[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 140 (Friday, October 28, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12049-S12050]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             MATH LITERACY

  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, in a few moments we will be closing for the 
week. But before doing so, I wanted to bring to the attention of my 
colleagues something that was just brought to my attention about 2 
hours ago when I was e-mailed by our President pro tempore, Senator Ted 
Stevens.
  Basically, in a little cryptic language, it said: Bill, did you read 
the New York Times today?
  I said: No, I haven't read the New York Times today.
  Then he gave me one statistic that he picked up. I looked at it, and 
he is exactly right. That statistic drove home to me a threat--we don't 
talk very much about it--that we need to face up to and to act on. We 
are doing some powerful things in the Senate to do just that. But we 
are going to have to put it out front, and we are going to have to lead 
on it.
  The statistic is that China, in engineering, one field, is producing 
442,000 new undergraduates a year, along with 48,000 graduates with 
master's degrees and 8,000 Ph.D.s in engineering. I focus on that to 
seize the opportunity that we do have before us a real threat that 
America is losing--not will lose but is losing--today the edge in 
technology that we depend on, and we depend on it in terms of creating 
the American dream, maintaining that American dream to pass on to our 
children, and it is time for us to act.

  This has not been the first time that certain challenges have been 
put before us. We faced a similar challenge, and we overcame it. On 
October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union--and we all remember that day, or 
those of us who were alive at the time remember that date--successfully 
launched the first manmade satellite into space. I was a very little 
boy at the time sitting around the dinner table and watching the 
stunning effect that had on my own family as they talked about it, I 
remember, one Sunday afternoon.
  The event stunned America, but it spurred us to action. We don't have 
a Sputnik, per se, moment, but we need to create it. We need to educate 
the American people where we are today, the challenge that we face and 
the threat that we face to our competitive edge.
  Less than a year later after that October 4 day in 1957, President 
Eisenhower signed the National Defense Education Act to restore 
America's preeminence in science. Math, engineering, and science became 
our top educational priorities. As a result, not only did we close the 
gap with the Soviet Union, but we far exceeded our own dreams, our own 
expectations at the time.
  Fifty years later we face a similar challenge with the entry of 
China, the example I used, but also India and soon to be many other 
nations, into this global marketplace. As writer and observer Tom 
Friedman details in his wonderful book, ``The World Is Flat,'' American 
workers face accelerating competition not only in the low-wage 
manufacturing sector but now in the new fields of science and 
engineering and the technological fields. That is where the competition 
is today--with China and with India.
  According to BusinessWeek, together China and India graduate 500,000 
scientists and engineers a year--every year, 500,000. How about 
America? Where are we? Just guess. Think. Are we more? Less?
  United States, 60,000; 500,000, India and China every year. We are 
down to 60,000. China, I just mentioned--more than 442,000 graduates 
every year.
  While the entire world is getting smarter and faster and stronger in 
math and science, the United States is not. We are moving in the 
opposite direction. Indeed, the number of engineering degrees awarded 
in the United States is down 20 percent from just a decade ago, 10 
years ago. We are moving in the opposite direction. If current trends 
continue, by 2010 more than 90 percent of all scientists in the world, 
of all engineers in the world, 90 percent will be in Asia. Already, the 
majority of graduate science and engineering students in the United 
States are foreign born.
  Let me say that again. Already, the majority of graduate students in 
science and engineering in the United States are foreign born.
  Instead of investing their new skills in America, they are 
increasingly returning--not staying here but returning to their homes. 
According to Education for Innovation Initiative, which is a coalition 
of America's most prominent business organizations, we need to double--
we need to double the number of American science, technology, 
engineering, and mathematic students by 2015 if we are to remain the 
technological leader in the 21st century. That is a lot to do by 2015, 
just 10 years from now--a doubling. As I said, we are moving in the 
opposite direction.
  If we don't significantly improve math and science education in this 
country, there is a real danger that we will fall permanently behind--
once we lose that competitive edge in technology, in science, in 
mathematics where most job creation, as we look to the future, occurs.
  How are we failing? I used the example of students today at the 
graduate level in engineering. So where does it all start? You have to 
jump all the way back down to the 15-, 16-year-old in the middle school 
areas. Are we failing there as we look to the future? They will become 
the graduates, whether it is math, science, engineering, or some other 
field, in the future.
  Well, right now in the 29 industrialized nations in the world, if I 
asked you just to imagine where you think we are if you look at 15-
year-old students--and most people would say,

