
Congress in support of increased funding for education and research a
member asked whether I understood that America was suffering a budget
crisis. I responded that I of course was aware of that circumstance,
but that as an aeronautical engineer, during my career I had worked on
a number of airplanes that during their development programs were too
heavy to fly. Never once did we solve the problem by removing an
engine. In the case of creating jobs for Americans, it is research,
education and entrepreneurialism that are the engines that propel the
creation of jobs.
Over the years, my experience in business has taught me that even
during difficult times when budgets are being cut, and I indeed saw
such times when, for example, during about a five-year period some 40
percent of the employees in our industry and three-fourths of the
companies departed, some areas must be provided additional funds. The
point is that one must continue to invest in the future, even during
hard times. The key is to distinguish between spending for consumption
and spending for investment.
Again, thank you for the privilege of sharing these views with you.
NORMAN R. AUGUSTINE was raised in Colorado and attended Princeton
University where he graduated with a BSE in Aeronautical Engineering,
magna cum laude, and an MSE. He was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, Tau Beta
Pi and Sigma Xi.
In 1958 he joined the Douglas Aircraft Company in California where
he worked as a Research Engineer, Program Manager and Chief Engineer.
Beginning in 1965, he served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense
as Assistant Director of Defense Research and Engineering. He joined
LTV Missiles and Space Company in 1970, serving as Vice President,
Advanced Programs and Marketing. In 1973 he returned to the Government
as Assistant Secretary of the Army and in 1975 became Under Secretary
of the Army, and later Acting Secretary of the Army. Joining Martin
Marietta Corporation in 1977 as Vice President of Technical Operations,
he was elected as CEO in 1987 and chairman in 1988, having previously
been President and COO. He served as President of Lockheed Martin
Corporation upon the formation of that company in 1995, and became CEO
later that year. He retired as Chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin in
August 1997, at which time he became a Lecturer with the Rank of
Professor on the faculty of Princeton University where he served until
July 1999.
Mr. Augustine was Chairman and Principal Officer of the American
Red Cross for nine years, Chairman of the Council of the National
Academy of Engineering, President and Chairman of the Association of
the United States Army, Chairman of the Aerospace Industries
Association, and Chairman of the Defense Science Board. He is a former
President of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and
the Boy Scouts of America. He is a former member of the Board of
Directors of ConocoPhillips, Black & Decker, Proctor & Gamble and
Lockheed Martin, and was a member of the Board of Trustees of Colonial
Williamsburg. He is a Regent of the University System of Maryland,
Trustee Emeritus of Johns Hopkins and a former member of the Board of
Trustees of Princeton and MIT. He is a member of the Advisory Board of
the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Energy, was a
member of the Hart/Rudman Commission on National Security, and served
for 16 years on the President's Council of Advisors on Science and
Technology. He is a member of the American Philosophical Society, the
National Academy of Sciences and the Council on Foreign Relations, and
is a Fellow of the National Academy of Arts and Sciences and the
Explorers Club.
Mr. Augustine has been presented the National Medal of Technology
by the President of the United States and received the Joint Chiefs of
Staff Distinguished Public Service Award. He has five times received
the Department of Defense's highest civilian decoration, the
Distinguished Service Medal. He is co-author of The Defense Revolution
and Shakespeare In Charge and author of Augustine's Laws and
Augustine's Travels. He holds 29 honorary degrees and was selected by
Who's Who in America and the Library of Congress as one of ``Fifty
Great Americans'' on the occasion of Who's Who's fiftieth anniversary.
He has traveled in 111 countries and stood on both the North and South
Poles of the earth.
The Chairman. Thank you, sir, very much.
And now, I would call upon Mr. Wieman.
STATEMENT OF CARL E. WIEMAN, FORMER ASSOCIATE
DIRECTOR, SCIENCE DIVISION, OFFICE OF SCIENCE
AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY
Dr. Wieman. Summarizing the state of STEM education, there
has really been very little change in either the level of
interest in STEM or the mastery of STEM subjects by American
students over the past few decades.
Here I would like to offer a new perspective on STEM
education. It both explains this lack of progress and indicates
what must be done to achieve improvement. This perspective is
based on advances in research on learning, what I have come to
appreciate after studying research across several different
fields for a dozen years or so and doing some research on this
myself.
What has been shown is that the learning of complex
expertise, such as the mastery of math and science, is not a
matter of transferring knowledge into sufficiently talented
brains, which is the traditional model of learning. Rather,
such learning of expertise is a development of the brain, the
actual change in its structure, in response to strenuous
practice of the components of thinking that make up expertise.
This is rather similar to where a muscle grows and strengthens
in response to strenuous use. Innate talent really plays very
little role in this learning process.
Now, this research-based perspective on learning implies
that effective STEM teaching is similar to effective coaching.
A good athletic coach, first, figures out the essential skills
that make up mastery in their sport. Then they create
challenging practice activities that quite explicitly practice
these necessary skills. Third, the coach motivates their
charges to work very hard at this practice. And fourth, they
offer frequent and targeted constructive feedback to guide
improvement. All of these same ideas apply to teaching STEM,
with the STEM thinking skills replacing the list of athletic
skills.
These STEM expert teaching skills are discussed in more
detail in my written testimony.
This effective research-based teaching has been
demonstrated, but is profoundly different from what is found in
the typical K-12 or college classroom. Also, the skills needed
to teach in this fashion are not part of the normal training
that is provided to STEM teachers.
Now, if these were changed, the U.S. would go from being a
laggard to the world leader in STEM education. And, if the
quality of teaching and teacher training are not improved,
nothing else will make much difference in our STEM education
outcomes.
However, to improve teaching, one must change some of the
basic institutional incentives that serve to maintain the
status quo, and most Federal STEM education programs, rather
than drive improvements, are actually serving to preserve these
incentive systems and prop up this dismissal status quo.
In the case of K-12 teaching, the institutional incentives
are for teacher training programs primarily to maximize their
revenue by admitting and graduating as many students as
possible. One result of this is that the STEM admissions
standards and curriculum requirements for teacher training
programs are very low, often the lowest of any college major.
Much of the Federal STEM teacher training dollars go in the
form of easily available scholarships, and the result is there
are more students of questionable quality with money to pay to
attend such programs of questionable quality. Thus, these funds
are actually preserving, rather than improving, the status quo.
At the college level, teaching methods have been
demonstrated, based on the ideas presented above, that are far
superior to the prevailing lecture method, typically achieving
twice the learning and half the failure and dropout rates, at
the same cost.
Now, if these methods were widely implemented, it would
dramatically increase the number and quality of STEM graduates,
and it would greatly improve the content mastery and models of
teaching provided to future K-12 teachers. This is a necessary
first step to fixing K-12 STEM teaching.
However, these superior teaching methods are not being
adopted at the university level, largely because the Federal
Government is paying universities and their faculty members $30
billion a year to focus their attention on research
productivity. That money has resulted in an incentive system at
universities that has been very effective at maximizing
research output, but it has had the unintended consequence that
adoption of best teaching practices and improvements in student
educational outcomes has a very low priority.
Now, it is not going to be easy to improve STEM teaching in
the way I have described. You will need to overturn established
practices and incentive systems that are supported by powerful
vested interests. However, we have already spent plenty of
money on fads and easy fixes that do not work, and advances in
research on learning at least now provide a much clearer
picture than was available in the past for what is necessary to
truly make a difference.
Thank you for the opportunity to make these comments.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Wieman follows:]
Prepared Statement of Carl E. Wieman, Former Associate Director,
Science Division, Office of Science and Technology Policy
Applying New Research to Improve Science Education
Insights from several fields on how people learn to become experts can
help us to
dramatically enhance the effectiveness of science, technology,
engineering, and mathematics education.
Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education
is critical to the U.S. future because of its relevance to the economy
and the need for a citizenry able to make wise decisions on issues
faced by modern society. Calls for improvement have become increasingly
widespread and desperate, and there have been countless national,
local, and private programs aimed at improving STEM education, but
there continues to be little discernible change in either student
achievement or student interest in STEM. Articles and letters in the
spring and summer 2012 editions of Issues extensively discussed STEM
education issues. Largely absent from these discussions, however, is
attention to learning.
This is unfortunate because there is an extensive body of recent
research on how learning is accomplished, with clear implications for
what constitutes effective STEM teaching and how that differs from
typical current teaching at the K12 and college levels. Failure to
understand this learning-
focused perspective is also a root cause of the failures of many
reform efforts. Furthermore, the incentive systems in higher education,
in part driven by government programs, act to prevent the adoption of
these research-based ideas in teaching and teacher training.
A new approach
The current approach to STEM education is built on the assumption
that students come to school with different brains and that education
is the process of immersing these brains in knowledge, facts, and
procedures, which those brains then absorb to varying degrees. The
extent of absorption is largely determined by the inherent talent and
interest of the brain. Thus, those with STEM ``talent'' will succeed,
usually easily, whereas the others have no hope. Research advances in
cognitive psychology, brain physiology, and classroom practices are
painting a very different picture of how learning works.
We are learning that complex expertise is a matter not of filling
up an existing brain with knowledge, but of brain development. This
development comes about as the result of intensive practice of the
cognitive processes that define the specific expertise, and effective
teaching can greatly reduce the impact of initial differences among the
learners.
This research has established important underlying causes and
principles and important specific results, but it is far from complete.
More research is needed on how to accomplish the desired learning most
effectively over the full range of STEM skills and potential learners
in our classrooms, as well as how to best train teachers.
What is learning STEM?
The appropriate STEM educational goal should be to maximize the
extent to which the learners develop expertise in the relevant subject,
where expertise is defined by what scientists and engineers do. This is
not to say that every learner should become a scientist or engineer, or
that they could become one by taking any one class, but rather that the
value of the educational experiences should be measured by their
effectiveness at changing the thinking of the learner to be more like
that of an expert when solving problems and making decisions relevant
to the discipline. As discussed in the National Research Council study
Taking Science to School, modern research has shown that children have
the capability to begin this process and learn complex reasoning at
much earlier ages than previously thought, at least from the beginning
of their formal schooling. Naturally, it is necessary and desirable for
younger children to learn less specialized expertise encompassing a
broader range of disciplines than would be the case for older learners.
Expertise has been extensively studied across a variety of
disciplines. Experts in any given discipline have large amounts of
knowledge and particular discipline-specific ways in which they
organize and apply that knowledge. Experts also have the capability to
monitor their own thinking when solving problems in their discipline,
testing their understanding and the suitability of different solution
approaches, and making corrections as appropriate. There are a number
of more specific components of expertise that apply across the STEM
disciplines. These include the use of:
Discipline-and topic-specific mental models involving
relevant cause and effect relationships that are used to make
predictions about behavior and solve problems.
Sophisticated criteria for deciding which of these models do
or don't apply in a given situation, and processes for
regularly testing the appropriateness of the model being used.
Complex pattern-recognition systems for distinguishing
between relevant and irrelevant information.
Specialized representations.
Criteria for selecting the likely optimum solution method to
a given problem.
Self-checking and sense making, including the use of
discipline-specific criteria for checking the suitability of a
solution method and a result.
Procedures and knowledge, some discipline-specific and some
not, that have become so automatic with practice that they can
be used without requiring conscious mental processing. This
frees up cognitive resources for other tasks.
Many of these components involve making decisions in the presence
of limited information--a vital but often educationally neglected
aspect of expertise. All of these components are embedded in the
knowledge and practices of the discipline, but that knowledge is linked
with the process and context, which are essential elements for
knowledge to be useful. Similarly, measuring the learning of most
elements of this expertise is inherently discipline-specific.
How is learning achieved?
Researchers are also making great progress in determining how
expertise is acquired, with the basic conclusion being that those
cognitive processes that are explicitly and strenuously practiced are
those that are learned. The learning of complex expertise is thus quite
analogous to muscle development. In response to the extended strenuous
use of a muscle, it grows and strengthens. In a similar way, the brain
changes and develops in response to its strenuous extended use.
Advances in brain science have now made it possible to observe some of
these changes.
Specific elements, collectively called ``deliberate practice,''
have been identified as key to acquiring expertise across many
different areas of human endeavor. This involves the learner solving a
set of tasks or problems that are challenging but doable and that
involve explicitly practicing the appropriate expert thinking and
performance. The tasks must be sufficiently difficult to require
intense effort by the learner if progress is to be made, and hence must
be adjusted to the current state of expertise of the learner.
Deliberate practice also includes internal reflection by the learner
and feedback from the teacher/coach, during which the achievement of
the learner is compared with a standard, and there is an analysis of
how to make further progress. The level of expert-like performance has
been shown to be closely linked to the duration of deliberate practice.
Thousands of hours of deliberate practice are typically required to
reach an elite level of performance.
This research has a number of important implications for STEM
education. First, it means that learning is inherently difficult, so
that motivation plays a large role. To succeed, the learner must be
convinced of the value of the goal and believe that hard work, not
innate talent, is critical. Second, activities that do not demand
substantial focus and effort provide little educational value.
Listening passively to a lecture, doing many easy, repetitive tasks, or
practicing irrelevant skills produce little learning. Third, although
there are distinct differences among learners, for the great majority
the amount of time spent in deliberate practice transcends any other
variables in determining learning outcomes.
Implications for teaching
From the learning perspective, effective teaching is that which
maximizes the learner's engagement in cognitive processes that are
necessary to develop expertise. As such, the characteristics of an
effective teacher are very analogous to those of a good athletic coach:
designing effective practice activities that break down and
collectively embody all the essential component skills, motivating the
learner to work hard on them, and providing effective feedback.
The effective STEM teacher must:
Understand expert thinking and design suitable practice
tasks.
Target student thinking and learning needs. Such tasks must
be appropriate to the level of the learner and be effective at
building on learners' current thinking to move them to higher
expertise. The teacher must be aware of and connect with the
prior thinking of the learner as well as have an understanding
of the cognitive difficulties posed by the material.
Motivate the student to put in the extensive effort that is
required for learning. This involves generating a sense of
self-efficacy and ownership of the learning; making the subject
interesting, relevant, and inspiring; developing a sense of
identity in the learner as a STEM expert; and other factors
that affect motivation. How to do this in practice is dependent
on the subject matter and the characteristics of the learner--
their prior experience, level of mastery, and individual and
sociocultural values.
Provide effective feedback that is timely and directly
addresses the student's thinking. This requires the teacher to
recognize the student's thought processes, be aware of the
typical cognitive challenges with the material, and prepare
particular questions, tasks, and examples to help the learner
overcome those challenges. Research has shown several effective
means of providing feedback, including short, focused lectures
if the student has been carefully prepared to learn from that
lecture.
Understand how learning works, and use that to guide all of
their activities. In addition to the research on learning
expertise, this includes other well-established principles
regarding how the human brain processes and remembers
information that are relevant to education, such as the
limitations of the brain's short-term memory and what processes
enhance long-term retention.
Although many of these instructional activities are easier to do
one on one, there are a variety of pedagogical techniques and simple
technologies that extend the capabilities of the teacher to provide
these elements of instruction to many students at once in a classroom,
often by productively using student-student interactions. Examples of
approaches that have demonstrated their effectiveness can be found in
recommended reading articles by Michelle Smith and by Louis Deslauriers
et al.
Effective STEM teaching is a specific learned expertise that
includes, and goes well beyond, STEM subject expertise. Developing such
teaching expertise should be the focus of STEM teacher training.
Teachers must have a deep mastery of the content so they know what
expert thinking is, but they also must have ``pedagogical content
knowledge.'' This is an understanding of how students learn the
particular content and the challenges and opportunities for
facilitation of learning at a topic-specific level.
This view of STEM teaching as optimizing the development of
expertise provides clearer and more detailed guidance than what is
currently available from the classroom research on effective teaching.
Most of the classroom research on effective teaching looks at K-12
classrooms and attempts to link student progress on standardized tests
with various teacher credentials, traits, or training. Although there
has been progress, it is limited because of the challenges of carrying
out educational research of this type. There are a large number of
uncontrolled variables in the K-12 school environment that affect
student learning, the standardized tests are often of questionable
validity for measuring learning, teacher credentials and training are
at best tenuous measures of their content mastery and pedagogical
content mastery, and the general level of these masteries is low in the
K-12 teacher population. The level of mastery is particularly low in
elementary-and middle-school teachers. All of these factors conspire to
make the signals small and easily masked by other variables.
At the college level, the number of uncontrolled variables is much
smaller, and as reviewed in the NRC report Discipline-Based Education
Research, it is much clearer that those teachers who practice pedagogy
that supports deliberate practice by the students show substantially
greater learning gains than are achieved with traditional lectures. For
example, the learning of concepts for all students is improved, with
typical increases of 50 to 100 percent, and the dropout and failure
rates are roughly halved.
Shortcomings of the current system
Typical K-16 STEM teaching contrasts starkly with what I have just
described as effective teaching. At the K-12 level, although there are
notable exceptions, the typical teacher starts out with a very weak
idea of what it means to think like a scientist or engineer. Very few
K-12 teachers, including many who were STEM majors, acquire sufficient
domain expertise in their preparation. Hence, the typical teacher
begins with very little capability to properly design the requisite
learning tasks. Furthermore, their lack of content mastery, combined
with a lack of pedagogical content knowledge, prevents them from
properly evaluating and guiding the students' thinking. Much of the
time, students in class are listening passively or practicing
procedures that neither have the desired cognitive elements nor require
the level of strenuousness that are important for learning.
Teachers at both the K-12 and undergraduate levels also have
limited knowledge of the learning process and what is known about how
the mind functions, resulting in common educational practices that are
clearly counter to what research shows is optimum, both for processing
and learning information in the classroom environment and for achieving
long-term retention. Another shortcoming of teaching at all levels is
the strong tendency to teach ``anti-creativity.' Students are taught
and tested on solving well-defined artificial problems posed by the
teacher, where the goal is to use the specific procedure the teacher
intended to produce the intended answer. This requires essentially the
opposite cognitive process from STEM creativity, which is primarily
recognizing the relevance of previously unappreciated relationships or
information to solve a problem in a novel way.
At the undergraduate level, STEM teachers generally have a high
degree of subject expertise. Unfortunately, this is not reflected in
the cognitive activities of the students in the classroom, which again
consist largely of listening, with very little cognitive processing
needed or possible. Students do homework and exam problems that
primarily involve practicing solution procedures, albeit complex and/or
mathematically sophisticated ones. However, the assigned problems
almost never explicitly require the sorts of cognitive tasks that are
the critical components of expertise described above. Instructors also
often suffer from ``expert blindness,' failing to recognize and make
explicit many mental processes that they have practiced so much that
they are automatic.
Another problem at the postsecondary level is the common belief
that effective teaching is only a matter of providing information to
the learner, with everything else being the responsibility of the
learners and/or their innate limitations. It is common to assume that
motivation, and even curiosity about a subject, are entirely the
responsibility of the student, even when the student does not yet know
much about the subject.
Failure of reform efforts
The perspective on learning that I have described also explains the
failure of many STEM reform efforts.
Belief in the importance of innate talent or other characteristics.
Schools have long focused educational resources on learners that have
been identified in some manner as exceptional. Although the research
shows that all brains learn expertise in fundamentally the same way,
that is not to say that all learners are the same. Many different
aspects affect the learning of a particular student. Previous learning
experiences and sociocultural background and values obviously play a
role. There is a large and contentious literature as to the relative
significance of innate ability/talent or the optimum learning style of
each individual, with many claims and fads supported by little or
questionable research.
Researchers have tried for decades to demonstrate that success is
largely determined by some innate traits and that by measuring those
traits with IQ tests or other means, one can preselect children who are
destined for greatness and then focus educational resources on them.
This field of research has been plagued by difficulties with selection
bias and the lack of adequate controls. Although there continues to be
some debate, the bulk of the research is now showing that, excepting
the lower tail of the distribution consisting of students with
pathologies, the predictive value of any such early tests of
intellectual capability is very limited. From an educational policy
point of view, the most important research result is that any
predictive value is small compared to the later effects of the amount
and quality of deliberate practice undertaken by the learner. That
predictive value is also small compared to the effects of the learners'
and teachers' beliefs about learning and the learners' intellectual
capabilities. Although early measurements of talent, or IQ, independent
of other factors have at best small correlation with later
accomplishment, simply labeling someone as talented or not has a much
larger correlation. It should be noted that in many schools students
who are classified as deficient by tests with very weak predictive
value are put into classrooms that provide much less deliberate
practice than the norm, whereas the opposite is true for students who
are classified as gifted. The subsequent difference in learning
outcomes for the two groups provides an apparent validation for what is
merely a self-fulfilling prophecy. Given these findings, human capital
is clearly maximized by assuming that, except for students with obvious
pathologies, every student is capable of great achievement in STEM and
should be provided with the educational experiences that will maximize
their learning.
The idea that for each individual there is a unique learning style
is surprisingly widespread given the lack of supporting evidence for
this claim, and in fact significant evidence showing the contrary, as
reviewed by Hal Pashler of the University of California at San Diego
and others.
Because of the presence of many different factors that influence a
student's success in STEM, including the mind's natural tendency to
learn, some students do succeed in spite of the many deficiencies in
the educational system. Most notably, parents can play a major role in
both early cognitive development and STEM interest, which are major
contributors to later success. However, optimizing the teaching as I
described would allow success for a much larger fraction of the
population, as well as allowing those students who are successful in
the current system to do even better.
Poor standards and accountability. Standards have had a major role
in education reform efforts, but they are very much a double-edged
sword. Although good definitions and assessments of the desired
learning are essential, bad definitions are very harmful. There are
tremendous pitfalls in developing good, widely used standards and
assessments. The old concept of learning, combined with expert
blindness and individual biases, exerts a constant pressure on
standards to devolve into a list of facts covering everyone's areas of
interest, with little connection to the essential elements of
expertise. The shortcomings in the standards are then reinforced by the
large-scale assessment systems, because measuring a student's knowledge
of memorized facts and simple procedures is much cheaper and easier
than authentic measurements of expertise. So although good standards
and good assessment must be at the core of any serious STEM education
improvement effort, poor standards and poor assessments can have very
negative consequences. The recent National Academy of Sciences-led
effort on new science standards, starting with a carefully thought-out
guiding framework, is an excellent start, but this must avoid all the
pitfalls as it is carried through to large-scale assessments of student
mastery. Finally, good standards and assessments will never by
themselves result in substantial improvement in STEM education, because
they are only one of several essential components to achieving
learning.
Competitions and other informal science programs: Attempting to
separate the inspiration from the learning. Motivation in its entirety,
including the elements of inspiration, is such fundamental requirement
for learning that any approach that separates it from any aspect the
learning process is doomed to be ineffective. Unfortunately, a large
number of government and private programs that support the many science
and engineering competitions and out-of-school programs assume that
they are separable. The assumption of such programs is that by
inspiring children through competitions or other enrichment
experiences, they will then thrive in formal school experiences that
provide little motivation or inspiration and still go on to achieve
STEM success. Given the questionable assumptions about the learning
process that underlie these programs, we should not be surprised that
there is little evidence that such programs ultimately succeed, and
some limited evidence to the contrary. The past 20 years have seen an
explosion in the number of participants in engineering-oriented
competitions such as First Robotics and others, while the fraction of
the population getting college degrees in engineering has remained
constant. A study by Rena Subotnik and colleagues that tracked high-
school Westinghouse (now Intel) talent search winners, an
extraordinarily elite group already deeply immersed in science, found
that a substantial fraction, including nearly half of the women, had
switched out of science within a few years, largely because of their
experiences in the formal education system. It is not that such
enrichment experiences are bad, just that they are inherently limited
in their effectiveness. Programs that introduce these motivational
elements as an integral part of every aspect of the STEM learning
process, particularly in formal schooling, would probably be more
effective.
Silver-bullet solutions. A number of prominent scientists,
beginning as far back as the Sputnik era, have introduced new curricula
based on their understanding of the subject. The implicit assumption of
such efforts is that someone with a high level of subject expertise can
simply explain to novices how an expert thinks about the subject, and
the novices (either students or K-12 teachers) will then embrace and
use that way of thinking and be experts themselves. This assumption is
strongly contradicted by the research on expertise and learning, and so
the failure of such efforts is no surprise.
A number of elements such as school organization, teacher salaries,
working conditions, and others have been put forth as the element that,
if changed, will fix STEM education. Although some of these may well be
a piece of a comprehensive reform, they are not particularly STEM-
specific and by themselves will do little to address the basic
shortcomings in STEM teaching and learning.
The conceptual flaws of STEM teacher in-service professional
development. The Federal government spends a few hundred million
dollars each year on in-service teacher professional development in
STEM, with states and private sources providing additional funding.
Suzanne Wilson's review of the effectiveness of such professional
development activities finds evidence of little success and identifies
structural factors that inhibit effectiveness. From the perspective of
learning expertise, it is clear why teacher professional development is
fundamentally ineffective and expensive. If these teachers failed to
master the STEM content as full-time students in high school and
college, it is unrealistic to think they will now achieve that mastery
as employees through some intermittent, part-time, usually voluntary
activity on top of their primary job.
Why change is hard
First, nearly everyone who has gone to school perceives himself or
herself to be an expert on education, resulting in a tendency to seize
on solutions that overlook the complexities of the education system and
how the brain learns. Second, there are long-neglected structural
elements and incentives within the higher education system that
actively inhibit the adoption of better teaching methods and the better
training of teachers. These deserve special attention.
Improving undergraduate STEM teaching to produce better-educated
graduates and better-trained future K-12 teachers is a necessary first
step in any serious effort to improve STEM education, but there are
several barriers to accomplishing this. First, the tens of billions of
dollars of federal research funding going to academic institutions,
combined with no accountability for educational outcomes at the levels
of the department or the individual faculty member, have shaped the
university incentive system to focus almost entirely on research. Thus,
STEM departments and individual faculty members, regardless of their
personal inclinations, are forced to prioritize their time accordingly,
with the adoption of better teaching practices, improved student
outcomes, and contributing to the training of future K-12 STEM teachers
ranking very low. Second, to the limited extent that there are data,
STEM instructional practices appear to be similarly poor across the
range of post-secondary institutions. This is probably because the
research-intensive universities produce most of the Ph.D.s, who become
the faculty at all types of institutions, and so the educational values
and standards of the research-intensive universities have become
pervasive. Third, with a few exceptions, the individual academic
departments retain nearly absolute control over what they teach and how
they teach. Deans, provosts, and especially presidents have almost no
authority over, or even knowledge of, educational practices in use by
the faculty. Any successful effort to change undergraduate STEM
teaching must change the incentives and accountability at the level of
the academic department and the individual faculty member in the
research-intensive universities.
A possible option would be to make a department's eligibility to
receive Federal STEM research funds contingent on the reporting and
publication of undergraduate teaching practices and student outcomes. A
standard reporting format would make it possible to compare the extent
to which departments and institutions employ best practices.
Prospective students could then make more-informed decisions about
which institution and department would provide them with the best
education.
Most K-12 teacher preparation programs have a local focus, and they
make money for the institutions of which they are a part. There is no
accepted professional standard for teacher training, and there is a
financial incentive for institutions to accept and graduate as many
education majors as possible. This has resulted in low standards,
particularly in math and science, with teacher education programs
frequently having the lowest math and science requirements of any major
at the institution. This also means that they attract students with the
greatest antipathy toward math and science. Research by my colleagues
has found that elementary education majors have far more novice-like
attitudes about physics than do students in any other major at the
university. Federal programs to support the training of K-12 STEM
teachers provide easily available scholarship money, which reinforces
the status quo by ensuring a plentiful supply of students in spite of
the programs' low quality. Rewarding institutions that produce
graduates with the expertise needed to be highly effective teachers is
an essential step in bringing about the massive change that is needed
in the preparation of STEM teachers.
Focusing on STEM learning and how it is achieved provides a
valuable perspective for understanding the shortcomings of the
educational system and how it can be improved. It clarifies why the
current system is producing poor results and explains why current and
past efforts to improve the situation have had little effect. However,
it also offers hope. Improvement is contingent on changes in the
incentive system in higher education to bring about the widespread
adoption of STEM teaching methods and the training of K-12 teachers
that embody what research has shown is important for effective
learning. These tasks are admittedly challenging, but the results would
be dramatic. The United States would go from being a laggard in STEM
education to the world leader.
Recommended reading
S. Ambrose, M. Bridges, M. DiPietro, M. Lovett, and M. Norman, How
Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching (San
Francisco, CA: J. Wiley and Sons, 2010).
J. Bransford, A. Brown, and R. Cocking, eds., How People Learn;
Brain, Mind, Experience, and School (expanded edition) (Washington, DC:
National Academies Press, 2000).
G. Colvin, Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class
Performers from Everybody Else (New York: Penguin Books, 2008).
L. Deslauriers, E. Schelew, and C. Wieman; ``Improved Learning in a
Large-Enrollment Physics Class,'' Science 332, no. 6031 (2011): 862-
864; and particularly the supporting online material.
R. Duschl, H. Schweingruber, and A. Shouse, eds., Taking Science to
School; Learning and Teaching Science in Grades K-8 (Washington, DC:
National Academies Press, 2007).
C. Dweck, Self-Theories: Their Role in Motivation, Personality, and
Development (Philadelphia, PS: Taylor and Francis, 2000).
K. A. Ericsson, N. Charness, P. Feltovich, and R. Hoffman, eds.,
The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance (Cambridge:
Cambridge Univ. Press, 2006),
H. Pashler, M. McDaniel, D. Rohrer, and R. Bjork, ``Learning
Styles: Concepts and Evidence,'' Psychological Science in the Public
Interest 9 (2009): 105.
S. Singer, N. Nielsen, and H. Schweingruber, eds., Understanding
and Improving Learning in Undergraduate Science and Engineering
(Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2012).
M. Smith, ``A Fishy Way to Discuss Multiple Genes Affecting the
Same Trait,'' PLoS Biology 10, no 3 (2012): e1001279. doi:10.1371/
journal.pbio.1001279.
Carl Wieman ([email protected]), professor of physics and
director of science education initiatives at the University of Colorado
and the University of British Columbia, served as the associate
director for science in the White House Office of Science and
Technology Policy from Sept 2010 to June 2012. He received the Nobel
Prize in Physics in 2001.
The Chairman. Thank you, sir.
You are all being too succinct.
Dr. Jeffrey Furman.
STATEMENT OF JEFFREY L. FURMAN, Ph.D.,
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF STRATEGY AND INNOVATION,
BOSTON UNIVERSITY; AND RESEARCH ASSOCIATE,
NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
Dr. Furman. Good afternoon, Chairman, Ranking Member,
members of the Committee. It is an honor for me to be here
today. This is the first time that I have testified before
Congress. I am Jeff Furman, Associate Professor of Strategy and
Innovation at Boston University and Research Associate at the
National Bureau of Economic Research.
I have understood my invitation today as relating to two
issues about which I have some expertise. First, I believe I
have been asked to talk a little about the overall drivers of
country-level scientific and innovative output, and the role of
the Federal Government in supporting science and innovation.
Second, I understand that I was invited to talk a little bit
about the 5-year history of the America COMPETES legislation. I
am one of a number of economists studying innovation who has
worked in a modest amount of detail on these issues, although I
suspect that members of the Committee are more knowledgeable
about the COMPETES legislation than academics who study
innovation.
With regard to the first substantive issue, country-level
science and innovation, the first question I would like to
address is what is the argument for Federal investment in
science and technology?
It is a relatively standard question that was addressed
famously by Vannevar Bush in a letter to President Roosevelt at
the close of World War II. Bush's argument was that science and
innovation, particularly early stage innovation, are public
goods, and that much like national defense, firms do not have
the incentives to provide these types of investments because
firms will be unable to capture the complete set of returns
associated with those investments. As a consequence, there is a
very strong argument for governments stepping in to help the
private sector in supporting science and early stage
innovation, as these would otherwise not receive the socially
optimal level of investments.
The idea that the private sector will underinvest in
innovation is somewhat like free trade, an idea on which
economists are in general agreement. There are some differences
in points of view, but the idea that science and early stage
innovation as a public good is something on which most
economists agree.
That said, there is a different question which relates to
whether science and innovation leadership is essential. An
alternative is, rather than having the United States be the
world leader in science and innovation, we could ask other
countries to make those leading investments and then simply
imitate what they have done. The evidence does not suggest that
this is a particularly ideal strategy for leading in jobs or
leading in industries, although many countries have been
following this approach with some degree of success. Indeed, a
follower approach to science and innovation is often taken by
countries aiming to get closer to the global frontier.
There is not as much empirical evidence in large-scale
studies as an economist would ideally like to have on these
topics, but there are both a great deal of casual evidence that
scientific and innovation leadership provides benefits, as well
as many of the ideas that other panelists and Committee members
have cited today.
In work led by Scott Stern of MIT and Michael Porter of
Harvard and me, we have looked at what drives country-level
outcomes in innovation. One note is that our approach
implicitly addressed whether culture was a driver of national
leadership in science and innovation.
Our results are inconsistent with this hypothesis, as most
of the exciting developments in country-level innovation over
the past 25 years come from countries whose cultures have been
relatively consistent over the past 100, 200, or even 300
years. Indeed, the areas in which countries seem to have made
improvements that lead to outcomes is that they figure out ways
to continuously ratchet up their investments in innovation,
both at the Federal level and then also at the private level.
There is, unfortunately, no obvious magic bullet, other
than having consistent upgrading in science capabilities. This
is a little bit like the race of the red queen.
There is also a great deal of evidence that, at the
regional level, leadership has its benefits. Some of this
evidence is casual. We can look to Boston and San Francisco as
two areas with great scientific institutions that lead both in
science and then also in associated innovation. But, there is
increasing evidence in economics, including work by Naomi
Housman, who looks at the positive impact of the Bayh-Dole Act
on industries and local universities that have been positively
affected by the Bayh-Dole Act.
So, it appears as if investments in science and innovation
have a substantial impact on the local regions and countries in
which they are made. This suggests, to me at least, that
leadership in these areas going forward is, indeed, as many of
the folks in this room surmised, soundly based in evidence.
The second issue to which I should turn is an assessment of
the COMPETES legislation. To be precise, I do not think an
assessment is a very strong way to describe what economists
have been able to do so far in this particular area.
Typically economists are very good at direct assessments of
very specific individual programs. That is not possible with
the COMPETES legislation because there are so many programs
that are a part of it, and because it is very difficult to
assess the impact of authorization relative to specific funding
through appropriations.
I think the summary of what economists can say about the
COMPETES Act, is that there are some very clear and notable
achievements that arise directly from the legislation. These
include the creation of ARPA-E, changes in and expansion of the
National Institute of Standards and Technology, the ability for
data to become centralized to evaluate teaching outcomes, which
I believe John may be able to say a good deal about, the
creation of Federal prize authority and the expansion of the
Federal prize authority. One other achievement of the COMPETES
legislation is that it to have galvanized momentum within
Federal agencies to continuously emphasize science and
innovation outcomes.
That said, a full assessment of the COMPETES Act requires a
nuanced view of what we think might have occurred in the
absence of the Acts. If we compare relative to the hope of the
``Gathering Storm'' report, it appears that as if much has been
unrealized. Indeed, many of the programs, as the Chairman has
pointed out, have not been funded. But, as has also been
pointed out, a great deal has been achieved, simply by unifying
a bipartisan consensus around the idea that science and
innovation investments should receive Federal attention. And,
it is very difficult to assess what may have happened in
physical science research and engineering research in the
absence of the COMPETES legislation.
I think I would like to close on that note. It is difficult
for an academic to keep things to five minutes, but I hope I
have done so. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Furman follows:]
Prepared Statement of Jeffrey L. Furman, Ph.D., Associate Professor of
Strategy and Innovation, Boston University; and Research Associate,
National Bureau of Economic Research \1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ These comments heavily draw upon text the paper, ``The America
COMPETES Acts: The Future of U.S. Physical Science & Engineering
Research?'' forthcoming, forthcoming in, Josh Lerner & Scott Stern, ed,
Innovation Policy and the Economy Vol 13, Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press. The discussion of the America COMPETES legislation in
that paper draws heavily on reports written by the Congressional
Research Service.
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I. Introductory Remarks
Thank you very much for this invitation. It is an honor to testify
before this Committee and I am grateful for the invitation. A common
complaint about Washington is that there is gridlock in Congress. I,
however, have the great pleasure of conducting research on Science and
Innovation Policy, an issue for which there has been both wide-ranging,
bi-partisan support for the majority of the past century and a
tradition of national successes that demonstrate the contributions of
the public sector, private sector, and interactions between the two.
I will begin with a brief introduction of my background and
research. I am an Associate Professor of Strategy & Innovation at
Boston University and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of
Economic Research (NBER). I hold a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology in Strategy & International Management. My
official training is in management scholarship, although much of the
work that I do is based in economics and contributes to research in
that field.
My principal research interests have addressed three general
questions:
(1) What are the historical drivers of national innovative output?
Stated somewhat differently, this question asks, ``Why are
some countries more innovative than others and what have
historically follower nations, like Israel and South Korea,
done to close the gap in innovation between themselves and
historical leader countries, like Germany, Japan, and the
United States? \2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ See, e.g., J.L. Furman (2011) ``The Economics of Science and
Technology Leadership,'' Leadership in Science and Technology: A
Reference Handbook, William Sims Bainbridge, Editor, Sage Publications;
J.L. Furman and R. Hayes (2004) ``Catching up or standing still?
National innovative productivity among `follower' nations, 1978-1999,''
Research Policy; J.L. Furman, S. Stern, and M.E. Porter (2002), ``The
determinants of national innovative capacity,'' Research Policy; S.
Stern, M.E. Porter, and J.L. Furman (2000) ``Understanding the drivers
of national innovative capacity--Implications for Central European
economies,'' Wirtschaftspolitische Blatter; M.E. Porter, S. Stern, and
J.L. Furman (2000) ``Los Factores Impulsores de la Capacidad Innovadora
Nacional: Implicaciones para Espana y America Latina'' Claves de la
Economia Mundial.
(2) What is the role of location in the R&D productivity of
science-based firms? For example, in this research line, I
have investigated whether pharmaceutical companies' drug
discovery efforts are, indeed, more productive when they
are located in high-science areas, like Boston,
Philadelphia, and San Diego.\3\
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\3\ See, e.g., J.L. Furman and Megan MacGarvie (2009)
``Organizational Innovation & Academic Collaboration: The role of
universities in the emergence of U.S. Pharmaceutical research
laboratories,'' Industry & Corporate Change; J.L. Furman & M. MacGarvie
(2008) ``When the pill peddlers met the scientists: The antecedents and
implications of early collaborations between U.S. pharmaceutical firms
and universities,'' Essays in Economic & Business History; J.L. Furman
& M. MacGarvie (2007) ``Academic science and early industrial research
labs in the pharmaceutical industry,'' Journal of Economic Behavior &
Organization; and J.L. Furman, M. Kyle, I. Cockburn, & R. Henderson
(2005) ``Public & Private Spillovers, Location, and the Productivity of
Pharmaceutical Research,'' Annales d'Economie et de Statistique.
(3) How do particular institutions and public policies affect
science and innovation output? For example, I have
investigated (a) the impact of the U.S. human embryonic
stem cell policy on national leadership in this research
area; (b) the contribution of Biological Resource Centers,
like the American Type Culture Collection in nearby
Manassas, VA, to the rate of knowledge accumulation, and
(c) the ability of the system of academic retractions to
limit the negative impact of false publications. I should
note that this last line of research has been supported by
a grant from the National Science Foundation's Science of
Science and Innovation Policy program and that it has been
my most recent line of work.\4\
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\4\ J.L. Furman, F. Murray, & S. Stern (2012) ``Growing Stem Cells:
The Impact of U.S. Policy on the Organization of Scientific Research,''
Journal of Policy Analysis & Management; J. Furman, K. Jensen, & F.
Murray (2012) ``Governing knowledge production in the scientific
community: Quantifying the impact of retractions,'' Research Policy;
J.L. Furman & S. Stern (2011) ``Climbing atop the shoulders of giants:
The impact of institutions on cumulative research,'' American Economic
Review; J.L. Furman, F. Murray, & S. Stern (2010) ``More for the
research dollar,'' Nature; S. Stern & J.L. Furman (2004) ``A penny for
your quotes?: The impact of biological resource centers on life
sciences research,'' in Biological Resource Centers: Knowledge Hubs for
the Life Sciences, ed. S. Stern, Washington, D.C.: Brookings
Institution Press.
In each of these projects, I should recognize the contributions of
my co-authors, most notably, Fiona Murray and Scott Stern of MIT's
Sloan School and Megan MacGarvie, my colleague at Boston University.
My understanding of my invitation today is that my charge is to
talk about two main issues: (a) the Federal role in Science and
Innovation Policy and (b) America COMPETES Act. I address these issues
in turn.
II. The Federal Role in Science & Innovation Policy
II.1. History & the general argument for Federal support for science &
innovation
Although the aim of ``promot[ing] the progress of science and
useful arts'' was articulated in the U.S. Constitution as a power of
Congress, this power was expressly linked to providing incentives to
authors and inventors.\5\ Consistent with the specificity of these
aims, the U.S. Federal Government administered the patent system but
did not engage in much centralized policy-making regarding science and
technology during its first century.\6\ During and following the Civil
War, the Federal government began to expand its role in promoting
science and technology by developing some key institutions, including
the development of research-oriented universities under the Morrill
Acts of 1862 and 1890, the Hatch Act of 1887, the National Academy of
Sciences (NAS). The second major wave of Federal science-and
technology-related investments began during the first two decades of
the 20th century and accelerated during World War I. This effort
included the establishment of the National Bureau of Standards (1901),
the Public Health Service (1912), and the National Advisory Committee
for Aeronautics (1915), the Naval Consulting Board (1915), and the
National Research Council (1916).
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\5\ U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8, Clauses 1 & 8: ``The
Congress shall have Power . . . To promote the Progress of Science and
useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the
exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.'' Clause
1 precedes the ellipsis; Clause 8 follows the ellipsis.
\6\ The Federal Government did engage support some efforts related
to science and technology, however. For example, Federal support for
the exploration of Lewis and Clark yielded numerous contributions to
scientific knowledge, including contributions to natural history
(including discoveries of new plants and animals), meteorology, and
cartography (Ambrose, Stephen E. (1996) Undaunted Courage: Meriwether
Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West, (1996)
New York, NY: Simon & Schuster; Cutright, Paul Russell (1969) Lewis &
Clark: Pioneering Naturalists, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois
Press).
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The argument for active government participation in funding and
guiding basic scientific research was made famously by Vannevar Bush,
Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development under
Franklin Delano Roosevelt during World War II, in his monograph,
Science: The Endless Frontier.\7\ Bush argued both that the scientific
enterprise was a key to economic growth and improvements in social
welfare.\8\ His logic for suggesting Federal support for science
funding was straightforward and reflected an understanding of positive
externalities: Since investments in basic scientific research
invariably diffuse to other organizations in way that limits the
ability of for-profit firms to capture sufficient returns from such
investments, society overall faces higher incentives to invest in basic
research than do for-profit firms. Thus, basic research can be usefully
classified as a public good and, in the absence of government support,
the private sector will provide an inefficiently low investment in
science and risky innovation. Bush argued that government should step
into the void and assume an active role in supporting scientific
research. Bush's vision resulted in the creation of the National
Science Foundation in 1950 and has constituted the rationale for
government investment in basic science since that time.\9\ The
arguments have taken on an additional salience during the debates on
national competitiveness that surfaced during the 1980s, when American
economic preeminence in several industries, including automobiles and
consumer electronics, faced challenges from imports from numerous
countries, including Germany and Japan, and during the 2000s, in light
of the substantial economic development of several countries that had
been historically imitation oriented than innovation-driven, including
South Korea, China, and India.
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\7\ Bush, Vannevar (1945) ``Science The Endless Frontier,'' A
Report to the President by Vannevar Bush, Director of the Office of
Scientific Research and Development, Washington, D.C.: United States
Government Printing Office.
\8\ ``Advances in science when put to practical use mean more jobs,
higher wages, shorter hours, more abundant crops, more leisure for
recreation, for study, for learning how to live without the deadening
drudgery which has been the burden of the common man for ages past.
Advances in science will also bring higher standards of living, will
lead to the prevention or cure of diseases, will promote conservation
of our limited national resources, and will assure means of defense
against aggression'' (Bush, 1945, p. 10).
\9\ Building on Bush's ideas, economists beginning with Nelson
(1959) and Arrow (1962) described as a public, non-rivalrous, non-
excludable good which creates higher social welfare than private
benefits. Considering the central role of scientific and technical
knowledge play a central role in economic growth and social welfare
(Solow, 1956; Abramovitz, 1956), the fact that scientific knowledge
evidences the properties of a public good suggest that the creation and
accretion of knowledge should be central goals for national
policymakers.
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II.2. National leadership and the role of location
The argument that science and early-stage innovation are public
goods requiring government support to achieve optimal levels is
especially compelling in a world in which there is only one country or
in which one country is the clear leader in science and technology, as
the U.S. was during the years following World War II, or in which there
is no trade between countries. In such a scenario, if the unchallenged
leader country (or the global science investment body) were to curtail
investments in science and technology or were to slow the rate at which
it built on prior research advances, global technological improvements
would stagnate, as would global economic growth.\10\
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\10\ See Jones, Charles I. (1995) ``R&D Based Models of Economic
Growth,'' Journal of Political Economy, 103: 739-784.
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If a number of countries have relatively similar levels of
scientific development, national decisions regarding scientific
investment become more interrelated. This complicates matters, as one
country's optimal investment decisions will depend on the investments
of other nations and on the rapidity and completeness with which
knowledge diffuses. If scientific and technical knowledge diffuses
slowly and incompletely (or if it is particularly expensive for non-
innovator countries to imitate leader countries, i.e., if catch-up is
slow), then a leader country is likely to obtain high returns to its
investments in science. If, however, scientific and technical knowledge
diffuses sufficiently swiftly and effectively, then there may not be a
substantial benefit to being a leader country, as fast-follower
countries can free ride on the investments of leaders.
Thus, unless it is the unchallenged global technological leader, it
will only be valuable for a country to pursue a strategy of scientific
and technical leadership in the presence of relatively strong
increasing returns to science and technology investment and relatively
local knowledge diffusion. Stated somewhat differently, in order for
locally-generated knowledge to be translated into scientific and/or
technical leadership, researchers in close proximity to an original
discovery must be able to exploit that discovery more rapidly,
intensively, and, ultimately, successfully, than researchers who are
further away.\11\
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\11\ Furman, Jeffrey L. (2011) ``The Economics of Science and
Technology Leadership,'' Leadership in Science and Technology: A
Reference Handbook, William Sims Bainbridge, Editor, Sage Publications,
Chapter 3.
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Despite improvements in information technology that have lowered
the communication costs and made it easier to spread information, the
often-anticipated ``death of distance'' has failed to materialize.
Indeed, proclamations that the world is flat (Friedman, 2005) overlook
the importance of local knowledge spillovers, which are quite strong,
even in science, one of the areas in which ideas are most likely to
flow most effectively.\12\ While transportation costs have declined for
physical goods and cost of direct communication has also declined,
empirical evidence suggests value of proximity has increased in most
industries and most sectors as well. Research suggests that investments
in science and technology at the world's frontier yield spillovers that
are constrained to geographically proximate regions (Jaffe,
Trajtenberg, & Henderson, 1993) and that even small barriers to
diffusion can explain large differences in productivity levels among
the most advanced nations (Eaton & Kortum, 1999).\13\ Thus, there are
at least some reasons to believe that investments in scientific and
technical leadership may yield high rates of return than investments
encouraging fast-follower approaches. Within the United States, those
regions that have been historically knowledge-intensive have
experienced greater economic success, even as the information economy
has developed further (Glaeser and Ponzetto, 2010).\14\ As well, there
is also evidence that U.S. Federal science and innovation policies,
including the Bayh-Dole Act have both a local and national impact on
economic outcomes, such as patenting and job creation (Hausman, 2012;
Saha & Weinberg, 2011).\15\
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\12\ Friedman, Thomas L. (2007) The World is Flat: A Brief History
of the Twenty-first Century. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
\13\ Adam Jaffe, Manuel Trajtenberg, Rebecca M. Henderson (1993)
``Geographic localization of knowledge spillovers as evidenced by
patent citation,'' Quarterly Journal of Economics, 79(3): 577-598 and
Eaton, Jonathan and Samuel Kortum, ``Trade in ideas patenting and
productivity in the OECD,'' Journal of International Economics, 40(3-
4), 251-278.
\14\ Edward L. Glaeser, Giacomo A. M. Ponzetto. (2010) ``Did the
Death of Distance Hurt Detroit and Help New York?'' in Edward L.
Glaeser, editor, Agglomeration Economics, Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press.
\15\ Naomi Hausman (2011) ``University Innovation, Local Economic
Growth, and Entrepreneurship,'' working paper; Saha, Subra B. and Bruce
A. Weinberg (2011) ``A Framework for Quantifying the Economic
Spillovers from Government Activity Applied to Science,'' working
paper.
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More broadly, research suggests that those countries and geographic
regions that have invested most heavily in scientific and technological
infrastructure and adopt innovation-oriented policies have
substantially improved their science bases and innovative capacity
(Furman and Hayes, 2004).\16\ The evidence suggests, though, that while
many leader countries have continued to make science and technology
investments at increasing rates, a number of former follower countries
have increased their commitments to innovation at even greater rates.
This has contributed to the globalization of science and technology and
has contributed to the erosion of the gap between the leader and
emerging innovator countries. Concerns about American competitiveness
in the wake of such advances by other countries were among the factors
prompting the Gathering Storm Report, the Bush Administration's
American Competitiveness Initiative, and the America COMPETES Act. I
turn to the lattermost of these in my next comments.
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\16\ Furman, Jeffrey L. and Richard Hayes (2004) ``Catching up or
standing still: Catching up or standing still? National innovative
productivity among `follower' countries, 1978-1999,'' Research Policy,
33, 1329-1354.
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III. The America COMPETES legislation
III.1. Introductory comments
My expertise with the America COMPETES legislation is of a
particular kind: I prepared an overview of the legislation's history,
components, and funding for a workshop of the National Bureau of
Economic Research. The paper had two purposes: (1) to provide an
overview of the COMPETES legislation for academic economists who were
broadly aware of the legislation but not familiar with its particulars
and (2) to lay the groundwork for future projects to assess its impact
and effectiveness. I believe that I was relatively successful in the
former task, thanks principally to my ability to build on the work of
the Congressional Research Service, but the latter task is especially
challenging. Economics has made extraordinary progress over the past
couple of decades in ``program evaluation,'' i.e., evaluating specific
public programs, such as job creation programs, and we are beginning to
make progress in evaluating science and innovation policy as well. The
field finds it much more difficult, however, to evaluate packages of
programs and broad-based changes in funding, such as those associated
with the COMPETES acts. Thus, I consider the research I have done on
the COMPETES legislation as the beginning rather than the end of
analysis on this subject and I believe that this is an area in which
economists and policymakers can find useful ground for interaction.