[[Page S12050]]

whether you are going to be a scientist or an engineer, it is really 
determined in that age, from about 14 to 16. If I happened to ask the 
American people listening but also my colleagues, if there are 29 
industrialized countries, and we want to rank mathematics performance 
of students around the world, is the United States first? You would 
think so. Maybe fifth? Surely, you would think so, in the United States 
of America, with our resources and our great innovation and culture of 
creativity and the American dream.
  It is not 5th. It is not 10th. It is not 15th. It is not 20th. The 
United States now ranks 24th of 29 industrialized nations in math 
literacy among 15-year-olds. We fall behind who? You can name 23 of 
them, but it is Finland, Korea, Canada, the Czech Republic, Ireland, 
Poland, Hungary, Spain, France.

  Business leaders who observe this tell us that fewer and fewer 
American workers have the math and science skills they need for today's 
jobs. One researcher at the Hudson Institute warns:

       We're rolling into the most severe shortage of skilled 
     workers this country has ever seen.

  And in what must be the most dismal development, tutoring American 
students in math via the Internet is becoming a boom industry--in 
India. We are actually outsourcing our education.
  All this really says: What do you do? These are the observations. 
They are observations at the middle school level, the high school 
level, the graduate level, even beyond graduate level, and we are 
failing. So it is incumbent upon us to act, and to act with meaningful 
solutions that respond to a real problem that is there today, and it is 
going to increase over time. We cannot afford to lose the technological 
race. It is a matter of economics. It is a matter of security. I 
believe it is a matter of national security as well. It is a matter of 
keeping jobs, good-paying jobs right here in America.
  People say: Well, Senator Frist, he is a doctor. He is a scientist. 
He has a little bias.
  It is way beyond that. Math and the hard sciences are what drive 
innovation in just about every single industry today. From computers, 
to my own field of medicine, we depend on technology to improve our 
quality of life, to be able to figure out how we solve problems that 
seemingly are insurmountable, that are unsolvable. We solve them by the 
most innovative, most creative, the most advanced technological 
solution. That is where that competitive edge exists.
  Not only that but math comprehension is critical to everyday tasks 
today, whether it is balancing the checkbook or figuring out how to 
interpret your 401(k). You need those everyday skills. We are thriving 
in a fast-changing modern world, constantly evolving world, moving so 
much faster than any of us would have anticipated 5 or 10 years ago. We 
need these skills to survive and to thrive.
  That is why in terms of action, in the sort of things we need to do, 
in August I proposed the national SMART grant. The national SMART grant 
provides low-income students up to $1,500 in their third and in their 
fourth year of college to pursue math and science. Together the maximum 
Pell grant and the national SMART grant cover nearly an entire typical 
State university tuition bill for those last 2 years.
  People say: Why the last 2 years? The last 2 years because that is 
when people determine their majors, in those years of college. The 
national SMART grant will make it easier for low-income students to 
meet that heavy class load in math and in science. We know that those 
academic loads are heavy in those particular fields.
  Some of my colleagues have worked on this. I thank them. To start 
naming them, Senators Enzi and Roberts and Warner have done a 
tremendous job in getting this legislation to the point that it exists, 
and each has been a champion of rigorous math and science education. In 
addition, I thank Chairman Enzi, especially, for more than doubling the 
investment in this SMART grant program. It is focused on the needs I am 
speaking about today. As a matter of fact, the SMART grant is a good, 
solid first step in getting America's science and math education back 
on track so that we truly can globally compete.
  Mr. President, throughout our history, our Nation has been blessed to 
be a land of innovation and creativity and dynamism. We have attracted 
the best, and we have attracted the brightest from across the oceans. 
And they have come and made our country an even more vibrant and more 
dynamic place. I am confident that if we keep our focus on the 
fundamentals, America will continue to offer unrivaled opportunity and 
prosperity for generations to come.

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