III.2. Overview of analysis
The America COMPETES legislation, including the initial America
COMPETES Act of 2007 (ACA 2007) and America COMPETES Reauthorization
Act of 2010 (ACA 2010), was one of the prominent bipartisan legislative
achievements of the past decade and was seen as having the potential to
be the most notable science and innovation policy initiative of the new
millennium.\17\ To date, however, limited systematic analysis of the
America COMPETES Acts has been undertaken.\18\ My analysis of the Act
has left me with two central impressions:
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\17\ See, for example, Broder, David (2007) ``Thankless
Bipartisanship,'' Washington Post, May 3, 2007, A18; Ensign, John
(2007) ``Why the America Competes Act is Vital,'' Innovation, 5(3);
National Governor's Association (2007) ``NGA Praises Congressional
Passage of the America COMPETES Act,'' press release, August 6, 2007,
http://www.nga.org/cms/home/news-room/news-releases/page_2007/col2-
content/main-content-list/title_nga-praises-congressional-passage-of-
the-america-competes-act.html accessed 15 June 2012; ASTRA (2007)
``Congress Passes, President Signs America COMPETES Act,'' Alliance for
Science & Technology Research In America: ASTRA Briefs, 6(6), 10-14;
and American Physical Society (2008) ``Supporters of America COMPETES
Bill Praise Its Passage, Urge Federal Funding,'' American Physical
Society--Capital Hill Quarterly, 3(1), 1.
\18\ The notable exception to this is the extensive work by the
Congressional Research Service, including the efforts of Deborah Stine
and Heather B. Gonzalez, who have written regular updates on COMPETES
Act policy issues and funding, and John F. Sargent, who has tracked
budgeting for COMPETES Act programs relative to historical trends.
Their work is cited throughout this paper and it forms the basis of
much of the chapter's analysis.
(1) The achievements of the legislation can be reasonably viewed as
substantial from the perspective of analyzing what may have
happened in the absence of the legislation. Key achievements
that were enabled by the Acts include important expansions to
the power of Federal agencies to implement innovation prize
programs, the creation of Advanced Research Projects Agency--
Energy (ARPA-E), funding for the National Institutes of
Standards and Technology (NIST), substantial funding for
programs at the National Science Foundation (NSF), the harder-
to-measure-enabling of agencies to implement programs
consistent with the spirit of the COMPETES Acts, and, perhaps
most importantly, the maintenance of a tenuous but consistent
bipartisan consensus to preserve the funding of physical
science and engineering programs even in the face of budgetary
difficulties of historical proportions. It is reasonable to
conclude that, absent the authorization of funding for science
and engineering programs called for by the COMPETES Acts, the
level of commitment to these areas would have waned over the
past half-decade that U.S. leadership in science and innovation
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
would have suffered as a consequence.
(2) Relative to the standards established by the COMPETES
legislation itself, much of the promise of the Acts is yet to
be realized. Perhaps the most salient observation about the ACA
to the external observer is that a substantial fraction of the
funds authorized by the 2007 and 2010 Acts was not appropriated
by Congress and that many of the specified programs have either
not materialized or have been created but at funding levels
much lower than their initial authorizations. This appears to
be particularly the case for STEM education funding. Table 1 of
my testimony reproduces a table from a 2009 Congressional
Research Service report identifying programs authorized for
funding under the 2007 Act that did and did not receive
appropriations between the 2007 Act and 2009.
In my understanding, the COMPETES legislation embraced a broad-
ranging series of goals. I will highlight six of these goals and give
my impressions of the extent to which progress has been made on these
issues. The issues include:
(a) the ``Doubling Path,'' i.e., the aim of doubling the funding for
Federal investment in the physical sciences and engineering
(b) ARPA-E, the establishment and implementation of the Advanced
Research Project Agency--Energy, built on the DARPA model
(c) Improvements in America's STEM education infrastructure
(d) Modification of programs at the National Institute of Standards
and Technology (NIST)
(e) Expansion of Federal Prize authority, which was a specific
initiative of the 2010 Reauthorization Act that was not
included in the 2007 Act
(f) Modifications to other Federal programs and clarification of
Federal science and innovation responsibilities
I address each of these issues in greater detail below.
III.3. The Doubling Path
One of the most prominent features of the COMPETES legislation was
the ``Doubling Path,'' the aim of doubling of Federal investment in the
physical sciences and engineering between relative to the 2006
baseline. The 2007 Act aimed to achieve this result by 2013, while the
2010 Act re-targeted for 2015. Figures 1 & 2 attached below reflect the
extent of funding under the COMPETES Act. Both are based in large
measure on the efforts of the Congressional Research Service. Figure 1
documents that realized levels of funding and the extent of funding
appropriated and authorized for the future have been systematically
revised downwards from the initial aims of the Gathering Storm Report,
the American Competitiveness Initiative, and the 2007 and 2010 Acts.
Indeed, the current rate of funding increase for physical sciences and
engineering is not appreciably greater than it was prior to the
COMPETES legislation.
Whether one views this as a success or not depends substantially on
the perspective that one takes: Federal investment in physical science
and engineering has not kept pace with the specifications of either
COMPETES Act; however, in contrast to many areas of the Federal budget,
funding for these areas has not declined. Thus, investment in these
areas is relative to other budget priorities is greater than it was
prior to the COMPETES legislation and is likely substantially greater
than it would have been in the absence of the 2007 and 2010
appropriations.
III.4. ARPA-E
The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) at the
Department of Energy was articulated by both COMPETES Acts, the
Gathering Storm Report, and the American Competitiveness Initiative.
The agency was created in the 2007, received $15 million in the FY 2009
budget, but did not receive substantial funding until the 2009 ARRA
appropriated $400 million, which enabled ARPA-E to begin to solicit
research proposals and fund research projects. ARPA-E's did not receive
appropriations in FY 2010, although it did receive nearly $180 million
in FY 2011 and an estimated $275 million in FY 2012. These funding
levels have enabled ARPA-E to award $521.7 million in grants to
approximately 180 awardees as of March 2012. The agency issued a call
for $150 million in additional proposals in March 2012.\19\ In addition
to its research funding, the Agency has held three Energy Innovation
Summits that showcase research by ARPA-E awardees, applicants, and
other contributors. Although the overall level of funding for ARPA-E
has not reached the levels envisioned by The Gathering Storm and is
substantially lower than the DARPA annual budget ($3.2 billion), ARPA-E
can be considered as an important outcome associated with the COMPETES
Acts, particularly in light of the fact that the total estimated annual
U.S. investment in energy-related R&D is approximately $5.1
billion.\20\ It is currently too early to assess the impact of ARPA-E
on energy innovation; however, studies like those conducted by Erica
Fuchs of the nature of DARPA research \21\ and could be insightful and
could set the stage for further evaluations of ARPA-E's performance.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\19\ ARPA-E (2012) ``ARPA-E issues open call for transformational
energy technologies,'' March 2, 2012, http://arpa-e.energy.gov/media/
news/tabid/83/vw/1/itemid/49/Default.aspx; accessed March 2012.
\20\ President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology
(2010) ``Report to the President on accelerating the pace of change in
energy technologies through an integrated Federal energy policy,''
November 10, 2010; http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/
microsites/ostp/pcast-energy-tech-report.pdf; accessed January 2012.
\21\ Erica R.H. Fuchs (2010) ``Rethinking the role of the state in
technology development: DARPA and the case for embedded network
governance,'' Research Policy, 39(9), 1133-1147.
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III.5 STEM Education
The aim of expanding and improving U.S. STEM education was another
of the signature initiatives of the 2007 and 2010 Acts. The legislation
embraced three particular aims: (a) increasing the number of STEM
teachers, particularly those of high quality and with exceptional
training, and improving the depth of existing teachers' in STEM areas;
(b) exposing a larger number of U.S. students to STEM education and
attracting more into post-secondary STEM education and STEM-linked
careers; and (c) improving investments in STEM education among women
and historically under-represented minorities, and high-need schools.
In this regard, the evidence is mixed. Some programs specified by the
COMPETES legislation did receive funding, although few received funding
at the levels authorized by either Act. For example, the Teachers for a
Competitive Tomorrow: Baccalaureate Degrees and Master's Degrees
programs, which were authorized by both COMPETES Acts, received annual
average funding of approximately $1 million, although each had been
authorized to receive more than $100 million in each fiscal year. Many
programs, including the Department of Energy's Experiential-Based
Learning Opportunities; Early Career Awards for Science, Engineering,
and Mathematics Researchers; Discovery Science and Engineering
Innovation Institutes; Protecting America's Competitive Edge (PACE)
Graduate Fellowship Program; and Distinguished Scientist Program, each
of which was authorized for between $10 million and $30 million in
funding in FY2010, did not receive appropriations.
My understanding is that the NSF, which is the agency with the
greatest responsibility for STEM education, has been able to support
some STEM initiatives, even as the STEM education programs authorized
by the COMPETES Acts have been winnowed and real (rather than nominal)
for education and training programs have declined from 2003 to 2011. In
particular, it appears as if the NSF has able to support postsecondary
student funding, through the Graduate Research Fellowship (GRF) and
Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT)
programs by increasing the fraction of funding derived from its
Research & Related Activities account.\22\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\22\ Gonzalez, Heather B. (2012) ``An Analysis of STEM Education
Funding at the NSF: Trends and Policy Discussion,'' Congressional
Research Service reports, 9 April 2012.
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Overall, however, it does not appear as if the COMPETES legislation
has substantially shifted investment in STEM education along the
dimensions of its three initially articulated goals. Again, however, it
does not appear as if STEM education, or associated outcomes, have
declined substantially during the COMPETES era and this, itself, may
constitute a substantial victory.
III.5. Modification of NIST programs
The modification of programs at the National Institute for
Standards and Technology (NIST) was another clearly articulated goal of
the COMPETES Act. While I was not able to conduct a rate-of-return
analysis on the changes, it appears as if substantial progress has been
made in funding and programs consistent with this aim. The Advanced
Technology Program was replaced with the Technology Innovation Program,
which was ultimately eliminated; the Hollings Manufacturing Extension
Partnership Programs have been extended; and funding for both NIST Core
Research and Facilities has been realized at levels not inconsistent
with those envisioned by the COMPETES legislation. It is noteworthy
that the levels of funding for NIST funding are orders of magnitude
below those of other agencies, including the Department of Energy and
the NSF.
III.6. Prizes
The 2010 COMPETES Reauthorization Act greatly enhanced the ability
of Federal agencies to reward progress in science and innovation with
prizes. Agencies may conduct prize contests of up to $50 million with
existing appropriations. The approval of prize authority has led to the
establishment of a clearinghouse for Federal prize programs,
www.challenge.gov, which posts prize descriptions, eligibility
conditions, submissions procedures, timelines, and rules. As of March
2012, www.challenge.gov hosted more than 150 prize challenges,
representing more than forty Federal agencies.\23\ One of the most
ambitious Federal prize efforts was an initiative sponsored by the
Department of Health and Human Services. Called the ``Investing in
Innovation'' (i2) initiative, the effort involved a novel $5 million
effort aimed at initiating innovations in Health Information
Technology. A number of Federal prize programs, most notably those
operated by NASA, have already become the subject of academic
study.\24\
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\23\ Office of Science and Technology Policy (2012)
``Implementation of Federal Prize Authority: Progress Report,''
Executive Office of the President, March 2012.
\24\ See, in particular, the work of Karim Lakhani and colleagues,
including Kevin J. Boudreau, Nicola Lacetera, & Karim Lakhani (2011)
``Incentives and Problem Uncertainty in Innovation Contests: An
Empirical Analysis,'' Management Science, 57(5), 843-863.
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The extent of Federal prize programs continues to grow and it is
too soon to measure the overall impact of such programs on innovation.
The current scope of prize funding is many orders of magnitude smaller
than Federal intramural research programs; however, it is possible that
success with Federal prizes may contribute to momentum for yet larger
attempts at inducements, such as those described by Kremer and
colleagues.\25\ More broadly, the opportunity for Federal agencies to
conduct innovation challenges affords greater latitude for
organizational innovation than existed in the past. It is possible that
the seeds sown by expanded Federal prize authority will redound in ways
that exceed the specific dollar value of prizes offered by Federal
agencies; at the moment, however, it is too soon to evaluate either
this possibility or the specific impact of Federal prize authority on
innovation.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\25\ Michael Kremer and Heidi Williams (2010) ``Incentivizing
innovation: Adding to the toolkit,'' in Josh Lerner and Scott Stern,
eds., Innovation Policy and the Economy, Volume 10, University of
Chicago Press, 1-17.
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III.7. Additional aims
In addition to the objectives I address above, the COMPETES
legislation also addressed additional aims, including the support of
high-risk, high-rewards projects within each executive agency; and
greater coordination of Federal science and technology investments. I
speak to progress on some of these dimensions in my working paper on
the Act, but regret a lack of time to discuss these in greater detail
during testimony today.
IV. Concluding Remarks
I would like to address three areas in my concluding remarks.
First, I would like to provide a quick summary of my attempt to
understand the impact of the COMPETES legislation. My impression is the
COMPETES Acts have led to a number of truly significant achievements.
These include the development of ARPA-E, which seems like it is off to
an effective start, the enhancement of Federal prize authority, the
energizing of Federal agencies around S&E objectives, and, perhaps most
importantly in the long-term, the reaffirmation and codification of
bipartisan support for physical science and engineering investment. The
Acts also appear to have resulted in a substantial positive impact on
Federal investments in S&E relative to what might have occurred in the
absence of these Acts. That said, it is important to recognize that the
level of S&E funding has not kept pace with the authorizations of
either Act and that a number of the objectives of the Acts, most
notably those related to STEM education, have been omitted from
appropriations throughout the half-decade since the initial Act.
A second issue that I would love to address is the question, ``What
is the optimal level of funding for S&E?'' While the consensus in
economics is that the rate of return to additional Federal investment
is still high, unfortunately, it does not appear to me that there is a
consensus in economics about the number or fraction of GDP that
identifies the optimal level of investment. There is consensus that
leadership in science and innovation continues to reap rewards in terms
of jobs, productivity, and living standards, even as the world becomes
increasingly connected and information flows ever faster across
borders. In the spirit of the glass-half-full, I can say that science
and innovation policy studies are developing more rapidly than in the
past and, although labor studies and other areas of economics have a
longer history of policy evaluation, this area of economics is making
strides and we should be able to provide more guidance to policy in the
future than we have in the past.
The final issue I would like to address regards ideas for what may
be done in an era of limited budgets to improve S&E competitiveness.
From the standpoint of my profession, this is a bit reckless as I do
not link each suggestion directly to a specific study; however, I
believe that the ideas have a solid basis in prior research. One issue
around which there is consensus in economics is that leadership in the
human capital race is important for overall science and engineering
leadership. Supporting the ability of universities to attract the
world's best, brightest, and most motivated students and then enabling
those individuals to remain in the United States, to continue their
contributions to science and innovation, and to encourage those
individuals to develop growing businesses is an idea around which there
is substantial consensus among economists who study innovation. Two
other ideas for which there is general support are the initiatives to
support industry commercialization of university-generated ideas,
potentially through subsidies or tax credits, and continued advocacy of
intellectual property abroad. Two additional ideas that I will risk are
that it would be helpful for Congressional acts and Federal initiatives
to be formulated with an eye towards enabling program evaluation and
rate of return calculations and the idea that development of scientific
and innovation capabilities abroad does raise all sails, both by
contributing to the increasingly rapid pace of technological
development and by improving the capabilities of American universities
and firms via competition. Science and innovation are not a zero-sum
game. Improvements in scientific and innovative capabilities abroad
augur well for American consumers and for American firms seeking less-
expensive, more valuable intermediate goods. However, the evidence does
suggest that the greatest rewards in terms of jobs, productivity
advantages, and social welfare (or lifestyle) do accrue to those
geographic regions with leadership in scientific and technical
capabilities.
Table 1--Overview of FY 2009 Funding Authorizations for 2007 America
COMPETES Act Programs
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Funding includes both FY 2009 Omnibus Appropriations Act and American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Programs Presumably Not Funded in Programs Funded at Authorized
FY 2009 Levels in FY 2009
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Department of Energy Department of Energy
Pilot Program of Grants to Office of Science
Specialty Schools for Science and National Science Foundation
Mathematics Research & Related
Experiential Based Activities
Learning Opportunities Major Research
Summer Institutes Instrumentation
National Energy Education Professional Science
Development Master's Degree Program
Nuclear Science Talent Robert Noyce Teacher
Expansion Program Scholarship Program
Hydrocarbon Systems Graduate Research
Science Talent Expansion Program Fellowship Program
Early Career Awards for Major Research Equipment
Science, Engineering, and and Facilities Construction
Mathematics Researchers NIST
Discovery Science and Scientific & Technical
Engineering Innovation Institutes Research and Services
Protecting America's Construction & Maintenance
Competitive Edge Graduate
Fellowship Program
Distinguished Scientist
Program
Department of Education
Advanced Placement &
International Baccalaureate
Program
Math Now
Summer Term Education
Program
Math Skills for Secondary
Skill Students
Advancing America Through
Foreign Language Partnership
Program
Mathematics and Science
Partnership Bonus Grants
National Science Foundation
Laboratory Science Pilot
Program
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Deborah D. Stine (2009) ``America COMPETES Act: Programs,
Funding, and Selected Issues,'' Congressional Research Service,
RL3428, April 17, 2009.
Figure 1. The ``Doubling Path'' in Research Funding for the Physical
Sciences
Figure tracks potential doubling of Federal funding for science and
technology, including funding for the NSF, DOE Office of Science, and
NIST Core Research and Construction relative to FY 2006 appropriations
levels.
Source for figure & notes below: John F. Sargent Jr. (2012)
``Federal Research and Development Funding: FY 2013,'' Congressional
Research Service report, R42410, 15 June 2012.
Notes: ``The 7-year doubling pace represents annual increases of
10.4 percent, the 10-year doubling pace represents annual increases of
7.2 percent, the 11-year doubling pace represents annual increases of
6.5 percent, the 15-year doubling represents annual increases of 4.7
percent, and the 20-year doubling represents annual increases of 3.3
percent. Through compounding, these rates achieve the doubling of
funding in the specified time period. The lines connecting aggregate
appropriations for the targeted accounts are for illustration purposes
only. With respect to ``Actual Appropriations,'' aggregate data for FY
2006-FY 2012 is based on regular appropriations (funding provided under
the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (P.L. 111-5) is not
included). America COMPETES Act figures are based on aggregate funding
for the target accounts as authorized by the act. America COMPETES
Reauthorization Act of 2010 figures for FY 2011-FY 2013 are based on
aggregate funding for the target accounts as authorized by the act''
(Sargent, 2012, p. 9).
Figure 2. Funding for ``Doubling Path'' accounts in millions of nominal
(current) dollars, FY 2002- 2013
FY 2002-FY 2011 (Actual), FY 2012 (Estimated), and FY 2013
(Request)
FY 2009 combines funding from FY 2009 and the American Reinvestment
and Recovery Act.
Notes: ``NIST--Core Research'' reflects funding for the ``NIST-
Scientific and Technical Research and Services'' (NIST-STRS) account.
Budget figures for this account and the ``NIST--Facilities'' account do
not include items appearing under the ``NIST--Industrial Technology
Services'' (NIST-ITS), which include programs such as the Advanced
Manufacturing Technology Consortium (AMT), Advanced Technology Program
(ATP), Technology Innovation Program (TIP), Baldridge Performance
Excellence Program (BPEP), and Hollings Manufacturing Extension
Partnership (MEP).
Source: FY 2002-FY 2005 data from NSF, DOE-Office of Science, and
NIST annual budget requests (websites listed below); FY 2006-FY 2013
data from John F. Sargent Jr. (2012) ``Federal Research and Development
Funding: FY 2013,'' Congressional Research Service report, R42410, 15
June 2012. NSF budget data from www.nsf.gov/about/budget/; DOE-OS data
from science.energy.gov/budget/; NIST budget data from www.nist.gov/
public_affairs/budget/. Budget data taken from reports in FY+2 (e.g.,
FY 2006 report used for FY 2004 budget data); JF verified that this
method yielded match with budget data reported by Sargent (2012).
The Chairman. You will not go to jail, you know.
Thank you, Dr. Furman.
Now, Dr. Peter Lee, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft
Research.
STATEMENT OF DR. PETER LEE, CORPORATE VICE PRESIDENT, MICROSOFT
RESEARCH
Dr. Lee. Thank you, Chairman, Ranking Member, members of
the Committee. Thank you for this opportunity. I am looking
forward to sharing perspectives on research and education in
the America COMPETES Act.
I have been pretty lucky. I have held leadership positions
in some great research organizations, at Carnegie Mellon
University, at DARPA, and now at Microsoft. This has allowed me
to see firsthand the rich interplay between industry, academia
and government, and how it creates an innovation ecosystem that
creates a steady stream of ideas, technologies and talent that
drives American competitiveness.
This innovation ecosystem, I do not think it came by
accident. It rose out of an intentional and profoundly
productive partnership between universities, industry and
government.
On the nature of this partnership, I refer you to a
recently released National Research Council report entitled
``Continuing Innovation in Information Technology.'' This
report illustrates, in fact, in the famous diagram referred to
as the ``tire tracks'' diagram, how fundamental research in IT
conducted in industry and universities over decades and
supported by Federal agencies has led to the introduction of
entirely new product categories that ultimately became the
basis of new multibillion dollar job-creating industries.
Just a partial list of these industries includes broadband
and mobile technologies, the Internet and the web, Cloud
computing, entertainment technologies, robotics and automation.
Now, while the U.S. has demonstrated time and again the
robustness of its IT innovation ecosystem, its current strength
is not a guaranteed right but the result of American vision and
sustained investment. The COMPETES Act is a key element of
this.
So, what should the Committee be aware of as it begins the
COMPETES reauthorization? I have two points to make.
The first is on the importance of investing in fundamental
research. The multibillion dollar industries I mentioned
earlier all rely on a pipeline of research advances enabled by
our past investments. For example, decades of basic research in
coding theory ultimately enabled today's smart phones,
streaming video and an array of communications technologies.
And, at Microsoft, our products and services today build on a
pipeline of research advances in areas such as machine
learning, distributed systems and computer graphics.
Looking forward, it is essential that we keep this pipeline
full, so as to create new opportunities to contribute to the
Nation's competitiveness. These include building on the ongoing
interagency initiatives in big data and in robotics to advance
transportation, energy, healthcare, and national security, as
well as transforming education through personalized and online
learning tools and systems.
Advances in basic research will also help us tackle grand
challenges facing our society. For example, we must continue to
focus on designing IT systems for security and robustness,
while also developing the research that underpins privacy
technologies and policies. Also important are advances in
networking and mobile computing to support technology and
policies around spectrum sharing for connecting people,
devices, sensors and the Cloud.
Now, my second point is about people and investing in the
future of people. Like all companies in innovation-based
industries, Microsoft actively seeks to hire people with the
skills and talent we need to be globally competitive. Yet, in
August 2012, Microsoft had more than 3,400 unfilled research
and engineering positions in the United States, a 34 percent
increase from a year ago. And demand is predicted to go up: the
Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that, through the year
2020, there will be on average at least 120,000 job openings
per year in computing professions that require at least a
bachelor's degree. Yet, in 2010, only half that number of
degrees were awarded in computer science in the United States.
It is not just people at IT companies or in IT jobs that
should have the opportunity to study computing. Understanding,
using and creating information technology matters for people
involved in research and education, in STEM jobs in industries
and governments, and in daily life.
Federal agencies should support efforts to expand computing
education, particularly at the K through 12 level. Going beyond
computing literacy, to an ability to think computationally,
will be a cornerstone for the future workforce.
In conclusion, I believe that Federal agencies, companies
and universities all play crucial roles in enabling American
competitiveness. The reauthorization of the America COMPETES
Act is an important element in providing Federal research
agencies with the resources and guidance they need to sustain
this innovation ecosystem.
Thank you for this opportunity to testify today and for
this Committee's longstanding support for scientific discovery
and innovation. I have additional information in my written
statement and would be pleased to answer questions. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Lee follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. Peter Lee, Corporate Vice President,
Microsoft Research
Chairman, Ranking Member, and Members of the Committee, my name is
Peter Lee, and I am a Corporate Vice President at Microsoft. Thank you
for the opportunity to share perspectives on research, education, and
the America COMPETES Act. I appreciate the time and attention the
Committee has devoted to this topic, and I commend you for advancing
the dialogue on innovation and competitiveness, including in
information technology.
Microsoft deeply believes that investment in research and education
lay the groundwork for advances that benefit society and enhance the
competitiveness of U.S. companies and individuals. In my testimony, I
will:
describe the profoundly productive interrelationships
between industry, academia, and government in the field of
information technology;
provide information and examples from our experiences and
activities at Microsoft;
mention some achievements that have occurred under the
America COMPETES Act; and
identify opportunities in computing research and education
for the Committee to consider going forward.
My testimony today is informed by my experiences in academia,
government, and industry. In the first area, I spent 22 years as a
professor at Carnegie Mellon University, including serving as the Head
of the Computer Science Department and as the Vice Provost for
Research. Between Carnegie Mellon and Microsoft, I served in the
Department of Defense at DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency. There, I founded and directed a technology office that
supported research and developed innovations designed to keep our
military at the leading edge in computing and related areas. Now, I
hold the title of Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Research, where I
am responsible for managing Microsoft Research Redmond, a laboratory of
over 300 researchers, engineers, and support personnel dedicated to
advancing the state of the art in computing and creating new
technologies for Microsoft's products and services.
We're In This Together
My experiences in industry, academia, and government have given me
a range of perspectives on the challenges and opportunities we face in
sustaining a strong innovation ecosystem that not only is first to
create new knowledge, but also is effective in deploying that knowledge
to improve our society and security and maintain American
competitiveness in the global economy. From the inside of some of our
nation's best research organizations, I have seen first-hand how the
rich interplay between industry, academia, and government produces a
continuous stream of technological and business innovations. In a
nutshell, our nation has been remarkably effective in supporting a
productive, interconnected ecosystem of people, ideas, projects, and
resources that today drive American competitiveness. The COMPETES Act
is a prime example of this support.
I will focus specifically on the field I know best, which is
information technology (IT). The commercial IT industry is a well-known
and well-appreciated success story of American innovation and
leadership. American ingenuity has turned advances in IT into an
incredible driver for global competitiveness and economic growth.
Today, IT contributes about 5 percent to overall U.S. GDP, according to
the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Yet the success was not solely the
outcome of visionary and very hard-working people at companies across
the U.S., such as Microsoft. Instead, it is the result of a tightly
interconnected ecosystem of people, ideas, projects, and resources from
government, academia, and industry.
The nature of this complex partnership is illustrated in the
recently released report Continuing Innovation in Information
Technology.\1\ (I chaired the National Research Council committee that
produced this study.) The centerpiece of that report is a diagram,
referred to as the ``tire tracks.'' (See Appendix A.) This diagram
illustrates how fundamental research in IT, conducted in industry and
universities over decades, and supported by Federal agencies, has led
to the introduction of entirely new product categories that ultimately
became the basis of new billion-dollar industries, including broadband
and mobile technologies; microprocessors; personal computing; the
Internet and the Web; cloud computing; enterprise systems;
entertainment technologies; and robotics. In all of these cases and
more, there is a complex interweaving of fundamental research and
focused development, with innovations in academia driving breakthroughs
in industry and vice versa; with ideas and technologies transitioning
among fields and applications, creating opportunities in both new
research and new products and markets.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Continuing Innovation in Information Technology; Committee on
Depicting Innovation in Information Technology; Computer Science and
Telecommunications Board; Division on Engineering and Physical
Sciences; National Research Council. http://
sites.nationalacademies.org/CSTB/CurrentProjects/CSTB_045476.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The three sectors of academia, government, and industry play
complementary roles in ensuring the health of the innovation ecosystem.
In particular, the study notes that ``the government role has coevolved
with the development of IT industries: its programs and investments
have focused on capabilities not ready for commercialization and on the
new needs that emerged as commercial capabilities grew.'' This evolving
role of Federal agencies, and the research communities they support and
nurture, is a critical complement to the activities of companies both
large and small. Large companies, on the whole, are driven to invest
more in product and process development, with clear connections to
existing products and markets and planned rewards that can be
demonstrated to shareholders in the near term. Start-up companies,
while more open to potential new areas and opportunities, are focused
on the implementations that make real the discoveries of past research,
not on conducting new investigations.
Without research agencies and universities to focus on the ever-
shifting frontiers of multiple computing sub-disciplines, to explore
connections across disciplines and products, and to expose each
generation of students to an array of future possibilities, companies
will not have the reservoir of ideas and talent to maintain the U.S.
lead in today's IT sector and build the next set of multi-billion
dollar job-creating industries.
The U.S. has demonstrated time and again that the three components
of the IT innovation ecosystem are each strong and the vital
connections among them are robust. Yet this situation is not a
guaranteed right. It is a result of sustained investment and a
nurturing environment. Other nations have looked at the U.S. successes
and are applying the lessons they have learned about how to invest in
research, to nurture a culture of original discoveries at universities,
and to deploy a legal and regulatory framework to encourage innovation.
India and China both have made significant progress and are likely to
benefit from having sizable internal markets for IT products. Other
nations, such as Ireland, Israel, Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and some
Scandinavian countries, are also developing strength in specific areas
within various IT sectors.\2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ Continuing Innovation in Information Technology, http://
sites.nationalacademies.org/CSTB/CurrentProjects/CSTB_045476, page 11.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Microsoft Research
Microsoft is a direct beneficiary of, and wholly committed to, its
role in the innovation ecosystem described above. This requires
significant investments by us in various elements of this ecosystem.
Across the company, more than $9 billion a year is directed toward
research and development (R&D), with the vast majority of those funds
supporting development activities focused on specific products. A
critical element, although small in dollar terms, of our overall R&D
investment is in more fundamental explorations at Microsoft Research
(MSR). Founded in 1991, MSR is now the largest and highest quality
industrial computing research organization in the world, with over 800
Ph.D.s working in more than 55 research areas. MSR is dedicated to
advancing the state of the art in computing, often in collaboration
with academic researchers and government agencies, and to creating new
technologies for Microsoft's products and services. This organization
and these people allow Microsoft to respond more rapidly to change and
provide a reservoir of technology, expertise and people that can be
quickly brought to bear to respond to and create new technologies, new
competitors, and new business models.
While MSR activities are distinct from the short-term development
activities conducted at Microsoft and other companies, distinctions
such as ``basic'' versus ``applied'' don't really apply to computing
research. In fact, computing research is a unique and intoxicating
blend of invention, discovery, and engineering. MSR researchers
collaborate with leading academic, government and industry colleagues
and often move in and out of universities and Microsoft business groups
as the type of activities they are engaged in shift in focus.
I like to say that within MSR we can see the incredible range of
possibilities in computing research come alive. A recent example is
Microsoft's Kinect, which allows you to control games by using your
body and voice. The real achievement here is the creation of a system
which recognizes people and their voices in a variety of environments,
tracks and responds to their body motions in real time, and can be
produced in bulk. The technology builds on decades of blue-sky and
disruptive research, conducted both in academia and in MSR, in a range
of areas including machine learning, image processing, audio
processing, and natural language processing.
The impact of Kinect is just one example of the connections and
synergies between industry and academia that are discussed in the
Continuing Innovation in Information Technology and illustrates how
information technology shifts and evolves from research to products
back to research. By providing a flexible and affordable system by
which visual and voice feeds can be processed and used by a computer,
Kinect is already transforming a variety of academic research projects
and applications in robotics, human-computer interaction, online
education, and more. In addition, the advances originally targeted at
the gaming and entertainment business are having multiplier effects
outside the IT sector as the technology is investigated for deployment
in retail (virtual car tours)\3\ and for healthcare applications (such
as autism or post-stroke physical therapy).\4\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ More information about how the Kinect is being used in other
commercial sectors is available at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/
kinectforwindows/.
\4\ More information about how the Kinect is being used in
healthcare, education, the arts, and other applications is available at
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/Kinect/Kinect-Effect.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Demand for STEM Knowledge
Microsoft and MSR actively rely on a vibrant and effective
education system within the national research environment to produce a
pipeline of diverse and highly qualified graduates. MSR supports a
variety of activities to strengthen this pipeline, including
fellowships for students and early career professors and programs to
increase the recruitment and retention of girls and women in computing.
A key element of our deep connection with the community is our annual
internship program. We bring over 1,800 student interns to Redmond each
year, with over 300 in Microsoft Research. The MSR interns participate
in cutting-edge research and also learn about how advances fit into the
context of a company that must continuously provide innovative products
to thrive. This experience helps prepare students for a variety of
career paths--as professors, as entrepreneurs, as industry researchers,
and some even as Microsoft employees.
A main reason that MSR, and Microsoft as a whole, devote
significant attention to our internship programs is that the success of
Microsoft is strongly dependent on the talent of our employees. We
aggressively seek out talented people who will help build our company
into one that is successful in improving our current products and
creating new ones as we participate in the rapid change that
characterizes our innovation-based economy. Yet in August 2012,
Microsoft had more than 3,400 unfilled research and engineering
positions in the United States, a 34 percent increase in our number of
unfilled positions compared to a year ago. And predictions suggest that
this situation could get worse. The Bureau of Labor Statistics
estimates that between 2010 and 2020, there will be at least 1.2
million job openings in computing professions that require at least a
bachelor's degree (on average 120,000 per year) and that in 2020 half
of the over 9 million STEM jobs will be in computing.\5\ Yet in 2010,
only about 60,000 bachelor's, master's, and Ph.D. degrees were awarded
in computer science \6\--far less than the predicted demand.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ This estimate is based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics'
occupational employment and job openings data, projected for 2010-2020,
http://www.bls.gov/emp/. Further analysis of the computing jobs
predictions are available from the Association of Computing Machinery,
http://cacm.acm.org/blogs/blog-cacm/147077-computer-science-jobs-and-
education-presentation-slides/fulltext.
\6\ From the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System from
the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education
Statistics, available at https://webcaspar.nsf.gov.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
As information technology permeates many aspects of our day-to-day
lives and becomes a critical element of sectors from manufacturing to
healthcare, from retail to education, other companies too will be
searching for the people with the core knowledge and creativity to
reinvent how we do business and keep American companies at the
forefront of the global economy. Just in the area of skills related to
the explosion of ``big data'' in multiple industry sectors, the
McKinsey Global Institute predicts a shortfall of 140,000 to 190,000
people with deep analytic skills (e.g., in statistics and machine
learning) and 1.5 million managers and analysts with the skills to
interpret and make decisions based on the data analysis.\7\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ Report from McKinsey Global Institute, Big data: The next
frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity, May 2011, by
James Manyika, Michael Chui, Brad Brown, Jacques Bughin, Richard Dobbs,
Charles Roxburgh, Angela Hung Byers. http://www.mckinsey.com/In
sights/MGI/Research/Technology_and_Innovation/
Big_data_The_next_frontier_for_in
novation.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Microsoft recognizes that many U.S. employers are searching for
people with the skills and talent we need to be globally competitive.
On September 27, Brad Smith, Executive Vice President and General
Counsel at Microsoft, will speak in Washington, DC at the Brookings
Institution on this issue and the policy changes necessary to foster an
education system that provides opportunities for students to access the
type and levels of education required to secure jobs in innovation-
based industries.\8\ We look forward to continuing the conversation on
STEM education and policy with the Members of this Committee and the
larger government, industry, and academic communities that all have
roles to play in this important area.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\8\ Brookings Institution Event on ``Education and Immigration
Reform: Reigniting American Competitiveness and Economic Opportunity''
on September 27, 2012. See http://www
.brookings.edu/events/2012/09/27-stem-education.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Five Years of the America COMPETES Act
Since the America COMPETES Act was passed in 2006 and reauthorized
in 2010, the agencies covered under the Act have made important
contributions to advancing our fundamental understanding of the world
and training the next generation of scientists and engineers. In
computing, there are several achievements of the past five years that
would not have been possible without key contributions by the Federal
Government.
Research
Under America COMPETES, we have seen significant interagency
collaboration on research targeted at major challenges and
opportunities. Two recent examples are the initiatives in robotics and
``big data.'' These both illustrate the interconnections between
industry, academia, and government described above, as they are
simultaneously areas for cutting-edge fundamental research on hard
problems that will occur at universities and industry labs, and also
the focus of development and deployment activities at large
corporations and in the operations of government agencies.
The National Robotics Initiative was launched in June 2011. The
focus is on ``co-robotics''--enabling the development of robots that
work with or beside people to extend or augment human capabilities,
taking advantage of the different strengths of humans and robots. An
important characteristic of the initiative is that it both supports
core research in areas such as computer vision, language processing,
and dexterous manipulation that will advance robotics capabilities
across the board while also supporting research targeted at key
robotics applications in areas such as health, manufacturing,
agriculture, defense, and space exploration.
The Federal Big Data Initiative was launched in March 2012. This
initiative builds on many years of research at multiple agencies to
improve the creation, management, analysis, fusion, visualization,
understanding, and use of very large data sets. Advances in these areas
will improve scientific research (e.g., on disease or the environment)
and facilitate real-time decision making (e.g., in the defense and
intelligence sectors or electricity grid management). Increasing the
ability to generate and interpret big data is already having an impact
in diverse sectors, from retailing to healthcare \9\, and Federal
investment will create new capabilities with even broader benefits. At
Microsoft, as well as our industry competitors, we are making big bets
on Big Data. Already, today, nearly every product and service offered
by Microsoft is improved or enabled by computing research advances in
an area called machine learning, which pertains to the design of
systems that become more effective with experience. Today, that
``experience'' is gained through the analysis of big data. Whether it
is the analysis of large numbers of electronic health records to
improve patient care for individuals, or the use of massive amounts of
training data to improve how well Kinect can track a videogame player's
movements, advances in big data provide a critical foundation for our
products.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\9\ The McKinsey Global Institute Big Data report referenced above
analyzes the potential impact of big data on five domains, including
manufacturing, retail, and public sector administration.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Another emerging example can be found in research on how large
numbers of interconnected people and computers can be used together to
solve hard problems. While I was at DARPA, I led an experiment to see
if social networks could be used to rapidly mobilize very large numbers
of people to conduct coordinated operations at global scale. The
resulting ``red balloon hunt'' (officially called the 2009 DARPA
Network Challenge) inspired millions of people around the globe to
collaborate. This experience had a major impact on thinking within the
Department of Defense. Another approach to this phenomenon can be seen
in FoldIt, which was also supported while I was at DARPA. FoldIt is a
crowdsourced computer game for protein folding and protein structure
calculation, and last year it was used to solve an AIDS-related protein
structure problem whose solution had eluded the scientific community
for a decade. At Microsoft and other companies, some products and
services, such as search engines, are improved as more people use them,
a form of crowdsourcing. While we have embarked on early research into
the potential of such online task markets, we rely on new government
research programs, for example on ``social computing,'' to build a
coherent research community and pool of talented researchers to
collaborate with and hire.
Education
A key attribute of the America COMPETES Act and its reauthorization
is the recognition of the importance of every element of the system
that contributes to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics
(STEM) education in the U.S. From K-12 to undergraduate, from graduate
education to post-doctoral studies and early career faculty, Federal
programs have an opportunity to improve the approaches taken in schools
and universities to ensure rigorous and engaging courses are offered
and students have the opportunity to experience and explore the STEM
fields.
Two examples of recent programs that supported the goals of America
COMPETES are Computing Education for the 21st Century (CE21)\10\ and
the Computing Innovation Fellows (CIFellows),\11\ both out of the
National Science Foundation.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\10\ The National Science Foundation's Computing Education for the
21st Century (CE21) program is described at http://nsf.gov/funding/
pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=503582.
\11\ Information about the Computing Innovation Fellows Project is
available at http://cra.org/ccc/cifellows.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The CE21 program focuses on generating knowledge and activities
related to computing education with the goal of building a robust
computing research community, a computationally competent 21st century
workforce, and a computationally empowered citizenry. Examples of work
underway in this program include development of resources to facilitate
expansion of computer science teaching in high school, such as the
design assessments and models of teacher professional development for
new courses, including a new computer science AP course, research on
the teaching and learning of computational competencies, and alliances
to broaden participation in computing careers. CE21 is ongoing and
continues to provide important contributions necessary to advance
computing education in the U.S.
The CIFellows Program is a program that ran from 2009 to 2011 and
was a targeted response to concerns that the economic climate in 2009
would force a large number of new Ph.D.s in computer science and
related fields to delay or altogether abandon a research career in
academia or industry. By providing post-doctoral fellowships, which
historically had been less common in computing than other fields, and
matching awardees to mentors, the CIFellows program provided interim
employment and career development at a critical juncture where the
research workforce pipeline was in danger of breaking down. It is still
early to fully assess the impact of this program, but many of the
CIFellows have now found permanent employment in research organizations
(including at Microsoft Research) where they can contribute to the
innovation opportunities outlined elsewhere in this testimony.
Looking Ahead
As a nation, we can be proud of the achievements that occurred
under the past five years of America COMPETES, but there are still
research questions to be answered and societal challenges in technology
and education to be tackled. The activities of the past lay the
groundwork that we can build on going forward. Below I provide several
observations about the opportunities that exist for the Committee to
consider as it begins reauthorization of the America COMPETES Act.
Invest in the future of research
The impact and results of research are often unknown when the
research is started. The value and payoff of a sustained and healthy
investment in research is often realized well after the initial work is
done. Today, the U.S. is reaping the benefits in both our quality of
life and in the global competitiveness of our companies that builds on
past investments. According to estimates by the Bureau of Economic
Analysis, the IT-intensive ``information-communications-technology-
producing'' industries grew by 16.3 percent in 2010.\12\ The strength
of these industries are built on research in many areas over many
years. One example is research on coding theory that eventually enabled
modern cell phones and streaming video through the Internet.\13\
Another is the research on distributed computing, including in
software, storage, and networking, that provided the underpinning of
today's rapidly-expanding cloud computing industry, in which the U.S.
is the international leader.
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\12\ Continuing Innovation in Information Technology, http://
sites.nationalacademies.org/CSTB/CurrentProjects/CSTB_045476, page 1.
\13\ Continuing Innovation in Information Technology, http://
sites.nationalacademies.org/CSTB/CurrentProjects/CSTB_045476, page 11.
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Grand Challenges and Computing Research: To maintain American
leadership in a world where information, knowledge, and people move
rapidly around the globe, the U.S. must support research in all
disciplines of science and engineering. Many of the grand challenges
facing society require not a single breakthrough in a single area, but
the contributions of researchers in multiple fields and the integration
of new knowledge into complex systems. Computing is often a central
element in tackling these grand challenges and improving healthcare,
transportation, education, national security, energy independence,
scientific discovery, and prosperity. Looking ahead, examples of the
opportunities that exist include:
Advances in big data and robotics targeted at refining and
reimagining our transportation and energy systems to improve
reliability, safety, and efficiency.
Continued focus on designing IT systems for security and
robustness in light of different levels of risk and threat
posed by different applications and environments.
Advances in networking and mobile computing to enable next-
generation technology and policies around spectrum sharing \14\
in order to provide the global connectivity among people,
devices, sensors, and the cloud that will allow benefits in
areas such as continuous health monitoring and smart buildings
and cities, as well as expand access to information and
technology throughout the world.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\14\ The potential benefits of spectrum sharing and the associated
policy and technical issues are described in Realizing the Full
Potential of Government-Held Spectrum to Spur Economic Growth,
President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, http://www
.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/
pcast_spectrum_report_final_july_20_
2012.pdf.
Technical and social science research to underpin privacy
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technologies and policies.
Integrating IT capabilities with educational knowledge to
deploy personalized or just-in-time learning tools and systems
that improve networks and information for teacher and schools.
Cyberinfrastructure: New technologies from computing have always
played a key role in enabling discoveries across multiple fields of
science and engineering. Today, modern science increasingly relies on
integrated information technologies and computation to create, collect,
process, and analyze complex data. Federal agencies must continue to
support research and deployment activities that facilitate effective
use of cyberinfrastructure \15\ in ways that recognize the changing
scale and types of scientific information and the rise of the ``fourth
paradigm'' of data-intensive science.\16\
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\15\ The role of networking and IT infrastructure in research in
other fields is discussed in Designing a Digital Future: Federally
Funded Research and Development Networking and Information Technology,
President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, http://
www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/pcast-nitrd-
report-2010.pdf.
\16\ Further discussion of the impact of advanced computing
capabilities on multiple fields of science is available in The Fourth
Paradigm: Data-Intensive Scientific Discovery, http://
research.microsoft.com/en-us/collaboration/fourthparadigm/default.aspx.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Interagency Coordination and Existing Legislation: Information
technology research and education is a critical element within the
mission and activities of multiple Federal agencies, and the
interagency Networking and Information Technology Research and
Development (NITRD) program has for years facilitated the coordination
of these activities. The President's Council of Advisors on Science and
Technology (PCAST) report on Designing a Digital Future: Federally
Funded Research and Development in Networking and Information
Technology,\17\ and the upcoming PCAST update of that report, clearly
articulate the opportunities in NIT and recommendations for moving
forward. Microsoft is supportive of the reauthorization of the NITRD
program, whether as part of the COMPETES reauthorization or as stand-
alone legislation.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\17\ Designing a Digital Future: Federally Funded Research and
Development Networking and Information Technology, President's Council
of Advisors on Science and Technology, http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/
default/files/microsites/ostp/pcast-nitrd-report-2010.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Invest in the future of people
Technology, including information technology, is permeating
society. Citizens of the 21st century will need core analytical and
quantitative knowledge to manage every-day tools such as smartphones
and programmable thermostats, to fill well-paying jobs in multiple
technology-dependent industrial sectors, and to create the new
technologies that fuel the innovation economy. The Federal agencies
have key roles to play in ensuring that students today receive the
education they need for society to thrive in the years ahead.
Computing Education: As discussed throughout this testimony,
understanding, using, and creating information technology is key for
people involved in research and education, in STEM jobs in industry and
government, and in daily life. Agencies should support efforts to
expand computing education, particularly at the K-12 level, and ways to
increase exposure to computing education and research opportunities at
the university level, for both computing majors and those in other
disciplines.
At the K-12 level, good work has been done to date in universities
on courses and professional development (as mentioned above) and
advances have been made in some states and cities. Yet still only nine
states allow computer science courses to count as part of the ``core''
curriculum that students can choose to pursue to graduate from
secondary school.\18\ More information about the opportunities and
policy challenges is available from the Computing in the Core coalition
(http://www.computinginthecore.org/), of which Microsoft is a founding
member.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\18\ Eight states count computer science as a mathematics credit--
Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island,
Texas, and Virginia--and one (Georgia) counts it as a science credit.
CSTA, ACM (2010). Running On Empty: The Failure to Teach K-12 Computer
Science in the Digital Age. Available at http://www.acm.org/
runningonempty/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
At the higher education level, it is important that the system have
the capacity to expand to serve a hopefully growing number of people
wishing to study computing. Also important is that the content and
approaches used in college computing courses reflect what is being
learned about engaging and effective learning and up-to-date content in
rapidly-changing areas such as cybersecurity.
In addition to activities that support these goals specifically, it
is important that general Federal ``STEM'' programs--whether for
teacher development and support, pedagogy research, undergraduate
education, or other areas--recognize that computer science is included
in their purview and clearly enable its inclusion through their
solicitations, outreach, and review criteria. While the importance of
including computer science in STEM has been widely recognized for
several years, accomplishing this may require coordinated action by
government agencies.
Education Across Disciplines and Integrated with Research: The pace
of change and discovery in science and engineering is increasing, as is
the amount of work involving researchers from multiple disciplines.
Universities are well-positioned to respond to these trends, and
Federal agencies should continue to support and drive universities to
enable students to engage in interdisciplinary courses of study and
also to develop opportunities and resources for students to access
courses and knowledge from outside their primary area of study. Also it
is important that we preserve and build on the integration of research
and education that is possible within the U.S. research university
system for undergraduates and graduate students. This exposes students
to the cutting edge of rapidly changing fields and, through those
students and their post-graduation employment in industry and
elsewhere, improves the transfer of knowledge from academia.
Diversity: The demographics of the Nation are changing. Society
benefits when people have access to multiple fields and career choices.
Women and certain minorities have historically been underrepresented in
many science and engineering fields, including computing. A number of
efforts are underway to shift this situation, and we all must continue
to strive to improve diversity in science and engineering.
Summary
Past investment in computing research has spawned multiple
new billion-dollar IT industries that have significant positive
impact on the U.S. economy.
Advances in IT are also enabling innovation in multiple
sectors (such as manufacturing, healthcare, energy, education,
and retailing).
Innovation in IT results from an interconnected ecosystem in
which government, universities, and industry each play a
critical role.
Federal investment in research is a critical component of
tacking national challenges in transportation, health, energy,
education, and other areas. This will require support for both
multidisciplinary research and strong investments in advancing
the core of all research areas, especially computing. It will
also require support for the development and deployment of
cyberinfrastructure.
People will need STEM skills, especially computing
knowledge, to be citizens, employees, and innovators in the
21st century technology-infused world.
Strengthening the pipeline of STEM education, including
computer science education.
* * * * * * *
In conclusion, I believe that Federal agencies, companies, and
universities all have major responsibilities in the interrelated system
by which curiosity becomes discovery, and knowledge is deployed for the
sake of the Nation's competitiveness and society's well-being. The
reauthorization of the America COMPETES Act is an important step toward
providing Federal research agencies with the resources and guidance
they need to contribute to our innovation ecosystem.
Finally, let me thank you for this committee's longstanding support
for scientific discovery and innovation. I would be pleased to answer
any questions you might have.
Appendix A: The Tiretracks Diagram
This is Figure 1 from National Research Council, Continuing
Innovation in Information Technology, National Academies Press,
Washington, D.C., 2012. Full report is available at http://
sites.nationalacademies.org/CSTB/CurrentProjects/CSTB
_045476.
Witness Biography--Peter Lee--Microsoft
Dr. Peter Lee holds the title of Corporate Vice President,
Microsoft Research. In this position he is responsible for managing
Microsoft Research Redmond, a laboratory of over 300 researchers,
engineers, and support personnel dedicated to advancing the state of
the art in computing and creating new technologies for Microsoft's
products and services. Prior to joining Microsoft, Dr. Lee was a
professor at Carnegie Mellon University. A devoted teacher and a
researcher with over 100 research publications, distinguished lectures,
and keynote addresses, he served as the Head of CMU's Computer Science
Department and before that had a brief stint as the university's Vice
Provost for Research. Peter Lee also served in the Department of
Defense at DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. There,
he founded and directed a major technology office that supported
research in computing and related areas in the social and physical
sciences.
Peter Lee has shown executive-level leadership in world-class
research organizations spanning academia, government, and industry. He
is a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery and serves the
research community at the national level, including policy
contributions to the President's Council of Advisors on Science and
Technology, membership on the National Research Council's Computer
Science and Telecommunications Board, former chairmanship of the
Computing Research Association, and testimony before the U.S. House
Science and Technology Committee.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Dr. Lee.
And now, Mr. John Winn, Chief Program Officer, National
Math and Science Initiative. Please.
STATEMENT OF JOHN L. WINN, CHIEF PROGRAM OFFICER, NATIONAL MATH
AND SCIENCE INITIATIVE
Mr. Winn. Thank you, The Chairman, members of the
Committee. I am indeed honored to testify before you today on
behalf of Tom Luce, our Chairman and CEO in the National Math
and Science Initiative.
The Chairman. Can you pull that mike up toward you a little
bit? Thank you.
Mr. Winn. Thank you. I would like to express our gratitude
for all the good work that went into America COMPETES Act. We
think it is extraordinary legislation and support it. Tom Luce,
as well as the rest of us, would like to extend our special
thanks and gratitude to Senator Hutchison and her great work to
further the competitiveness of this nation, and particularly in
STEM education.
Since its inception five years ago, the National Math and
Science Initiative has been replicating proven programs in STEM
education, both in teacher preparation, as well as in advanced
STEM learning within K-12 education.
We believe that, through public-private partnerships, and
through provided guided replication and implementation of
successful programs in public schools and universities who
desire to, not only change STEM education, but to transform
STEM education in an important and powerful way, is indeed an
incredible mission.
One particular program that we replicate is the UTeach
program that Senator Hutchison mentioned earlier. This program
was created by the University of Texas in Austin, and it
recruits STEM majors into a integrated program of science,
mathematics, engineering, as well as providing them with
education credentials, all within a four-year period. There are
many programs that provide two degrees, but most of them
require an additional year of education.
Ninety percent of our UTeach graduates go directly into
teaching, and 80 percent of our graduates, our teachers that
are in the field, are still teaching in STEM fields five years
later.
To implement UTeach successfully, it requires a close
relationship between colleges of natural science and colleges
of education. Can you imagine a senior engineering professor
teaching alongside a college of education professor or a master
teacher? You really do not have to, because you can see it in
action at the University of California at Berkeley, and at many
other UTeach sites across the Nation.
We now have 33 universities across the nation implementing
UTeach. I will refer you to the map that is included in my
written testimony.
UTeach works in all sorts of universities, Research One
universities, comprehensive, rural and urban settings. These
universities that are replicating UTeach now have over 5,500
actively enrolled students who we believe, that by 2020, will
have taught over four million public school students in STEM
education.
As Senator Hutchison pointed out, this Act authorizes to
replicate and implement programs in institutions of higher
learning that have integrated course of study in science,
technology, engineering and mathematics, and teacher education.
This describes UTeach perfectly.
UTeach, we believe that there are unfilled opportunities in
America COMPETES Act to make this subtitle a reality. The
National Science Foundation rightly allocates funding for
research and innovation across this nation. We think, by taking
a broad view of the implementation of research and innovation,
it can support the UTeach program and programs like it.
The UTeach program furthers research in two ways. Number
one, in universities that are replicating UTeach across the
nation, we are seeing a new wave of research in STEM teaching
and learning that bubbles up at the faculty level. These
research activities, many of them are small and within
universities, but they are happening as a result of the
replication of the UTeach program and are not dependent on
external additional funding.
The second way that it supports research is the UTeach
graduates become very adept at introducing research
understanding and practice within the K-12 school system. What
better way could we inspire students to go into more advanced
study in STEM education than to have them involved in active
research?
Also, the UTeach programs involves innovation, ongoing
innovation, within the universities that are implementing it.
By this I mean, although there are core elements of success
that are followed for the integrity of the program, it requires
a transformation within the universities that create new
integrated curricula, develop new partnerships and new
strategies for integrated teaching, both among STEM faculty and
among college of education faculty.
In conclusion, I would like to share with you a situation
that I noticed in Florida, when I was Commissioner of
Education. We could never set the passing score in our
mathematics and science certification test at the level that
our best teachers recommended. Why? The reason was simple. We
had too few candidates who could pass that high level.
I think this stands as a stark reminder that we need to
produce a new generation of highly competent STEM teachers if
we are going to reach our national goals.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Winn follows:]
Prepared Statement of John L. Winn, Chief Program Officer, National
Math and Science Initiative
Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and honorable members of the
Committee. I am honored to be testifying before you today. I would like
to say thank you for your support of innovation in STEM fields and
would especially like to say thank you to Senator Hutchinson for her
work to offer solutions to this Nation's growing need to become more
competitive in a highly technological world. We will certainly miss
you.
Today I am testifying on behalf of the National Math and Science
Initiative located in Dallas, Texas. Since its inception five years
ago, NMSI has been replicating successful programs to transform STEM
teaching and advanced learning. Our approach relies on public private
partnerships, performance management of replication and continued
guidance and support for public schools and universities that have a
strong desire, not just to improve STEM learning, but to transform it
in a way that is powerful and lasting.
One particular program is UTeach, a teacher preparation program
first developed at the University of Texas at Austin. This program is
highly innovative in that it offers service minded majors in math,
sciences, and engineering an opportunity to earn a degree in their
field of interest and become a highly competent teacher all within four
years. Ninety percent of UTeach graduates go directly into teaching and
80 percent continue teaching five years later. Their trademark is a
strong knowledge of their subject and four years of teaching practice
before they enter classrooms.
UTeach requires a close and lasting partnership between colleges in
STEM fields of study and colleges of education. Can you imagine a
senior engineering professor teaching UTeach classes beside a master
teacher or senior education professor? You don't have to. You can see
it at the University of California Berkeley and other UTeach sites
across the Nation. We now have 33 universities replicating the UTeach
program. I refer you to the map contained in my testimony. UTeach works
in all types of universities: research, comprehensive, urban, and
rural. These universities now have over 5,500 students actively
enrolled and we project that over four million K12 students will have
been taught by UTeach graduates by 2020.
How does this relate to the America Competes Act?
The Act authorizes a program at the National Science Foundation to
``replicate and implement programs at institutions of higher education
that provide integrated courses of study in science, technology,
engineering, or mathematics, and teacher education . . .''
Subtitle B Section 551 states,
The purpose of this subtitle is to replicate and implement
programs at institutions of higher education that provide
integrated courses of study in science, technology,
engineering, or mathematics, and teacher education, that lead
to a baccalaureate degree in science, technology, engineering,
or mathematics with concurrent teacher certification.
UTeach is just this type of program. We believe that there are
unfulfilled opportunities to make this statute a reality.
The National Science Foundation rightly allocates funding to spur
research and innovation. With the strong support of this committee and
taking a broad view of these priorities, the UTeach program can be
supported as described in this legislation.
Support for research and innovation does not have to be limited
early development. If we truly want to build a top flight generation of
scientists, mathematicians, researchers, inventors, etc., we must lay
the groundwork now. UTeach students learn to bring research
understanding and practice into the K12 classroom. How better can we
prepare and inspire students to go into advanced STEM fields and
further our strong competitive presence? The universities replicating
UTeach are starting a new wave of faculty driven research into STEM
teaching and learning. Therefore, support for expanding UTeach is
expanding research without additional funding.
There is no doubt that UTeach is a remarkable innovation. But it is
not a program that can be adopted in a flash. Success requires four
years of continuous innovation within the replicating university. New
curricula must be collaboratively developed, new approaches to
recruiting STEM majors into the program must be created, as well as
developing additional relationships that make the program work.
Although replication includes core elements of success, these unfold in
ways often unique to the university.
One thing we all know. We can and must do better.
I would like to end by relaying a situation that underscores the
need to transform STEM teaching. In Florida, we could never set our
science and math certification exam passing scores at the level
recommended by our best teachers. The reason is simple; there would be
far fewer candidates passing the higher qualifying score. This
phenomenon is not limited to one state. It is pervasive and it stands
as a reminder that we need a new generation of highly trained STEM
teachers if we are to reach our goals.
Thank you for your attention.
The Chairman. Thank you, sir.
In my opening statement, I referred to three main points,
the last of which was the development of innovation
infrastructure. As I was listening to the five of you, and also
thinking, universities are not rapid in changing the direction
of their battleships, and I have experienced in my own state
the programs at major universities where there have been a
tradition of how institutes are handled, and sometimes one
person in the faculty, in the health sciences faculty for
example, has responsibility for 19 institutes. That has not
changed in some 10 years. I consider that not useful.
So, I want to give you a chance, any of you, I guess
starting with you, Mr. Augustine, in talking about developing
infrastructure, sort of going against what my argument with
that was, getting away from the individual but developing
infrastructure, whether, in fact, not the Stanfords and the Cal
Berkeleys, et cetera, et cetera, but the upper-grade
institutions across the rest of the country who now can
participate, and very usefully and happily in America COMPETES
and, therefore, research, whether--I mean, one could make the
argument that we are overproducing biologists and we're under-
producing petroleum engineers, and institutions, presumably
local to that requirement, would seem to want to translate the
way they do business.
I am just not sure that universities are any faster at
changing the way they do things. Well, they are obviously
faster than government agencies. But, you understand my point.
And, I would love to have you comment, each of you, on that.
In other words, sort of getting back to the individual,
which is what you suggested.
Mr. Augustine. I would be happy to comment. As you spoke, I
am reminded of a situation that occurred at MIT when I was
trying to help the provost there introduce a new program in
systems engineering that cuts across the traditional
departments of the university or the institute, and we were
having a very hard time doing it. The faculty fought it, and
the provost and I were getting very discouraged.
He took me aside and he said, ``You know, Norm,'' he said,
``the thing that you do not appreciate is how difficult it is
to overcome 100 years of excellence and success.'' That is kind
of what we are facing. Our universities have been so excellent
and had such great success, that it is very hard to persuade
them to change.
On the other hand, when one is looking at catastrophe, one
tends to be much more adaptable. In the aerospace industry, we
went through a period where we were looking at catastrophe, and
we did many things that none of us would have wanted to do
before. Briefly, we lost 40 percent of our employees and 75
percent of our companies in about five years, totally revamped
the industry.
I think particularly with technology, this new wave of
technology, it would just overwhelm our universities, unless
they do change. So, I think it will be difficult, but I think
it will come about.
With regard to your point how will we deal with the fact we
produce too many biologists and maybe not enough petroleum
engineers or what have you, I always like to say that, if we do
not fund biology research adequately, we will produce too many
biologists. But, the students seem to be very quick to adapt to
market opportunities, and we saw that in computer sciences,
where they do change quickly and move into fields that are
needed, if they can. And, if they can is the major point, that
we have heard that just too few of our students are qualified
to study any kind of engineering or science.
The Chairman. One more person. Dr. Lee, perhaps you.
Dr. Lee. So, I think this point you are raising, I agree
with Mr. Augustine, is a crucial one. I think in research there
is a fundamental tension between, on the one hand, stability,
and I think the commitment to big ideas and trying to protect
possibly fragile concepts and ideas that might take a long time
of investment to really understand on the one hand. And then,
on the other, trying to be agile and react to obvious emerging
societal challenges and needs. And, managing that tension, I
think, is part of the game here, part of the challenge that we
face.
By and large, I think that universities can and have done a
good job in finding the right balance between the tension
between stability and agility. If we take the current
activities in online education, there are many, many scenarios.
Several of us on the panel have stated that there could be huge
transformations afoot.
But, we have also all been in this job long enough to know
that, roughly every 5 years, the next big thing in online
education that will transform universities kind of hits
everyone's minds, and there is a big flurry of activity. And
then, a more considered and deep exploration of these things
occurs. Those things have, on occasion, transformed
universities, going back to the complete wiring and putting
every student on the Internet in the 1980s.
So, on balance, I would say that universities have
demonstrated reasonable stability, but also an ability to adapt
to new conditions.
The Chairman. OK, I will follow that up further, but my
time is out. And now it is Ranking Member Hutchison, please.
Senator Hutchison. Yes, I would like to go to Norm
Augustine again and ask in the ``Rising Above the Gathering
Storm'' report, I have read it, and I know we fashioned
legislation guided by it, but what do you think was not done
that should be done? What would you do beyond America COMPETES
when we are looking at a reauthorization? But, let us stipulate
that we know putting more money into our appropriations where
the authorizations have been made is a given. We understand
that is a given, and it should be a priority in our limited
budget. But, in the substance of where we should go, what would
be your recommendations?
Mr. Augustine. Well, I would reiterate that we should
implement the 20 recommendations that were included in the
Gathering Storm'' report, fully implement them. We got a good
start, and then our progress waned.
I think a couple things. One thing we could do that costs
very little, if any, money, and that is to try to help our
young people understand the impact of science and engineering,
the importance of it. I find it ironic that young people look
with disdain on science and engineering, consider science and
engineers to be geeks, but yet they all carry iPhones, and
video games, and so on. So, that would be one thing we could
do.
The other thing that I think is really new that needs to be
added is some means of addressing the impact that the economy
is having on our great universities. As I said, we did
appreciate that when we did the ``Gathering Storm'' report. We
could have imagined it. But today, those universities really
are endangered, and I think that would be the main thing that I
would encourage that be included as you revisit the Competes
Act.
Senator Hutchison. You mentioned the higher cost of higher
education as being one of the issues, and of course, certainly
affordability is an issue. But, how would you attack that? We
have tuition going up because costs are going up. You want
research, although some Governors are saying in their states
that research is not important. You want teachers in the
classroom. I think that is shortsighted myself. But, it seems
to me that the research is the spark that shows the students
how exciting science can be. But, how would you bring down the
costs if you do value research as well as teaching?
And, let me make a second point. Banks used to give student
loans, but the Federal Government sort of took that over, and
it is not in the private sector anymore like it had been. Do
you think that has prevented more students from having the
capability to get the loans that are necessary to bridge that
gap of expense?
Mr. Augustine. You raise a number of important points. In
my view, one of the elements of success of America's higher
education system has been that our teachers are researchers,
that they do both, and that there is a need for a balance. The
private sector used to do a lot of research, some great basic
research. Bell Labs would be an example.
I think there are things that you could do to change the
tax laws that would encourage industry to invest more in
research. Very simply, for example, if a person holds an asset
for one day, the tax on the gain on that asset would be 99
percent. If they held it for 10 years, the tax would be 1
percent, and you would draw some kind of a line between the
two. CEOs would act very differently in that world from the way
they act today in terms of their willingness to support
university research.
Also, how do you make universities more effective or more
efficient? I think technology is part of the answer. We can
draw on much more of technology for our teaching. Dr. Wieman
has done a good deal of research in this area that I think
offers great promise.
Therein, I cannot help but say this, that there are some
very fundamental issues for our universities. One is their
reason for existence. During the period that faculty salaries
have been reduced, as they have the last couple of years on
average, we have vastly increased pay of the football coaches.
We need to think through what it is we want our universities to
do.
Senator Hutchison. Yes, please, Mr. Wieman.
Dr. Wieman. If I could just make a brief comment on this. I
think one of the things you really need to look at is something
Norm talked about early on, is the fully funding of research.
This is something I have spent a lot of the last year looking
into and could give you detailed numbers. It takes a lot of
digging.
But, if you just look at the AAU institutions or 25 top
research universities, they are actually spending $5,000 per
undergraduate per year to subsidize research costs with
probably 50 to 60 percent of that going directly to cover
unreimbursed costs associated with federally funded research.
The agencies do not want to talk about this and the
universities do not want to talk about this, so it is all kind
of hidden. But, these unreimbursed costs are coming out of
tuition. If you track it down, that is the only place it can
come from.
So, the result is, if you go and give big increases to the
research funding, you are actually making college less
affordable. Harvard, Stanford, et cetera, they have plenty of
money to pay for this, and they can charge whatever tuition
they want. The good state universities are the ones really
getting hurt by this, and this is part of what is causing the
financial problems they have. But, the administrators at those
schools cannot admit that they are taking money out of student
tuition topay for research, because they would all get fired.
It is a serious issue you need to look into.
Senator Hutchison. I am so sorry. I do not understand
exactly what you were saying. That more Federal research
funding hurts the universities because of hidden costs?
Dr. Wieman. Yes. It is the hidden unreimbursed costs. For
example, you know, NIH has hundreds of millions of dollars for
graduate fellowship programs. They set a cap on that program of
8 percent to cover indirect costs. If you look at what the
government feels are the actual costs of supporting and
maintaining a research graduate student, and what they will pay
in indirect costs on a regular research grant, it is about 50
percent higher than that.
So, if I am in a university, and I have a student who gets
a NIH fellowship, my university has to pay. It has to find
money somewhere to actually cover about 50 percent of the real
cost of that student. If I am a dean, I am faced with a choice
of saying, ``Oh, we are going to start turning down Federal
fellowships and research grants, because they are not being
paid for,'' which would be a terrible thing for a dean to say.
They would get fired immediately. Or they say, ``I have got to
find money somewhere else that nobody is going to notice to pay
for this,'' and that other place, for state universities now,
is tuition.
Senator Hutchison. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Senator Udall from New Mexico, and then Senator Thune from
South Dakota.
STATEMENT OF HON. TOM UDALL,
U.S. SENATOR FROM NEW MEXICO
Senator Udall. Thank you, Chairman. And, I know you have
noted that this was probably the last hearing for our Ranking
Member, Senator Hutchison, and I just want to thank her for all
of her good work for this Committee, and just really solid, I
think, bipartisan effort in all of the markups we have had and
the progress we have made. The two of you working together have
been a great team. So, we are going to miss her a lot. And, I
particularly enjoyed working with her on the Mexico-U.S.
parliamentary group, with the Senate coming up, and many, many
other things. But, thank you for your service, and I think we
are going to miss you very much.
Senator Hutchison. Thank you.
Senator Udall. You bet. You bet.
Dr. Wieman, I would like to ask you, sir, for your specific
thoughts on improving STEM education for girls and how to
encourage more young girls to pursue careers in STEM fields.
One National Science Foundation reports that women earned only
21 percent of doctoral degrees in computer science, and many
women who earned science, engineer and math degrees are not
hired in STEM fields. Research from the National Association of
University Women suggest that this disparity threatens our
ability to innovate and compete globally in these fields.
What Federal policies would improve our nation's efforts to
attract and retain women in STEM fields?
Dr. Wieman. That is a difficult issue, and it extends
beyond women, to other underrepresented groups, of course.
Senator Udall. You bet. You bet. And, you can expand out a
little on that. That would be fine.
Dr. Wieman. What we do know is these improved teaching
methods help it. We have good data from colleges and
universities that these improved teaching methods have a
disproportionately large impact on underrepresented students.
And, I could go through in detail why they better relate to and
help with the particular challenges of such groups, because
they are better targeted to a student's prior experiences,
background, and so on.
But, getting above that into the broader issues of
employment and so on, a lot of those things are determined by
broader, cultural aspects. So, Federal efforts are always going
to be somewhat limited in what they can do. But, there are very
clear things that have been demonstrated; research that shows
ways to change teaching that make it much more effective and
successful for underrepresented groups. This is based on having
a deeper understanding of the learning process, and the way the
students' experiences, and the differences in those experiences
shape their classroom experience.
Senator Udall. Thank you.
Dr. Furman, in your testimony, you described the creation
of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy, called
ARPA-E. And, as one of the successes, and you know this as one
of the successes of America COMPETES, ARPA-E which funds
breakthrough energy technology development. However, with the
looming sequester, the DOE Office of Science may be cut by $400
million. DOE's Office of Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency
could see $150 million in cuts. This would include cuts to
ARPA-E.
What are the long-term costs of major cuts to Federal
funding for energy science research like ARPA-E.
Dr. Furman. Thank you very much. I should start by saying
that I do not have a substantial amount of expertise in
evaluating ARPA-E in particular. My understanding, however, and
I will get back to the Committee if I turn out to be incorrect,
is that ARPA-E represents a fairly substantial fraction of
Federal support for energy-related research and is a very
important early stage funder for these types of technologies. A
good deal is done in the private sector, but it is does not
appear as if those private sector investments have yet yielded
very promising outcomes.
And so, without putting specific numbers on it, which I
think would be irresponsible of me, it does appear to be a
fairly substantial long-term impact, unless this turns out to
be an area in which private funds can rush in, in a measure
that they have not in the past.
Senator Udall. Great, thank you for that answer.
And, I do not have a final question, but Mr. Augustine, I
just wanted to thank you for putting your emphasis on, even in
hard times, investing in America COMPETES and all the various
STEM fields. Really appreciate your effort there and your
service on the Committee that then led to the legislation.
Mr. Augustine. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Udall.
Chuck Vest has been a pretty good soldier, too, hasn't he?
Mr. Augustine. One of the best.
The Chairman. West Virginia, needless to say.
Senator Thune, South Dakota.
STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN THUNE,
U.S. SENATOR FROM SOUTH DAKOTA
Senator Thune. Thank you, Chairman. And thank you, the
Ranking Member, too, for a good couple of years. And I, too,
will really miss our Ranking Member, Senator Hutchison. It has
been great working with her on so many different issues like
transportation, although my thinking is that this may be
premature, because I have a feeling in a lame duck we may be
kind of busy around here.
[Laughter.)
Senator Thune. So anyway, this could be perhaps our last
hearing. So, I just wanted to say how much we appreciated
working with both of you and, of course, with Senator
Hutchison.
Let me ask, if I could, Dr. Wieman, a question about
something you said in your prepared testimony. You stated that,
and I quote, ``There have been countless national, local and
private programs aimed at improving STEM education, but there
continues to be little discernible change in either student
achievement or student interest in STEM.''
So, my question is a fairly direct question. In this period
of extreme stress to the Federal budget, do you believe the
dollars that we are spending to improve STEM are being wasted?
Dr. Wieman. It is a sweeping statement to say they are
being wasted. I think many of them are being well spent, but
there are also a lot of them that could be spent much better.
As I mentioned in my remarks, I think the way that we are
funding K-12 STEM education through scholarships to potential
teachers, the particular way I think that is being done, I
think, is not having a particularly desirable effect.
Also, if you look at the evidence of results, there is a
lot of money that goes to teacher professional development,
where I think that is the evidence is it is not working very
well, and there are some basic reasons it is not. Most of the
teacher professional development programs end up focusing on
improving the teacher's STEM content mastery, which is because
that is where the most serious weaknesses up.
However, you are trying to take someone who went through 16
years of school, where their focus was on learning, and then
say, ``Well, they did not learn during school, so we are going
to have some voluntary intermittent professional development
activity to fix it.'' And meanwhile we are paying them full
salaries.
It is not surprising that this is not a very good use of
money. And, I think that money could be put to better use
focusing on training teachers in the beginning in a much more
rigorous way.
Senator Thune. Anybody on the panel disagree with that?
Dr. Wieman. What?
Senator Thune. I am just asking if anybody else on the
panel has a different view or disagree with that, what is your
view about any discernible progress with regard to student
interest or student achievement as a result of STEM.
Mr. Augustine. Well, certainly if one looks at the
standardized tests having given over the years, there has been
very little improvement. There will be one area that will
improve a little bit, one year and another and another. But, I
think there is no real evidence that we have done much better.
And, I doubt that there will be that sort of evidence until we
get teachers that are qualified to teach in the core subject or
have core degrees in the subject they are teaching.
Today, the chances are very high that a student will have a
math or physical science teacher who has neither a degree nor a
certificate in those fields.
If you will permit a personal experience, I took early
retirement because I had always wanted to teach. I have a
master's degree in aeronautical engineering with a lot of math.
I tutored math in college. And, it turns out I am not qualified
to teach eighth-grade math in any school in my state.
Fortunately, the people at Princeton on the faculty there heard
I was unemployed and invited me to join the faculty and teach
in the engineering school, which I did.
The Chairman. You are a virtual John Nash.
[Laughter.]
The Chairman. Ignored by faculty.
Mr. Augustine. That would be an honor.
Senator Thune. There was a report out yesterday that I was
proud to see. It came out of Bloomberg News, that recent
graduates from a South Dakota engineering college, the South
Dakota School of Minds and Technology, are earning more than
recent graduates from Harvard University.
And, aside from the personal pride in South Dakota that we
have from that, I am wondering what that says, if anything,
what that data point says about STEM. Are we reaching a point
where it really does not matter whether you are receiving a
STEM education at an elite university or a state university?
Mr. Augustine. Well, I will be glad to try to comment on
that. I think that the market is recognizing the importance of
STEM, and there has been a long perception that STEM degrees do
not pay well. The truth is that STEM degrees on average pay
better than most other professions requiring a comparable
degree of education.
The difference is that trail of the distribution function
that shows salary in many other fields is very high, whereas in
engineering it tends to clip off. You tend to hear about the
Warren Buffets and so on. But, on average, the STEM fields do
pay well, particularly engineering. And, I think what you are
seeing is that a good engineer from the University of South
Dakota may well draw at least a better starting salary than the
average graduate from Harvard.
Dr. Lee. Just from the perspective of Microsoft, we find
great talent from every school, and we are always receptive to
that. One slight extension I would make to Mr. Augustine's
comments is that, in computing education specifically, we have
continued to see, over the last five years of COMPETES, a very
good increase in enrollments in undergraduate programs in
computer science. But, that has not been reflected in high
school level education in computing.
And so, as I look to the future, the incorporation of
computing and computer science in our concept of STEM I think
would create more opportunities and fill the pipeline.
Senator Thune. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Senator Cantwell.
STATEMENT OF HON. MARIA CANTWELL,
U.S. SENATOR FROM WASHINGTON
Senator Cantwell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you
for holding this hearing. And, I do not know if it is the last
hearing we are going to have, but certainly want to add my
thanks to Senator Hutchison for her leadership as the Ranking
Member and her commitment to this Committee over her time in
the Senate. I can think of many memorable moments in this
Committee, particularly around aviation issues and slots, in
which Senator Hutchison played a key role.
In particular, I remember one day we had a vote here when,
I think, our colleague, Senator Hollings, was still Chair of
the Committee, and the discussion went back and forth, and
there was a lot of confusion about who was seconding and not
seconding, and what the normal procedure was. It turned out to
be a very interesting day, and we appreciated your leadership
then, and certainly wish you well.
So, I have no idea whether this is the last hearing or not,
but certainly do really appreciate your hard work and focus for
America on many, many issues related to commerce, but
particularly to aviation.
I wanted to turn--well, I do have a question, you know,
about STEM for the panel in general, and that is just that, as
I have looked at these STEM focuses in Washington State,
whether it is the Delta High School in Richland, which is
focused in particular from a lot of help because of the
national laboratory that is there in Battelle, or I look at
Vancouver IT Preparatory School, which has gotten a lot of help
from the high tech industry there, or I look at Aviation High
School, in Seattle, which has got a lot of help from Boeing, or
what is now going to happen at Riverpoint Academy in Spokane,
again a lot of help with the healthcare industry stepping up.
The question becomes, you know, a lot of these things have,
you know, incubation or help and support from private sector
entities that care a lot about establishing these programs, and
they seem to be doing quite well in breaking down the barriers,
but what do we do about scalability? Are we only going to have
successful STEM programs where there are successful private
sector partners? Or, if a neighborhood just does not happen to
have that successful partner, how are we going to leverage
that, you know, private sector commitment for doing STEM?
So, I do not know if anybody has any comments on that. Dr.
Lee?
Dr. Lee. So, I would be happy to give some reactions. So,
first of all, it is very important for Microsoft to invest in
education locally. There are lots of reasons for that. If we
look at the major universities in Washington State, they are
producing computer science graduates at a rate that is below
the number of openings we have annually at Microsoft. And, that
is not just a workforce pipeline issue.
But, in fact, as we recruit, we are recruiting people who
tend to have children who they would like to have local
opportunities for education in similar fields. And so, it is
also for us a community, and development, and recruiting
priority.
And, as you pointed out, then the question is, there is
only so much that we can do locally. How do we scale? And, how
do we scale?
Senator Cantwell. And, is not the number that something,
like, we need 300,000 computer scientists on a national basis
every year, and we are graduating like 73-or-some-thousand? We
are not off by a little. We are off by a lot.
Dr. Lee. That is right. And so, I think I am heartened by
the fact that, over the past 5 years of COMPETES, at least at
the collegiate level, we are starting to gain some traction. We
are starting to see some increase. I do worry about the
pipeline running dry though at the K through 12 level.
So, things that we can do in the context of COMPETES or in
other ways to increase interest, increase our effectiveness, to
increase the number of teachers who are able to provide
instruction and interest and inspiration, particularly at the K
through 12 level, I think is a very important place to look.
Mr. Winn. If I may, Mr. Chairman, I would like to respond
as well. We are expanding a STEM advanced placement program as
one of our standard programs at the National Math and Science
Initiative. We are now in 300 high schools in the United
States.
And, I can say that the investment, particularly local
investment of corporations and private industry, are alive and
well. In fact, far exceed government-sponsored funding for
implementing new and innovative advanced placement programs.
We are in the process now, since we have been over four
years of instilling the programs and scaling them up. We
started with about 60 schools in 2007 and 2008, and we are in
300.
And, we are just now seeing part of our replication program
is to work on ways to sustain the program, because we believe
that corporations have an incredibly important role, but more
as a catalyst to get innovation started than to sustain
programs in schools over long periods of time. And so, in the
spirit of that, we have had corporations be very responsive to
doing just that, and now we are in the process of working with
state and local school districts and state legislators to help
fund the continuation of those programs.
And, part of that process is demonstrating the remarkable
improvement in advanced placement passing scores by all
students, but particularly by underrepresented students,
females and minority students.
Senator Cantwell. Thank you. Thank you. Did you have
something, Dr. Wieman, that you wanted to add?
Dr. Wieman. I would just add that you have touched on a
very real problem. As Dr. Lee says and Dr. Winn reiterated,
industries really like to invest locally, and what that means
in some geographic sense, the rich get richer and the poor get
poorer. And so that makes it a Federal problem, how to ensure
those industry efforts do not result in wildly different
educational opportunities in different regions. I think this is
a very important problem that you need to think about.
Senator Cantwell. Well, my time is almost up, but I think
what Mr. Winn was saying is so, for example, if Dell was the
big supporter of STEM in Texas that, you know, once you got one
school district going, then you would go to the state
legislature and others and say, ``OK, now how do we replicate
this?'' Is that right?
Mr. Winn. Yes.
Senator Cantwell. Is that what you were saying? OK.
Dr. Wieman. And, if I may----
Senator Cantwell. So, the question is, how do we, you know,
take Aviation High School and replicate that across a bunch of
different jurisdictions, I guess?
The Chairman. This is the day of the Hutchison bonus. So,
if you----
Senator Cantwell. Oh, I have time? OK. All right. Well, I
just wanted to point one more thing out. I came in right at the
RPE debate, and I just wanted to point out, I am, you know,
pretty sure that Bill Gates and the CEO of Cummings basically
came up with, what they thought was, a private sector number
for what they thought RPE should really be, right? You may have
discussed that. But, to me, having those two individuals, you
know, talk about what RPE investment levels should be and try
and get people here to recognize that, I think is very
important, that we try to achieve that level of investment.
Thank you.
The Chairman. OK, thank you.
Senator Boozman from Arkansas.
STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN BOOZMAN,
U.S. SENATOR FROM ARKANSAS
Senator Boozman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do not have any
questions, but I apologize for being late as this is such an
important hearing. I, like everybody else, have 2 or 3 days to
get 2 or 3 weeks' worth of stuff done here. I was able to
listen to the testimony however, as I was in my meeting. So, I
just want to thank you all for being here.
The discussion that we have had is so important as we go
forward for our country. This has always been the bright spot
in our country, being able to innovate. I know that we are
committed to doing all we can to help, and we appreciate your
comments.
I would also like to thank Senator Hutchison so much, for a
number of different deals, in the sense of your leadership,
your ability----
The Chairman. Did you say a century of leadership?
Senator Boozman. Oh no.
[Laughter.]
The Chairman. That is good.
Senator Boozman. Anyway your ability to have so much
knowledge on the individual issues has been just a great
example for us young folks in the sense of not having been here
in the Senate very long. And also, for your kindness in making
all of us new members to the Committee feel welcome. We
appreciate it, and you will be very missed. Again, we just
appreciate all you have done for this Committee through the
years.
Senator Hutchison. Thank you very much. I hope we have
another hearing so I can hear all of this again.
[Laughter.]
Senator Hutchison. Except the poor witnesses have had to
endure it.
The Chairman. Let me just ask another question. If somebody
else wants to ask, fine. We have wandered here a bit, have we
not? And, nobody is challenging America COMPETES. Nobody is
challenging the need for Federal help on this. We accept two
stipulations.
One, that there is probably going to be a cut in this
program. And, the question is, how much will it hurt? Which
brings to mind two thoughts, one is that it will hurt, and the
other is what Norm Augustine said, and that is when Northrop
Grumman had to cut back by 50 percent or 45 percent, whatever
it was, they became better. Now, I am not sure that
corporations work the same way as government, or rather
government works the same way was corporations, but it is an
interesting thought.
The second is what you said, Dr. Lee, and that is, you just
threw the comment in, and it was very important to me, that we
are finding good people in all kinds of places.
So, my overall question is, we recognize that America
COMPETES is not out to gratify on the short-term basis. It just
cannot do it. It has been around for quite awhile, and it went
through some National Science--I am sure there was some
bureaucratic fulminations about it there.
But, it did change its philosophy. It did reach out more.
The world has changed dramatically. And, it has all changed in
the direction of what it is that America COMPETES, in fact, is
trying to do, and I do not care if it is biology, petroleum, or
engineering. I mean, it is that young people are infinitely
curious. All you have to do is walk into, you know, an
elementary school lab and look at the intensity of these
people. You cannot even see their noses because, you know, the
earpieces are so big, and they are focused on their computer. I
mean, it is absolutely inspirational.
Then you get through the latter part of K through 12, and
that is called the teenage years, and concentrating on anything
gets to be more difficult. Then you get into the college years,
and that is when things are meant to get serious, except when
people say, ``Well, some people go to college just to grow
up.'' Well, those are not meant to be the people we are
focusing on. We are meant to be focusing on the people who do
not go to college to grow up, but to grow really, really good
at needed STEM subjects and other areas within our entirely new
economy.
So, I want somebody just to make the case for America
COMPETES. One of the five of you is charged with doing that.
Tell me what it is important, fully funded, three quarters
funded, or whatever.
Mr. Augustine. Thank you for the opportunity to take a
crack at that. Much of what America does and is able to do for
its citizens requires financial resources by those citizens and
by the Government. And, our economy today is, to a very large
degree, underpinned by advancements in science and engineering
and by our ability to compete for jobs.
Today, unlike the past, when American citizens competed
with people across town for their jobs, today they compete with
people around the world for their jobs. The people around the
world are now much more highly educated, they are very hungry,
and very anxious to get good jobs.
If Americans cannot compete for those jobs, and we are
becoming less and less competitive as every day passes, we will
not have the income to pay the taxes to provide for national
security or healthcare, we will not have the money to provide
for education.
And, if we are to fix this, there are two things we have to
do more than anything else. One is fix K through 12, and in
addition to that, now I have to add to attend to our higher
education system. And, the second is to greatly invest into our
knowledge.
America cannot compete based on the cost of our labor. The
fact that we have a lot of capital, that capital invests abroad
now. So, America COMPETES Act, that is what it is about, is
creating jobs for America for the kind of reasons I have
stated.
Mr. Chairman. So, it is kind of a last course, last stand.
I do not mean to put that pessimistically, but I will just say
that. It is kind of a last stand for, are we going to take
world competition seriously, or are we not?
I happen to agree, and I wish Kay Bailey Hutchison were not
in the room right now. I happen to agree with you about paying
the coaches and the symbolism therein, the emphasis on
athletics, the domination of ESPN over virtually everything
that happens in the private time of the American citizen and so
many universities, and their grasp for that dollar, and what
they will do to get that dollar, and what suffers because of
their willingness to grasp for that dollar. I happen to feel
very strongly about that. There is not much I can do about
that. So, I have got to live with what remains.
I would stipulate that the average American, who you
earlier referred to as perceived to be a geek, that there are a
lot of them, and that they are very proud of what they can do.
In fact, it opens up to them, and I am thinking now
particularly about rural areas, you know, less about Austin and
more about something that begins with ``A'' in West--Aracoma,
West Virginia, that--I mean, I will just give the example.
A number of years ago, 12 years ago, 13 years ago, I met a
girl from McDowell County, which is one of the four poorest
counties in the United States of America, year after year,
after year, after year, after year, to the extent that it has
been taken over by a teachers union, which happens to be doing
it without the idea of unionizing, but with the idea of
improving education in this McDowell County, out of coal, out
of jobs, out of hope, strung out by drugs, but still there are
people there. They have taken it over. They want to make it
work.
That instinct still lives in this country. So, we are going
to have to figure out a way. I spent a lot of time sitting with
math and other STEM teachers, hours with them, including a
couple women who used to be coal miners, but they are really
tough math teachers today, and really good, and proud of it.
So, you cannot tell me that American ingenuity is not
tapped into, that there is not something that is appealing in
what is going on in this country so manifestly and clearly, and
that is high technology, and that people want to tap into that.
Now, I understand there are rural areas there are people
that think they cannot tap into it because God has it in that
they are just not going to be able to tap into it because they
are poor, and they are going to stay poor, and you know, there
parents are not pushing them, and all that kind of thing. I
understand sociology.
But, most of America does not fit into that category and is
made up of people who have every reason to be turned on by what
Microsoft is doing, what you have been working on, Norman, and
you have been terrific, Carl, at what you have said today and
your understanding of all of this, and as have you Dr. Furman,
and therefore, I should say you also, Mr. Winn, turned on by
this opportunity.
And, I am confounded that we cannot do it. We put up an
America COMPETES. America COMPETES helps substantially, but not
enough. Well, not enough is not a reason to quit something.
I mean, you know, it is like hacking in cyber security. You
put up a wall, then somebody else puts up a higher wall to get
in, and then you put up a higher wall. I mean, that is just
part of life, and that is going to go on in anything that has
to do with technology.
So, for the life of me, I cannot figure out why it is that
more Americans cannot get turned on by STEM. I have--Sharon and
I, I should say would be I think rather more fair, for our
children, two of them are involved in high technology. I had
not a wit to do with it, nor did my wife. They just--they went
to good schools. They--one of them was a teacher of special ed
in Harlem for 4 years, and then sort of graduated on into other
things. Another is teaching at Johns Hopkins. And they are
just--you know, sure they got a better start because they had a
good education.
But, it defies my sense of hope for America that there are
not more kids doing this. And, we have a program to help on it,
where people in states that care about it, most states have
councils on science and technology, some probably better than
others. So, maybe we are waiting for a recession to end. Maybe
we are waiting for a nation to gain confidence, like we are
waiting for industry to gain confidence, so that the $3
trillion that they are sitting on, that they will begin to
spend, because they have confidence in something called the
future.
Now, is there any parallel or any sense in anything that I
am saying? Please, any of you, and then we will be finished
with the hearing.
Dr. Wieman. Just make a quick comment. These attitudes
people have about science is something my own research group
has done a lot of work on. We have primarily looked at students
at the introductory college level, but we see that the formal
schooling system and the formal classes, like an introductory
science course at a college or university, actually shifts the
students' attitudes against science, so they see science as
less useful and less relevant to their lives than they did
before they ever started that class.
So, that has told us some things about how these classes
are being taught that is actually hurting rather than helping.
The Chairman. Are we talking K through 12?
Dr. Wieman. No, Our data is from students at the
introductory college level.
The Chairman. Introductory college, OK.
Dr. Wieman. I am quite confident that if we dig down and
understand why this is happening, we will very likely see that
it is happening even more so at the K-12 level. This is just
another one of these advances in research and learning we we
suddenly realize, ``My God, that is what is happening,'' and
then you go and figure out how to fix it, which we have done.
But, there is a lot in the formal school system that I think is
affecting those attitudes about science and engineering in
negative ways.
Dr. Lee. I have a comment. I was really impressed with your
statement, and I think underlying that is something very
important.
A colleague once told me, in tongue in cheek, that a young
person opting to go to a good college to study science or
engineering is the modern day equivalent of joining a
monastery. And, it is a joke, but it is a joke that is getting
at the basic societal concept that that is a strange choice.
But, in that----
The Chairman. Why is that a strange choice, Dr. Lee?
Dr. Lee. It should not be.
The Chairman. The examples are all over television, the
newspapers, they are spoken about all the time, the example is
exactly the opposite.
Dr. Lee. I agree completely. And so, I think what is
exposed by this is, as adults, we see that this is important
for the future, for our competitiveness, for jobs. But, young
people who make these choices, also are making choices to go
for some idealism, to really be a part of a community that is
just trying to express their curiosities and their creativity,
and along the way, make a difference in the world.
And so, to the extent that, as leaders and as legislators
we are, on the one hand, talking about the practicalities,
practicalities about finance, about competitiveness, about
innovation, and jobs, but not forgetting about this basic
idealism in young people and making sure that we express
ourselves in a way that touches that idealism, if we forget
that, we will risk coming off making all of the wonderful
things we do in science and technology look too mundane.
Instead, we really need to inspire young people.
The Chairman. To wit, and then I will quit, the
applications at the Peace Corps, which I was a part of a long
time ago, are higher and at higher levels of aptitude than they
have ever been in its long history.
Dr. Lee. Perfect example.
The Chairman. The applications for people who want to join
the CIA and to do covert or non-covert operations, but dealing
with algorithms and all kinds of things, is higher than it has
ever been, and the quality of the applications is the highest
than it has ever been. That is the ``I want to be a part of the
future. I want to be a part of the world. I want to make the
world better.''
So, the question is, how do you change over to what we have
been talking about today? And, that we will have to leave
unfinished business, but with Kay Bailey Hutchison, such as
time as she still has, but from a distance anyway afterwards,
and myself, and all of us, determined to make it work.
I thank you all very much, and this hearing is adjourned.
Senator Hutchison. Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 4:23 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
Prepared Statement of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is proud
to support the America Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote
Excellence in Technology, Education, and Science (COMPETES) Act. NOAA
thanks Members of the Committee for giving the agency a prominent role
in this historic effort to enhance American competitiveness.
As part of America COMPETES, NOAA was charged with implementing
programs and activities ``to advance ocean, coastal, Great Lakes, and
atmospheric research and development, including potentially
transformational research.'' As a mission-driven, scientific agency
NOAA has to balance incremental scientific advancements to operations
with transformational research. Transformational research and
development is an investment that often carries a level of uncertainty,
but has the potential to positively affect society in substantial ways
that increase earth system knowledge and produce technological advances
that fuel economic opportunity. NOAA's transformational research
inspires students and researchers alike to push the limits of
knowledge.
As an example, consider the High Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR)
weather model. This new experimental model, under development by NOAA's
research community in collaboration with our operational weather
forecasters, is designed to more accurately predict high impact weather
events. This new generation of ultra-high resolution (3 km) weather
models predicted the derecho event on June 29, 2012 in excellent detail
ten hours in advance of its arrival to Washington, DC. Models such as
this have the potential to radically transform our ability to forecast
events such as the derecho and therefore greatly enhance NOAA's ability
to conduct its mission to save and protect lives and property. As
computing capability continues to improve, HRRR could be transferred
from research to operations and applications. NOAA is also active in
moving hydrodynamic coastal models from research to operations by
developing and implementing coastal nowcast/forecast systems for
several major U.S. Ports. These ports systems are taking advantage of
NOAA's High Performance Computing and Communications facility for safe
and efficient management and use of our coastal resources.
In addition to model improvements, NOAA has transformed its ability
to gather observations over the last decade. In the climate and oceans
arena, drifting probes that can be deployed throughout the ocean--
called Argo floats--have revolutionized our ability to observe and
record the physical conditions of the global ocean. In the past,
scientists studying the interplay between ocean and atmosphere used CTD
(conductivity/temperature/depth) recorders deployed from research
vessels to get temperature and salinity profiles. These profiles formed
the basis of much of our basic understanding of the ocean. Limited by
our ability to physically sample wide areas of the ocean and the
inherent costs and limitations associated with ship time, there were
large data gaps such as the Southern Ocean, and data were mostly
limited to the upper 750 meters of the ocean. Argo floats are now
routinely used to continuously collect data at depths of up to 2,000
meters and transmit the data to scientists on shore via satellite. The
Argo float network and other global array systems have allowed for the
collection of temperature and salinity profiles throughout the global
ocean. They have vastly improved our ability to estimate and forecast
sea level rise, and play a key role in improving seasonal climate
forecasts and providing new insight into hurricane activity. The next-
generation of Argo, deep-Argo floats, is under development and will
extend our ability to comprehensively observe the ocean far beyond the
existing 2,000 meter depth to as many as 6,000 meters.
While the development of the HRRR model and the Argo float network
are examples of transformational research, use-inspired incremental, or
evolutionary, research also has the ability to shift paradigms over
longer time scales. An example of this is the shift from traditional
species-by-species fisheries management to ecosystem-based management.
The traditional management strategy for fisheries and other living
resources has been to focus on one species of fish and shellfish in
isolation. For example, if there were a decline in the number of a
certain type of fish in the Gulf of Mexico, the relevant Council might
recommend and NOAA might decide to decrease the number of that species
that could be taken. That approach does not take into account other
elements such as interactions with other species and the effects of
pollution and other stresses on habitat and water quality. To more
effectively assess the health of any given fishery and to determine the
best way to sustain it requires a holistic understanding of the
ecosystem. Ecosystem approaches are transforming our ability to manage
fisheries by considering the cumulative effects from various sources,
and the balance of conflicting uses.
The power of America COMPETES speaks not only to our Nation's
strong scientific expertise but it also furthers NOAA's strong
education ethic. The Act complements existing education mandates found
in the authorizing legislation of specific NOAA programs, and provided
NOAA with a broad, agency-wide authority for education. To provide a
clear and coordinated path forward, the NOAA Education Strategic Plan
(http://www.education.noaa.gov/plan) was developed, which outlines our
20-year education vision, goals, and strategies needed to support the
agency's mission. The NOAA Education Strategic Plan, the subsequent
Implementation Plan, and most recently, the Monitoring and Evaluation
framework have resulted in increased internal collaboration and
leveraging of resources, not only among the agency's education programs
but also with external partners. We are proud to report a few
illustrative examples of the progress NOAA has been able to make in
response to the Act this year.
In 2012, NOAA is projected to support 513 students through
competitive internships, fellowships, and scholarships who have been
awarded NOAA mission-related Science, Technology, Engineering and
Mathematics (STEM) post-secondary degrees, out of which 57 are from
underrepresented communities. For America to be competitive in the
global marketplace, we need bright, creative minds. Our job is to see
that we give as many young people as possible many opportunities to
learn, stretch in new directions, develop critical thinking, ingenuity,
and scientific expertise.
In 2012 alone, we project 49.7 million people will visit informal
learning institutions with a NOAA-funded exhibit or program that
integrates NOAA's unique science products and services. NOAA partners
with informal learning institutions such as museums, zoos, and
aquariums to make NOAA sciences, data, and other information widely
available to the American public through interactive STEM exhibits and
programs. NOAA's products and services are essential to explaining
current, real-world STEM issues such as climate change, oil spills,
extreme weather and weather safety, appropriate management of coastal
environments, and overfishing.
In 2012, NOAA will serve an estimated 41,000 educators through
professional development programs and estimates nearly 7 million visits
to NOAA education websites. Such programs and resources aim to enhance
understanding and use of ocean, coastal, Great Lakes, weather, and
climate environmental information with the goal to promote stewardship
and increase informed decisionmaking.
Through scientific rigor, cutting-edge research, and integrated
STEM education NOAA is committed to developing and attracting the next
generation of scientists who will drive the scientific and
technological innovation our country needs to stimulate the economy and
create jobs. Through the authority granted by the America COMPETES Act,
we offer the American people access to the unique and significant
resources of a mission-driven, scientific agency. Coupled with NOAA's
investment in education ($53.8 million in FY 2011), we effectively
leverage NOAA's significant scientific expertise, laboratories, data,
ships and aircraft, and places of special significance to the Nation
(such as our National Marine Sanctuaries and National Estuarine
Research Reserves) to offer high quality, mission-relevant, formal, and
informal education opportunities.
Educating our students in the STEM disciplines will help them
understand their world and provide useful scientific advances to
society. In turn, that prepares them with the critical thinking skills
they need to get better jobs with better pay for a brighter future. We
at NOAA will continue our efforts to attract, promote, and engage more
talented scientists of all ages--scientists who will help keep America
on course to win the future and help us develop the next
transformational scientific break-through.
Thank you again for the opportunity to share our enthusiasm for the
strong support that you have shown in propelling our Nation's economy
and competitiveness forward. NOAA is proud and pleased to play a role
in this effort--both in developing the next transformational scientific
tools and in preparing the next generation of scientists to make those
discoveries for tomorrow.
______
Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. John D. Rockefeller IV
to Norman R. Augustine
Federal funding for physical science and engineering basic research
increased at a faster rate in the past five years than in the preceding
decade, but applied research funding has declined with inflation.
Question 1. What might be the competitive implications of
increasing the funding for basic research as compared to flat or even
declining funding for applied research?
Answer. As your question implies, there needs to be a balance
between funding for basic and applied research. My own view is that
basic research was so severely underfunded, particularly in the
physical sciences, engineering and mathematics, that the steps of the
past few years have been in the direction of restoring balance rather
than disturbing it. Unfortunately, at least as one looks towards
sustainability, much of the increase in basic research was funded by
the stimulus package and has therefore been consumed.
Question 2. What innovative, funding-neutral policies should the
Federal government pursue that it is not currently?
Answer. This is a very difficult question because, unfortunately,
the fundamental problem is one of underinvestment in both basic and
applied research. Most revenue-neutral changes tend to have an impact
at the margins; however, constructive actions would include placing
greater emphasis on high payoff (perhaps higher risk) efforts; greatly
reducing administrative costs associated with reporting requirements;
cutting the time-demand associated with writing grant requests; and
eliminating earmarking.
______
Response to Written Question Submitted by Hon. Bill Nelson to
Norman R. Augustine
Question. Dr. Lee noted that Microsoft invests more than $9 billion
a year towards research and development. However, right now, companies
in the U.S. are sitting on around $1.7 trillion in cash instead of
investing it in new technology, and you noted that U.S. corporations
spend over twice as much on litigation as on basic research. What can
the government do to encourage companies to invest more in research and
technology here in the U.S.?
Answer. Frankly, were I an active CEO at this point in time I, too,
would be ``sitting on'' our firm's cash. The reason for this is that
CEO's bear a legal fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders and
the uncertainty in the market affecting everything from taxes to
interest rates to inflation are simply too great to warrant major
investment under today's conditions.
But there are constructive steps the government could take with
regard to the permanence and magnitude of the R&D tax credit; the
repatriation of foreign earnings; and the clarity of tax policy.
A principal problem in encouraging long-term investments (in such
areas as R&D) is the ``results now'' psychology of Wall Street that
encourages ``financial engineering'' rather than productive pursuits.
This could be changed overnight by adopting a new capital gains tax
policy whereunder profits from investments held one day would be taxed
at ninety-nine percent and profits from investments held over ten years
would be taxed at one percent. . .with some schedule between the two
that produced whatever revenues were sought.
______
Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Amy Klobuchar to
Norman R. Augustine
Question 1. You discuss effective teaching models in your testimony
when it comes to both STEM courses and the fact that U.S. youth seem
disinterested in the study of science and engineering despite a
fascination with the products of these fields. How do we effectively
motivate students to enter and stay in STEM fields? What impact does
the Federal government have in inspiring students through events like
the Curiosity landing on Mars last month? What are the keys to
inspiring students to pursue STEM education goals?
Answer. In my generation a large fraction of those who pursued
careers in various branches of science and engineering were inspired to
do so by the Apollo Program. I believe that the same effect could be
produced today by a (sustained) Apollo-like program in the field of
energy.
But it is also clear that the most important single step government
could take is to ensure that every classroom has a teacher with a
degree specifically in the field wherein they are teaching. This is far
from the case today, particularly in math and science. This objective
could be accomplished by fully implementing the proposals related to
this subject that were contained in the Gathering Storm report.
Question 2. I worked to include university commercialization
reports in the COMPETES Reauthorization Act. I understand measuring the
long-term economic impact of the COMPETES Act programs is inherently
difficult--it is often difficult to trace any specific breakthrough or
innovation all the way back to a specific research grant, additionally,
these projects take time. What is the best way to measure the success
of these programs? What indicators should we look to? For example, is
there a way to estimate how many jobs are created by a program or by
the Act?
Answer. I, of course, am an engineer and not an economist. However,
I agree both with your emphasis on measuring outcomes and with the
difficulty of doing so, particularly when addressing research efforts.
I feel certain that the individuals working on quantum mechanics and
fundamental materials behavior many years ago did not have iPads and
iPhones in mind!
There have been a number of generally successful efforts to measure
the impact of prior advancements in research and engineering on the
growth in GDP. My own correlations suggest that each percentage point
growth in GDP is accompanied by at least a 0.6 percentage point growth
in employment. It is unfortunately difficult to isolate cause and
effect; however, my own experience suggests that there is an ample
amount of the former present. I do believe that such quantitative
analyses are possible and meaningful--but are limited as a management
tool because of the long time-lags that exist.
______
Response to Written Question Submitted by Hon. John D. Rockefeller IV
to Carl E. Weiman
Question. What innovative, funding-neutral policies should the
Federal Government pursue that it is not currently?
Answer.
1. Making transparency in STEM teaching methods a requirement for
Federal research grant eligibility.
Current Federal programs are providing incentives to preserve bad
STEM teaching at both the college and K-12 levels. At the college
level, far more effective methods of teaching have been repeatedly
demonstrated, but faculty and institutions ignore those results and
continue to use ineffective lectures as they focus solely on research
(see recent NRC study). The large amount of Federal money for research
has driven that single-minded focus. What is needed is to attach some
modest level of educational accountability to the large amount of
Federal support for science research ($30 B/yr).
The Federal Government should establish a policy that would require
transparency in the teaching practices used by STEM faculty members and
academic departments, in order for them to be eligible to receive
Federal research funds. This could be done by requiring each STEM
department to report in a standard format on the teaching practices in
use in their undergraduate courses, as well as overall student
outcomes, such as number of majors and graduation rates for majors, and
completion rates in first year courses. In my university work, I
developed a survey that adequately captures the extent to which a
course is being taught with new, demonstrably more effective, teaching
methods, or less effective traditional lectures. This survey only takes
about 5 minutes to fill out for each course offered, so the cost of
collecting such data would be minimal. NSF should be charged to develop
the instrument and collect the data on behalf of all the agencies,
since the NSF has the most expertise and are best positioned to
institute such a system rapidly.
Universities would be required to provide this data for every STEM
department that wanted to be eligible to receive Federal research
funds. This departmental level data would then be published so that
prospective STEM students could compare departments and institutions as
to which were using more effective teaching methods and which had the
best student outcomes, and make their decisions about where to enroll
accordingly. I am confident that this would be sufficient to bring
about rapid improvement in the teaching practices in use at the
university level. It will provide accountability and transparency at
the level where teaching practices are determined and can be changed,
namely the level of the academic department. It would be unnecessary
for the Federal Government to attach any requirements to educational
practices and outcomes, other than transparency.
This reporting of teaching practices will be opposed by the leading
research universities because they have achieved their elite status by
focusing entirely on research prominence. This will now subject them to
a different standard--one where they likely will not fare nearly as
well, and it will force their faculty and administration to shift their
priorities slightly if they are to look respectable.
2. Shift current Federal STEM teacher preparation funds and STEM
teacher professional development funds to create a program to drive the
overhaul of teacher preparation programs.
To improve STEM teaching at the K-12 level will cost money to
change the teacher preparation programs, but this could be achieved in
a funding neutral manner by putting all the money that is currently
going for STEM teacher training and professional development for in-
service teachers to this much better use. This would amount to several
hundred million dollars per year. As I discussed in my written
testimony, the evidence shows that these funds are currently
accomplishing very little and there are basic structural reasons why
such programs can never be effective. Current teacher training programs
focus largely on admitting and graduating as many students as possible
to maximize tuition revenue, with very little attention paid to the
STEM competence of those teachers or the training needed to be
effective STEM teachers. Much better use of those funds would be to
support Federal programs that provide incentives to institutions to
create rigorous new STEM teacher training programs and recruit highly
qualified students to complete those programs. There should be rigorous
criteria established for programs to be eligible for these Federal
funds, criteria that will require major changes in most every teacher
training program. These criteria should focus on ensuring every teacher
candidate achieves both high levels of STEM content mastery and
detailed training and practice in effective STEM teaching methods that
are aligned with the latest research. The programs should require joint
involvement of both the Schools of Education and the STEM academic
departments at the institution. It would be sensible to consider also
supporting this program with some of the money that is currently going
to support programs that fund various informal science activities that
are designed to inspire students. As I discuss in my written testimony,
there is little evidence that these programs accomplish the goal of
getting more kids to pursue STEM careers, and good reason to believe
they never can, for the reasons I gave in response to Senator
Klobuchar's question. Whatever inspiration these programs may create,
it will not survive the uninspiring teaching of science that takes
place in school and which dominates students' career decisions. So
working to improve the teachers and help them build inspiration into
the science they are teaching every day is the only way to achieve
large gains.
3. Changes in the organizational structure of the Department of
Education
Currently the U.S. Federal Government is badly organized for
improving STEM education. Although done by many different agencies, it
is always the third, fourth, or fifth priority of that agency and so
never attracts the level of funding and quality of people and authority
that is necessary to make a real difference. Historically the
Department of Education has had little responsibility for STEM
education, and as a result there is no place in the current
organizational structure for STEM education and very little STEM
competence in the department. The NSF has lots of STEM competence, but
is fundamentally a research agency, and so is well suited to carry out
critically important research on improving STEM education, but it is
not well suited to drive large-scale change in educational practices
across the country. That requires more extensive connections with
States and local districts, like the Department of Education has.
However, if the Department is ever going to be able to play a serious
role in STEM education, it needs to create a new position with
significant policy and budgetary authority and fill that position with
a person who has solid STEM education expertise.
4. Fully funding the cost of Federal science and engineering
research and stopping the increase in the reporting and compliance
burden associated with Federal research.
Current policies unknowingly serve to drive up indirect costs and
transfer those costs to undergraduate tuitions, seriously impacting
college affordability. The typical undergraduate at a large public
research university now pays about $5,500 per year of tuition to
support research, with much of that total going to subsidize federally
supported research. This has come about because of a variety of
policies that have increased the indirect costs associated with
federally supported research at academic institutions while also
reducing the reimbursement for those costs. Because the amount of
Federal research funding and associated prestige is all-important to a
university, university administrators have quietly covered these
unreimbursed costs by raising tuition rather than turning down Federal
grants. Some university administrators have told me in private that it
would be professional suicide for them to either admit to this policy
or to oppose it. The extent of the problem can be seen in the NSF
tabulation of the amount of institutional funds that each public
university spends on research. This now averages $160 M/yr for a top 20
public university, up from approximately zero dollars 25 years ago.
These institutions have no source of revenue other than tuition that
has increased by nearly this amount over this time period, so most of
this $160 M/yr can only be coming from tuition. Further analysis shows
that much of it goes to subsidize Federal research by paying for the
unreimbursed costs. While this has short-term benefits for the Federal
research enterprise, it cannot be good for the long-term interests of
the Nation. To illustrate how these costs arise, I will give one
specific example, the NIH graduate fellowships. Tthe Federal
Government, after careful auditing and negotiation, has concluded that
there are indirect costs associated with having a graduate research
assistant that amount to about 60 percent of their salary at a typical
institution. These costs arise from the need to process their pay,
taxes, etc, and the cost of providing them with office space, desks,
labs, electricity and water, etc. However, the NIH only pays 8 percent
indirect cost on all of its many fellowships, who all work as research
assistants their respective universities. So if an institution has a
student who receives and NIH fellowship, the institution has to find
some other source of funds to cover those indirect costs amounting to
52 percent of their salary.
Changing this system will involve shifting costs from student
tuition to the Federal Government, and so if the funds for research
remain unchanged, will involve reducing the amount of research that is
produced by a modest amount. However, I do not think that anyone would
support a Federal policy of having student tuition being used to
unknowingly subsidize Federal research, if they actually realized that
is what is happening.
Because this issue involves billions of dollars a year and is so
entrenched in the system of research funding, I would recommend dealing
with it in stages. The NSF established policies and carried out much,
although not all, of the first two stages below over a period of time,
demonstrating that it can be done. Applying similar policies to the
other agencies, particularly the NIH, which has the most research
funding and the most programs that pay reduced indirect costs, is a
necessary next step. As research universities have already demonstrated
that they are willing to use surreptitiously tuition revenue to boost
research productivity and prominence, the implementation of the stages
listed below should be linked in some way to commitments to some
combination of tuition reduction, increased student aid, or other
appropriate enhancements of undergraduate education.
Stage 1--Preventing further growth in the number of programs that
pay indirect costs that are ``below negotiated rate''. There should be
a much higher barrier to agencies paying less than negotiated rate, for
example, any such rates must be approved at a high OMB level. Similar
restrictions should apply to programs wishing to use cost-sharing as
part of the proposal selection criteria. So called ``voluntary cost-
sharing'' is not at all voluntary when it impacts whether the proposal
does or does not get funded.
Stage 2--Establish a schedule for gradually rolling back both the
current ``below negotiated rate'' policies for specific programs, and
the consideration of institutional cost sharing in proposal decisions.
Some of these may be congressionally mandated. I think that may be the
case for the 8 percent overhead paid on the NIH fellowships. However,
if congress was made aware that for every dollar of Federal money that
goes for an NIH fellowship, 50 cents from undergraduate tuition goes to
support that fellowship, they may well be willing to reexamine that
issue. This payment of the negotiated overhead rate and elimination of
institutional cost-sharing will involve some modest reduction in the
amount of research that gets supported. However, to put that in
perspective, the amount of student tuition that currently goes to
support research at the average large public research university is
just about the same amount as the average annual debt incurred by every
student at that university.
Stage 3--While the first two steps would reduce the problem of
student tuition subsidizing Federal research it will never eliminate it
as long as the artificial 26 percent cap on federally reimbursed
facilities and administration costs remains in place. With that cap in
place, agencies, congress, auditors, and OMB, will continue considering
new requirements and regulations without carrying out a reasonable
cost-benefit analysis. This situation has led to dozens of requirements
and regulations being added over the years that didn't cost the
government money because of the cap, but have very real costs to the
universities. The universities complain, but they can never admit what
the real cost is, because they have put themselves in the position that
they cannot admit that they are subsidizing Federal research with
tuition money. So we currently have a system where new indirect costs
keep getting added by government policies, but they are paid through
secret increases in tuition, so no one complains. Only if you eliminate
the 26 percent cap so the government is paying the actual cost of
research will there be transparency and an accurate cost-benefit
analysis to any proposed new regulations or reporting requirements.
______
Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Bill Nelson to
Carl E. Wieman
Question 1. Dr. Wieman, your testimony suggests that in order to
substantially enhance STEM education in the U.S., we need K-12
educators who have both a mastery of a science or engineering
discipline and are well versed in the latest research regarding the
learning process. How can we develop or attract educators to our K-12
classrooms that have such specialized knowledge and experience in both
engineering AND education? Would it be more worth-while to invest in
training experienced scientists and engineers to become teachers, or to
invest in developing science and engineering skills in experienced
educators?
Answer. This is a very important question. At the college level the
data is pretty clear. It takes far less time for a scientist or
engineer to learn to become a highly effective teacher than it takes to
learn to become a scientist or engineer. The ratio is roughly a few
hundred hours versus 10,000 hours.
The answer is less clear for the K-12 level, first because there
are more factors involved in teaching effectively. The teacher has to
learn to handle discipline issues, special needs students, classroom
management, meeting state and district content standards, etc. that are
not present at the college level. My speculation, based on the college
results and the poor results from professional development of existing
teachers, is that it would be more cost effective to train existing
scientist and engineers to be effective teachers, but it will require
much more than the few hundred hours of training and practice required
for the college level. That speculation is strengthened by the results
from teacher professional development, attempting to develop science
and engineering skills in experienced teachers. Those results have been
so dismal that almost anything else would be better.
However, it is unlikely that there could ever be sufficient
scientists and engineers interested in going into teaching to meet the
demand via this route. So I believe that the best approach would be to
have programs to recruit and properly train a select group of
experienced scientists and engineers to become teachers, and to develop
the pre-service teacher training programs so that their graduates have
the necessary STEM content mastery to be effective teachers. All of the
evidence would imply that both of these approaches, training scientists
and engineers to become teachers, and better training of pre-service
teachers, will be more cost-effective than trying to retrain existing
teachers so that they have high level STEM content mastery.
Question 2. Dr. Wieman, in your testimony you note that current
practices incentivize universities to prioritize research over
teaching, and you suggest as a partial remedy that Federal science and
technology research grants should more closely tied to educational
outcomes. What specific measurements would tell us which universities
are best educating their students in the STEM fields?
Answer. I have spent a lot of time considering this issue. The
situation is greatly complicated by the selection effects that make the
student cohort at each institution unique. So the kind of measurements
used with K-12 schools, which already have serious limitations in that
context, are meaningless at the higher education level. Skipping a full
discussion of all the complications here, I will just give my
conclusions as to most useful and practical measurements to make.
Data should be collected on a combination of basic student outcomes
and teaching practices used; all collected and reported at the level of
the individual academic department. The most meaningful student outcome
measures would be (1) number of student majors, (2) number of
graduating majors, and (3) student completion rates for first year
courses. It would be useful to have this data broken down by different
under-represented minority groups, but care would be required in doing
that in such a way it would not violate privacy laws when numbers are
small. Departments typically collect all this student outcome data
anyway, and they are already reporting much of it through the IES
website, so collecting and providing all the data would be negligible.
In terms of teaching practices, the data that should be collected
are what methods of teaching are being used in the undergraduate
courses. How much of the class time is traditional lecture with the
instructor presenting new material by talking while the students
listen, and how much of the time has students and instructor involved
in several teaching methods that have consistently been shown to
achieve better learning and high student success rates compared to
lectures. (The recent NRC study on Discipline-Based Education Research
in Science and Engineering provides a good review of this research and
which teaching practices are more effective.) This could be done by
requiring each STEM department to report in a standard format on the
teaching practices in use in their undergraduate courses. In my
university work, I developed a survey that adequately characterizes how
a course is being taught to allow distinctions as to the quality of
teaching practices that were used. This survey and only takes about 5
minutes to fill out for each regular undergraduate course that is
offered. For a large department, that is only 15-25 per year, so the
amount of time and hence cost that an academic department would need to
collect all the required data is rather minor, and departments
seriously paying attention to undergraduate education should already be
collecting much of this information themselves.
This data should be collected and published by the Federal
Government to thereby provide transparency on teaching practices and
student outcomes for each academic department that receives Federal
research funding. I would strongly recommend against using the data in
any decisions on research funding. The requirement would thus be one of
transparency but not direct Federal accountability. I believe that
would be the most effective way to accomplish the desired purpose, and
it would be far easier to implement. Prospective STEM students could
compare departments and institutions as to which were using more
effective teaching methods and which had the best student outcomes, and
make their decisions about where to enroll accordingly. I am confident
that this market pressure would be sufficient to bring about rapid
improvement in the teaching practices in use at the university level.
This will have the further benefit that it will bring transparency and
resulting accountability at the level where teaching practices are
determined and can be changed, namely the level of the academic
department.
______
Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Amy Klobuchar to
Carl E. Weiman
Question 1. You discuss effective teaching models in your testimony
when it comes to both STEM courses and the fact that U.S. youth seem
disinterested in the study of science and engineering despite a
fascination with the products of these fields. How do we effectively
motivate students to enter and stay in STEM fields? What impact does
the Federal Government have in inspiring students through events like
the Curiosity landing on Mars last month? What are the keys to
inspiring students to pursue STEM education goals?
Answer. Any time that society gives recognition to science
activities and successes it helps attract students into STEM. However,
in themselves, events like the Curiosity landing have little long term
effect. The problem is that students may get excited by missions to
Mars, or Hubble pictures, or science fair projects, but then the
science they see in school is totally different and quite uninspiring,
and the ``school science'' is what determines the long term career path
for most students. That is necessarily the result of school being their
dominant exposure and hence defining experience as to what STEM is.
This is true even into college, where many students switch out of STEM,
because of poor teaching and boring curriculum. It is worse at lower
grades where many of the teachers have little understanding or
appreciation of science and present it as an exercise in rote
memorization.
Ultimately, if we are to have more students enter and stay in STEM
fields it will require teachers at all levels who can make science and
engineering interesting and meaningful, and show students how these
subjects are not just memorization of lots of facts and words, but
rather creative intellectual processes that can solve problems that are
meaningful and interesting to the students. Without that, events like
NASAs latest triumph will make little difference, unfortunately. With
that, those NASA triumphs will be seen as an extension and goal of what
they are learning in school and will further inspire them to pursue
STEM.
Question 2. I worked to include university commercialization
reports in the COMPETES Reauthorization Act. I understand measuring the
long-term economic impact of the COMPETES Act programs is inherently
difficult--it is often difficult to trace any specific breakthrough or
innovation all the way back to a specific research grant, additionally,
these projects take time. What is the best way to measure the success
of these programs? What indicators should we look to? For example, is
there a way to estimate how many jobs are created by a program or by
the Act?
Answer. I must defer to the economists who study such things for
this question. I do not feel qualified to offer an answer.
______
Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. John D. Rockefeller IV
to Jeffrey L. Furman, Ph.D.
Federal funding for physical science and engineering basic research
increased at a faster rate in the past five years than in the preceding
decade, but applied research funding has declined with inflation.
Question 1. What might be the competitive implications of
increasing the funding for basic research as compared to flat or even
declining funding for applied research?
Answer. This is an excellent question to which, I believe, academic
research has not yet supplied a fully satisfactory answer. The U.S has
experienced a number of episodes in which basic research programs
received substantial infusions of funding, including aerospace research
(in response to the Soviet space program) in the late 1950s and the
Apollo Program in the 1960s, the War on Cancer during the Nixon
Administration, the doubling of NIH funding between 1998 and 2003, and
the increase in research funding in the 2009 ARRA.
While such funding boosts are often a boon for short-term science
and have been effective in achieving near-term missions (e.g., the
Manhattan Project), Freeman and Van Reenen's study of NIH budget
doubling, which was not accompanied with equal expansion of applied
research funding, suggest that such policies may have less-than-hoped-
for outcomes, particularly if expenditures following the spending boost
remain flat or decline in real terms. In particular, the authors
conclude that adjustment costs, including the ability of the market for
scientifically-and technically-trained workers to respond quickly,
limit the short-term effects of such doubling efforts. This, in turn,
harms the downstream commercialization opportunities associated with
brief funding boosts.
Freeman and Van Reenen also note that globalization strengthens the
argument for global funding of basic research while weakening the
argument that any one particular nation should subsidize basic
research, since the fruits of that investment in any one country are
likely to yield spillover benefits worldwide. At the same time, they
note that the argument for subsidizing applied research, which may be
commercialized more quickly in any one region, increase with
globalization.
Boosts in basic research funding can make valuable contributions
even without attendant support for applied funding, as the positive
spillovers from DARPA's research efforts, the Space Program, and even
Israel's experience with spillovers from military spending to their IT
sector demonstrate.
It may also be possible to support applied research and
commercialization without targeted funding increases by increasing R&D
tax credits, as Bloom et al., (2002) and Hall and Van Reenen (2000)
describe.
References
Bloom, Nick, Rachel Griffith, and John Van Reenen.(2002) ``Do R&D
Tax Credits Work?'' Journal of Public Economics, 85:1-31.
Hall, Bronwyn H., and John Van Reenen. (2000) ``How Effective Are
Fiscal Incentives for R&D? A Review of the Evidence.'' Research Policy,
29(4-5), 449-469.
Richard Freeman, John Van Reenen (2009) ``What if Congress Doubled
R&D Spending on the Physical Sciences?'' in Josh Lerner and Scott
Stern, Innovation Policy & the Economy, vol 9, University of Chicago
Press: Chicago, IL
Question 2. How can the United States best take advantage of the
results of federally-funded research before they are picked up by other
nations?
Answer. My understanding of research on this question is that the
answer involves elements of both hope and concern.
The element of concern is that models and large scale quantitative
studies of knowledge generation and diffusion agree with casual
empiricism that much basic research diffuses widely and with some speed
to researchers at the global frontier regardless of where they are
located.
While this may have some deleterious effects for U.S. industry and
the workforce and may appear to lower the rate of return on Federal
investment in science, I think that economists generally agree that the
benefits of diffusing science outweigh the potential benefits of
secrecy: As Freeman and Van Reenen (2009) note, the everyone would
benefit if a cure for cancer were found, regardless of whether that
cure were identified in the U.S., Europe, or Asia and regardless of the
location of original knowledge on which the discoverers of that cure
built.
That said, evidence suggests that basic scientific knowledge
diffuses more quickly towards commercialization in the regions close to
its discovery. Thus, the U.S. has an inherent advantage in building
upon and commercializing basic research relative to regions and
countries that are more geographically distant (see, e.g., the classic
and often reexamined study by Jaffe, Trajtenberg, and Henderson, 1993).
In this regard, the Earth is very far from flat. Two key factors
appear most important to the ability of a country to benefit from its
own discoveries: (1) the overall strengths of its research and
innovative capacities and (2) the ability to link the results from
basic research to entities that can commercialize those efforts.
Historically, the U.S. has been a leader in each of these areas, due to
substantial investments in university research and the strength of
technology licensing and venture funding (including venture capital)
(Furman, Porter, & Stern, 2002). Ensuring that these areas sustain high
levels of investment and competitiveness will support the local
commercialization of federally funded research.
References
Adam B. Jaffe, Manuel Trajtenberg, Rebecca Henderson (1993)
``Geographic Localization of Knowledge Spillovers as Evidenced by
Patent Citations,'' The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 108(3), 577-
598.
Jeffrey L. Furman, Michael E. Porter, & Scott Stern (2002) ``The
Determinants of National Innovative Capacity,'' Research Policy, 31,
899-933.
Question 3. What innovative, funding-neutral policies should the
Federal government pursue that it is not currently?
Answer. I believe that there are a few options that could be
pursued to support science and innovation that would not require
additional Federal funds. I list a few recommendations below and
elaborate on these thereafter:
(1) Implement a program to support high-skilled immigration
(2) Require that Federally-funded research projects include support
for and a mandate for supported scientists to deposit research
materials associated with federally-funded research
(3) Require that licenses for technology supported by Federal
funding be disclosed and non-exclusive
(4) Institutionalize the evaluation of federally-sponsored
research--require recipients to identify the fruits of
sponsored grants and consider these as relevant (though not
dispositive) when deciding upon future funding.
(5) Shift existing tax structures to ensure that prices more
accurately reflect actual costs; doing so would enable the
price mechanism to provide appropriate incentives for
innovation and the associated burdens on firms and individuals
could be alleviated via revenue-neutral tax rebates.
High Skill Immigration
The first, and most often-discussed of these would be a program
supporting high-skilled immigration or giving individuals. Economists
who study innovation have undertaken a number of useful projects on
this topic. Descriptive statistics note the over-representation of
immigrants and first-generation Americans among Americans receiving
patents and among the population of high tech entrepreneurs. More
structural analyses demonstrate that admission of additional high-
skilled immigrants--for example, through H1-B visa expansion in the
1990s--yields benefits, in terms of patents, innovation, and the size
of the science and engineering workforce.
Some well-done academic work ont these topics has been conducted by
William Kerr of Harvard Business School and Jennifer Hunt of Rutgers
University. Two of their relevant papers include:
William R. Kerr & William F. Lincoln (2012) ``The Supply
Side of Innovation: H-1B Visa Reforms and U.S. Ethnic
Invention,'' Journal of Labor Economics, vol. 28(3), pages 473-
508, 07.
Jennifer Hunt & Marjolaine Gauthier-Loiselle (2010) ``How
Much Does Immigration Boost Innovation,'' American Economic
Journal: Macroeconomics, vol. 2, pages 31-56.
While the politics of supporting high-skilled immigration may be
difficult, academic research on this topic suggests that the addition
of highly-trained immigrants yields improvements in science and
innovation that would otherwise not have been achieved.
Disclosure requirements for licenses associated with federally-
sponsored research
A second, budget-neutral recommendation is that all licensing
transactions associated with Federally-sponsored research be disclosed,
not concealed. In nearly all cases, the results of Federally-sponsored
research are made accessible through the academic process of
publication and presentation, the exchange of materials (such as tissue
samples or cell cultures) and licensing contracts often occur without
any disclosure.
This secrecy can inhibit downstream research based on Federally-
funded projects. This secrecy over technology licensing has developed
in part as a result of university Technology Licensing Offices' (TLOs')
efforts to maximize fees and to protect the strategic concerns of
licensees'. The potential value to society, however, of this disclosure
likely exceeds the value of secrecy in this case. Making disclosure a
requirement of funding to report the existence of, parties to, and
broad features of each transaction related to the products of
Federally-sponsored research would help untangle a legal web and
support commercialization and downstream research efforts. This could
be facilitated by a standardized, accessible database, which could be
managed by the National Science Foundation and could be managed
relatively cheaply, in the model of ClinicalTrials.gov. (Fiona Murray,
Scott Stern, and I articulate this suggestion in the co-authored paper,
``More for the research dollar,'' (2010), Nature, 468, 757-758 and the
text above is based closely on text in that article.)
Require deposit of research materials associated with federally-funded
research
Researchers studying the economics science suggest that
establishing rules and practices that maximize the productivity of
research in the long term can increase the rate of return of current
Federal R&D funding. Implementing this approach, however, can create
inconveniences or push-back from current grant recipients.
One example of how short-term researcher interests were overcome by
long-term plans arises in the effort to sequence the human genome. The
disparate, often competing efforts (which included the U.S. National
Institutes of Health and the UK Medical Research Council) introduced
rules (called, the ``Bermuda Rules,'' which required publicly funded
researchers to disclose their sequencing information every day. Whereas
researchers were previously able to monopolize their information for
weeks or months, the Bermuda Rules ensured that the public could
benefit from this information essentially immediately and enabled
complementary research and downstream work on the genome to progress
more swiftly.
While this type of disclosure is unique to the case of the genome
sequencing effort, the general lesson that the deposit and broad
sharing of research materials speeds complementary work and downstream
work has wide application to Federally-sponsored research projects.
(Fiona Murray, Scott Stern, and I articulate this suggestion in the co-
authored paper, ``More for the research dollar,'' (2010), Nature, 468,
757-758 and the text above is based closely on text in that article.)
Institutionalize evaluation of Federally-funded research
A policy that is simple in theory, though substantially more
difficult in practice would be to institutionalize the evaluation of
federally-sponsored research. Part of this effort could be built on
grantees' self-reports about the outcomes of federally-funded research.
This could be achieved in a number of ways, including requirements that
Federal funding identify the fruits of sponsored grants, either as
requirements of receiving year-to-year funding, or as final reporting
requirements, or as requirements for future grant applications. These
outcomes should then be considered (though they should not be the only
factors considered) when individuals or firms apply when deciding upon
future funding.
Shift existing tax structures to ensure that prices reflect actual
costs (to the extent possible)
The most general of my recommendations is likely also the most
controversial. By ensuring that negative externalities (like pollution
and products with deleterious health effects) do not result in prices
that involve implicit subsidies, the costs of fuel and other substances
that involve such negative externalities will rise to a degree that
fosters innovation. The burdens that such prices impose on firms and
individuals of more limited means could be ameliorated with lump sum
tax rebates. Ensuring that prices reflect marginal costs, however, will
support the appropriate incentives for innovation. I recognize,
however, that such efforts (e.g., the Acid Rain Program and potential
carbon tax) face substantial political difficulties.
______
Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Amy Klobuchar to
Jeffrey L. Furman, Ph.D.
Question 1. Your testimony mentions that one way we can improve the
COMPETES Act is through initiatives supporting industry
commercialization of university-generated ideas. Can you expand on how
we can work to promote getting these projects into the market, as well
as what promoting university research does for our international
competitiveness?
Answer. The issue of technology commercialization is one of the
more well-researched topics in the economics of innovation. Research in
this area has addressed the commercialization of university-generated
technology in a number of ways that related to U.S. competitiveness and
technology policy. These include:
Comparisons of university commercialization efforts across
countries: These studies generally conclude that the United
States is among the world leaders in this effort, as a
consequence of the historical role of American universities in
collaborating with for-profit companies to achieve
commercialization, in part because of policies that enable
faculty to work with private companies when continuing their
academic pursuits, and in part because of the Bayh-Dole Act.
Assessments of specific programs that support technology
commercialization: These include the Bayh-Dole Act, the
``professor privilege'' (to patent and commercialize lab
research), university intellectual property policies, the
development and behavior of Technology Licensing Offices, among
others. My reading of these studies is that they support the
conclusion that the United States pursues policies supporting
technology commercialization to a greater degree than other
industrialized counties. The most recent studies of the Bayh-
Dole Act suggest that it continued growth in university-
industry relationships that existed prior to the Act's passing,
but that it has effectively supported commercialization in the
United States and that it has become a model for other
countries' efforts at commercializing technology (see Mowery et
al., 2001, and Mowery & Sampat, 2005). One of the most
sophisticated analyses of the Bayh-Dole Act in the United
States (Hausman, 2012) suggests that, ``long-run employment and
payroll per worker around universities rise particularly
rapidly after Bayh-Dole in industries more closely related to
local university innovative strengths.'' That is, the results
suggest that Bayh-Dole had a statistically and economically
meaningful positive impact on employment and worker earnings in
geographic regions and industries matched to local university
research strengths.
While suggesting that the U.S. is at the forefront of global
efforts to commercialize university-generated technology, this research
does not imply that improvements are not possible.
Some improvements can come from university policies. Recently, a
number of technology licensing offices have been moving away from a
model in which they attempt to maximize university licensing revenues
and towards a model in which they maximize the diffusion of knowledge
generated by universities (Siegel et al., 2003). As well, Siegel and
Phan (2005) note that improving university management practices,
training for students and faculty, and coordinating engineering schools
with business schools could improve university-industry technology
transfer.
Public policies can support university efforts by ensuring that all
licensing transactions associated with Federally-sponsored research be
disclosed rather than concealed. This secrecy can inhibit downstream
research based on Federally-funded projects. This secrecy over
technology licensing has developed in part as a result of university
Technology Licensing Offices' (TLOs') efforts to maximize fees and to
protect the strategic concerns of licensees'. The potential value to
society, however, of this disclosure likely exceeds the value of
secrecy in this case. Making disclosure a requirement of funding to
report the existence of, parties to, and broad features of each
transaction related to the products of Federally-sponsored research
would help untangle a legal web and support commercialization and
downstream research efforts. This could be facilitated by a
standardized, accessible database, which could be managed by the
National Science Foundation and could be managed relatively cheaply, in
the model of ClinicalTrials.gov. (Fiona Murray, Scott Stern, and I
articulate this suggestion in the co-authored paper, ``More for the
research dollar,'' (2010), Nature, 468, 757-758 and the text in this
paragraph is based closely on text in that article.)
Expanding R&D tax credits and providing subsidies for risky
commercialization efforts are other programs that have, historically,
been employed to support university-industry technology transfer
efforts. Research suggests that R&D tax credits can, indeed, support
such activities, although the rate of return suggests that these are
not a panacea (see Bloom et al., 2002, and Hall and Van Reenen, 2000).
Research on R&D subsidies is more mixed, with some studies suggesting
that public R&D subsidies crowd out private investment fully
(Wallsten's (2000) study of the SBIR program suggests this, for
example) and other studies suggesting that public support supplements
rather than simply replaces private investment (David et al., 2000).
Overall, research in on subsidies suggests that their success may
depend on the details of particular programs.
References
Bloom, Nick, Rachel Griffith, and John Van Reenen.(2002) ``Do R&D
Tax Credits Work?'' Journal of Public Economics, 85:1-31.
David, P. A., Hall, B. H., and Toole, A. A. (2000), ``Is public R&D
a complement or substitute for private R&D? A Review of the Econometric
Evidence,'' Research Policy, 29, 497-529.
Furman, Jeffrey L. Fiona Murray, Scott Stern, (2010) ``More for the
research dollar,'' Nature, 468, 757-758.
Hall, Bronwyn H. and John Van Reenen. (2000) ``How Effective Are
Fiscal Incentives for R&D? A Review of the Evidence.'' Research Policy,
29(4-5), 449-469.
Hausman, Naomi (2012) ``University Innovation, Local Economic
Growth, and Entrepreneurship,'' working paper, Dept of Economics,
Hebrew University of Jerusalem: https://sites.google.com/site/
naomihausman/research/.
Mowery, David C., Richard R Nelson, Bhaven N Sampat, Arvids A
Ziedonis (2001) ``The growth of patenting and licensing by U.S.
universities: an assessment of the effects of the Bayh-Dole act of
1980,'' Research Policy, 30(1), 99-119.
Mowery, David C., Bhaven N. Sampat (2005) ``The Bayh-Dole Act of
1980 and University-Industry Technology Transfer: A Model for Other
OECD Governments?,'' in Essays in Honor of Edwin Mansfield: The
Economics of R&D, Innovation, and Technological Change, Albert N Link &
Frederic M Scherer, ed., 233-245.
Siegel, Donald S., Phillip H. Phan (2005), Analyzing the
Effectiveness of University Technology Transfer: Implications for
Entrepreneurship Education, in Gary D. Libecap (ed.) University
Entrepreneurship and Technology Transfer (Advances in the Study of
Entrepreneurship, Innovation & Economic Growth, Volume 16), Emerald
Group Publishing Limited, 1-38.
Donald S Siegel, David Waldman, & Albert Link (2003) ``Assessing
the impact of organizational practices on the relative productivity of
university technology transfer offices: an exploratory study,''
Research Policy, 32(1), 27-48.
Wallsten, S. J. (2000), ``The effects of government-industry R&D
programs on private R&D: The case of the Small Business Innovation
Research Program,'' RAND Journal of Economics, 31, 82-100.
Question 2. I worked to include university commercialization
reports in the COMPETES Reauthorization Act. I understand measuring the
long-term economic impact of the COMPETES Act programs is inherently
difficult--it is often difficult to trace any specific breakthrough or
innovation all the way back to a specific research grant, additionally,
these projects take time. What is the best way to measure the success
of these programs? What indicators should we look to? For example, is
there a way to estimate how many jobs are created by a program or by
the Act?
Answer. Assessing the impact of university commercialization or any
efforts to support science or innovation is both an important and
difficult task. Some of the issues and difficulties are outlined in the
Siegel papers cited above. The ideal indicators that one would like to
have include indicators of knowledge outputs (e.g., patents, papers,
students trained), indicators of commercialization (e.g., new firms,
new products, and new jobs). Two difficulties, however, are (a) that it
is difficult to obtain useful measures of inputs (e.g., dollars spent
on research by universities and firms) that can be used to compare with
the outputs in order to compute productivity and (b) that, even if one
could obtain those measures, it is difficult to identify what
economists call ``counterfactuals,'' which refer to what would have
occurred in the absence of the support or policies.
Economics has made substantial advances in policy evaluation
(Imbens and Wooldridge, 2009), some of which has been incorporated into
recent evaluations of science and innovation policy (Furman, et al.,
2012). Estimating the impact of public policies on employment is made
particularly difficult by the problem of knowing what would have
happened in the absence of such policies. The Hausman study of the
Bayh-Dole Act described above is one of the few recent studies that
credibly assesses the causal impact of an innovation policy on
employment outcomes.
By designing public policies with evaluation in mind (e.g., by
including natural variations in the timing of implementation, by
including variations in specific policies across regions, etc.),
however, it may be possible to lay the ground work for more systematic
evaluations of their effects. Each of the papers referenced below
describes ways to do this and I would be happy to discuss possibilities
further.
References
Imbens, G.W., and J.M. Wooldridge (2009) ``Recent developments in
the econometrics of program evaluation,'' Journal of Economic
Literature, 47, 5-86.
Furman Jeffrey L., Fiona Murray, & Scott Stern, (2012) ``Growing
Stem Cells: The Impact of U.S. Policy on the Organization of Scientific
Research,'' Journal of Policy Analysis & Management, 31(3) 661-705.
Hausman, Naomi (2012) ``University Innovation, Local Economic
Growth, and Entrepreneurship,'' working paper, Dept of Economics,
Hebrew University of Jerusalem: https://sites.google.com/site/
naomihausman/research/.
______
Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. John D. Rockefeller IV
to Dr. Peter Lee
Question 1. Federal funding for physical science and engineering
basic research increased at a faster rate in the past five years than
in the preceding decade, but applied research funding has declined with
inflation. What might be the competitive implications of increasing the
funding for basic research as compared to flat or even declining
funding for applied research?
Answer. In computing research, distinctions such as ``basic''
versus ``applied'' don't really apply, and advances in capabilities do
not necessarily follow a linear path from fundamental research to
commercial application. As described in the National Research Council's
``Continuing Innovation in Information Technology,'' \1\ there is a
complex interweaving of fundamental research and focused development,
with innovations in academia driving breakthroughs in industry and vice
versa; with ideas and technologies transitioning among fields and
applications, creating opportunities in both new research and new
products and markets. Individuals and projects can shift focus among
discovery, invention, and engineering, and the lessons learned in any
one area inform and inspire future work. This interplay between
research with different drivers and timescales can be seen within
Microsoft Research as well. Our research includes mission-focused,
blue-sky, sustaining, and disruptive activities. Flexibility is a key
attribute of our ability to meet these interrelated goals, and our
researchers collaborate with leading academic, government and industry
colleagues and often move in and out of universities and Microsoft
business groups as the type of activities they are engaged in shift in
focus. At DARPA, similar benefits have emerged from connecting research
and communities across different types of projects. Therefore, when
thinking about the range of research activities the government can
support, for computing research, what matters is that Federal programs
and agencies enable flexibility in partnerships and the flow of people
among different projects and different types of projects.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Continuing Innovation in Information Technology; Committee on
Depicting Innovation in Information Technology; Computer Science and
Telecommunications Board; Division on Engineering and Physical
Sciences; National Research Council. http://
sites.nationalacademies.org/CSTB/CurrentProjects/CSTB_045476.
Question 2. From an industry perspective, which government
investments most directly contribute to the economic growth of our
country?
Answer. Different government investments contribute to economic
growth in different ways. Certainly investments in research and
education are a critical factor. The strength of the U.S. economy and
the competitiveness of U.S. companies in innovation industries reflects
the quality of the people the companies can hire and the quality and
quantity of research conducted by the entirety of the innovation
ecosystem, including government, businesses, and academia.
Therefore, one critical element in facilitating economic growth is
encouraging and supporting the conduct of research by companies,
universities, and Federal agencies. This includes sustained investment
by government in research, especially fundamental research, in all
disciplines of science and engineering. The government can take a
longer and broader view of research activities, allowing agency
programs to cultivate emerging research concepts and fields. Many of
the opportunities for leadership and growth by American companies will
be realized through the combination of work from multiple fields and
the integration of new knowledge into complex systems. Today,
technology is an integral component of many sectors of the economy,
including manufacturing, transportation, energy, healthcare, financial
services, and national security, and therefore investment in research,
and especially in computing, will make contributions across companies
and geographies.
Complementing Federal support for research, the government can
support and encourage U.S. industry investment in R&D by permanently
and seamlessly extending the R&D tax credit. This tax credit provides a
critical, effective, and proven incentive for companies to increase
their investment in U.S.-based R&D. Microsoft also supports increasing
the alternative simplified credit rate from 14 percent to 20 percent.
Another critical component for enabling economic growth in the U.S.
is a talented and appropriately-prepared workforce. On this topic,
Microsoft has released a National Talent Strategy,\2\ which outlines
the challenges and opportunities facing the U.S. today in improving the
science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) pipeline and
preparing people for the jobs of the 21st century, especially in areas
such as computing and engineering. The strategy offers specific
recommendations within four areas:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ The Microsoft National Talent Strategy is available at http://
www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/download/presskits/citizenship/MSNTS.pdf.
1. Strengthening K-12 STEM education by providing additional
resources to recruit and train STEM teachers and implement
Common Core State Standards and Next Generation Science
Standards that will better prepare students for college and
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work in these disciplines.
2. Broadening access to computer science in high school to ensure
that all students have the opportunity to gain this
foundational knowledge and explore careers in computing.
3. Addressing our national crisis in college completion by helping
students who start college to finish it faster and expanding
higher education capacity to produce more STEM degrees, with a
particular focus on computer science.
4. Targeting changes to high-skilled immigration both to bridge the
short-term skills gap, and to help fund some of the investments
in strengthening the STEM pipeline.
In all of these areas, government, businesses, and schools and
universities have a role to play in increasing opportunities for
American youth and enabling U.S. companies to access skilled workers in
support of our global competitiveness in innovation.
Question 3. Since 2004, nearly 85 percent of R&D-related employment
growth by U.S. multinational companies has been abroad. How does
Microsoft's internal R&D enterprise benefit from its location in the
United States, and what would make the company choose to relocate R&D
abroad?
Answer. Microsoft spends 83 percent of its worldwide R&D budget in
the United States. This reflects the impact we receive from enabling
close collaboration between our R&D and business and product teams and
the flow of people and ideas among these organizations. It also
reflects the value of the partnerships we have with the U.S. innovation
ecosystem, which includes our partners, our customers, and especially
the American higher education system. Research universities are a
critical source of ideas and collaborations, and the students who
become employees at Microsoft and other R&D-intensive companies are a
key conduit for keeping U.S. companies at the forefront of innovation
industries.
This fundamental reliance on access to smart, skilled people is not
unique to Microsoft, and it is not unique to the information technology
sector. But companies across various industry sectors cannot continue
to focus R&D jobs in this country if we cannot fill them here. Other
countries are graduating larger numbers of individuals with the STEM
backgrounds that the global economy so clearly calls for. In the short
term this represents an unrealized opportunity for American job growth.
In the longer term, unless the situation changes, it is possible that
unfilled jobs will migrate over time to where the workforce is, and
this may spur the development of economic competition in a field that
the United States pioneered. In the Microsoft National Talent Strategy
(as described in the response to question (2) above), there is a
discussion of these issues and of the changes that would help ensure
U.S. companies in general have access to an appropriately-trained
workforce in the U.S.
Question 4. What innovative, funding-neutral policies should the
Federal Government pursue that it is not currently?
Answer. The response to question (2) above outlines key ways in
which the Federal Government supports innovation, including investment
in research and in education. Examples of policy steps that can be
taken within these areas include:
Reauthorizing the interagency Networking and Information
Technology Research and Development (NITRD) program.
Ensuring that computer science-focused projects and teachers
are eligible for and included in Federal STEM education
programs, especially those that provide funding for teacher
professional development, research on pedagogy, and assistance
to States on standards and assessments.
Supporting interdisciplinary research and education,
especially the integration of computing into STEM programs in
higher education and in collaborative research.
Increase focus on methods and incentives for retention and
completion of degrees in STEM subjects, including computer
science.
______
Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Bill Nelson to
Dr. Peter Lee
Question 1. You note that Microsoft invests more than $9 billion a
year towards research and development. However, right now, companies in
the U.S. are sitting on around $1.7 trillion in cash instead of
investing it in new technology, and Mr. Augustine notes that U.S.
corporations spend over twice as much on litigation as on basic
research. What can the government do to encourage companies to invest
more in research and technology here in the U.S.?
Answer. Companies do not invest in and conduct research and
development (R&D) in a vacuum. The amount of business investment in
R&D, and the impact of those R&D programs reflects the quality of the
people companies can hire and the quality and quantity of research
conducted by the rest of the innovation ecosystem, especially
universities with the support of Federal agencies.
Therefore, one critical element in encouraging company investment
in R&D is complementary investment by government in research,
especially fundamental research, in all disciplines of science and
engineering. The government can take a longer and broader view of
research activities, allowing agency programs to cultivate emerging
research concepts and fields. Many of the opportunities for leadership
and growth by American companies will be realized through the
combination of work from multiple fields and the integration of new
knowledge into complex systems. Computing is often a central element in
enabling these opportunities in sectors like manufacturing,
transportation, healthcare, and national security. On this front, in
addition to supporting Federal investment in research in general,
Microsoft also specifically is supportive of the reauthorization of the
interagency Networking and Information Technology Research and
Development (NITRD) program.
Another critical element in companies' conduct of R&D in the U.S.
is the access to a talented and appropriately prepared workforce. On
this topic, Microsoft has released a National Talent Strategy,\3\ which
outlines the challenges and opportunities facing the U.S. today in
improving the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)
pipeline and preparing people for the jobs of the 21st century,
especially in areas such as computing and engineering. The strategy
offers specific recommendations within four areas:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ The Microsoft National Talent Strategy is available at http://
www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/download/presskits/citizenship/MSNTS.pdf.
1. Strengthening K-12 STEM education by providing additional
resources to recruit and train STEM teachers and implement
Common Core State Standards and Next Generation Science
Standards that will better prepare students for college and
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
work in these disciplines.
2. Broadening access to computer science in high school to ensure
that all students have the opportunity to gain this
foundational knowledge and explore careers in computing.
3. Addressing our national crisis in college completion by helping
students who start college to finish it faster and expanding
higher education capacity to produce more STEM degrees, with a
particular focus on computer science.
4. Targeting changes to high-skilled immigration both to bridge the
short term skills gap, and to help fund some of the investments
in strengthening the STEM pipeline.
In all of these areas, government, businesses, and schools and
universities have a role to play in increasing opportunities for
American youth and enabling U.S. companies to access skilled workers in
support of our global competitiveness in innovation.
Finally, another step the government can take to make the U.S.
environment conducive to and supportive of U.S. industry's investment
in R&D is to permanently and seamlessly extend the R&D tax credit. This
tax credit provides a critical, effective, and proven incentive for
companies to increase their investment in U.S.-based R&D. Microsoft
also supports increasing the alternative simplified credit rate from 14
percent to 20 percent.
Question 2. Dr. Lee, given that finding the brightest and most
well-prepared students is so important for recruitment at a high tech
firm like Microsoft, what specific measurements would tell us which
universities are best educating their students in the STEM fields?
Answer. As the U.S. economy increases shifts to a focus on
innovation industries, universities and other organizations will be
critical in preparing the workforce of the twenty-first century. The
Bureau of Labor Statistics projections forecast that occupations that
require post-secondary education will grow faster than those which
require a high school diploma or less.\4\ However, as various
institutions of higher education serve different populations and train
people for different jobs and fields, it is difficult to suggest
specific metrics. However, there are some key areas to watch. One is
college completion--whether students are able to achieve the degrees
and credentials that twenty-first century jobs require. Another is
retention of students studying in STEM fields. According to analyses
done for the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology,
fewer than 40 percent of students who enter college intending to major
in a STEM field complete a STEM degree.\5\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ From the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' occupational
employment and job openings data, projected for 2010-2020. Overview
available at http://www.bls.gov/ooh/About/Projections-Overview.htm.
\5\ President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
Engage to Excel: Producing One Million Additional College Graduates
with Degrees in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/pcast-
engage-to-ex
cel-final_2-25-12.pdf. This report derived the number from U.S.
Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics,
2003-04 Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study, Second
Follow-up (BPS:04/09), See Appendix C of PCAST Report.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Finally, it is worth noting that information technology is becoming
a critical element of research and work in all of the STEM fields.
Students in STEM areas would benefit from exposure to computing
principles and experience with how information technology applies
within their field as part of their educational programs.
______
Response to Written Question Submitted by Hon. Amy Klobuchar to
Dr. Peter Lee
Question. I worked to include university commercialization reports
in the COMPETES Reauthorization Act. I understand measuring the long-
term economic impact of the COMPETES Act programs is inherently
difficult--it is often difficult to trace any specific breakthrough or
innovation all the way back to a specific research grant, additionally,
these projects take time. What is the best way to measure the success
of these programs? What indicators should we look to? For example, is
there a way to estimate how many jobs are created by a program or by
the Act?
Answer. As noted above, it is difficult to measure the economic
impact of individual programs in an interconnected system such as the
innovation ecosystem in the U.S. This is particularly challenging in
the information technology space, where new products and capabilities
build on a broad collection of technologies and advances and can't be
traced to a single research paper or patent or graduate student.
In the longer term, the overall benefit to the economy due to
investments in research can be seen in the emergence of new industries.
The National Research Council's ``Continuing Innovation in Information
Technology'' describes eight entirely new product categories that
ultimately became the basis of new billion-dollar industries, including
broadband and mobile technologies; microprocessors; personal computing;
the Internet and the Web; cloud computing; enterprise systems;
entertainment technologies; and robotics.\6\ Federal investments in
research, mostly in academia, played a critical role in all of these
areas, both by funding specific research areas that opened up new
opportunities and supporting the education of the scientists and
engineers who powered the new products and companies.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ Continuing Innovation in Information Technology; Committee on
Depicting Innovation in Information Technology; Computer Science and
Telecommunications Board; Division on Engineering and Physical
Sciences; National Research Council. http://
sites.nationalacademies.org/CSTB/CurrentProjects/CSTB_045476.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Similarly, the connections between investments in information
technology research and job creation are hard to measure narrowly.
Looking at employment just in the information technology sector does
not reflect the value that advances in information technology
capabilities bring to sectors across the economy, including financial
services, manufacturing, healthcare, and others.\7\ In addition, there
is the impact of high tech companies on local economies. It has been
estimated that for every high tech job created in a metropolitan area,
five additional local jobs are created outside of the high tech
industry.\8\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ Of the people working in computing occupations, 9 percent are
in information services, 12 percent are in financial services, 36
percent are in professional and business services, 7 percent are in
government and public education services, and 12 percent are in
manufacturing. Georgetown University Center for Education and the
Workforce report on STEM (October 2011), by Anthony P. Carnevale,
Nicole Smith, and Michelle Melton, available at http://cew.george
town.edu/stem/.
\8\ Enrico Moretti, The New Geography of Jobs (2012).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
______
Response to Written Question Submitted by Hon. John D. Rockefeller IV
to
John L. Winn
Question. What innovative, funding-neutral policies should the
Federal Government pursue that it is not currently?
Answer. I propose making STEM a priority for many K-12 and higher
education grant programs.
Require Title II to have a STEM focus in state strategies.
Make Title II STEM programs be more competitive.
Give scholarship programs a STEM priority component.
______
Response to Written Question Submitted by Hon. Amy Klobuchar to
John L. Winn
Question. I worked to include university commercialization reports
in the COMPETES Reauthorization Act. I understand measuring the long-
term economic impact of the COMPETES Act programs is inherently
difficult--it is often difficult to trace any specific breakthrough or
innovation all the way back to a specific research grant, additionally,
these projects take time. What is the best way to measure the success
of these programs? What indicators should we look to? For example, is
there a way to estimate how many jobs are created by a program or by
the Act?
Answer. The USDOE needs to develop common metrics toward improving
the STEM education and workforce development and require these metrics
to be reported on. Once data is being collected on common metrics, they
should be analyzed and used to drive future policy on what works. These
evaluations are often put aside as the government moves on to next
year's grants.
The Federal Government should focus on scaling effective programs
in STEM fields. One major problem is local successes are never really
scaled to make a larger impact.
The state of Florida has done a fabulous job of tracking students
from education through employment. Look to their program. There are two
issues: (1) How many more skilled workers do we have going into
relevant STEM fields and (2) How many new jobs are being created. Not
sure how to measure the second one as jobs tend to follow innovations
developed in the market place and based on consumer demand.