We continue to hear from nearly every leader in this country that an internationally competitive STEM education pipeline is critical to the economic security of the US. Investment in STEM programs at all levels is a stated national priority. But this vital education and economic policy objective has slammed into an economic headwind that apparently makes rational budgeting a political impossibility.
Just recently, the body that oversees public higher education in Texas voted to close six undergraduate physics programs in the state. Sadly, these programs provided critical opportunities in science to the rapidly growing minority populations. These institutions included the two largest historically black colleges and universities, Texas Southern University and Prairie View A&M University, along with Hispanic-serving institutions like the University of Texas at Brownsville.
Oddly, science and engineering play an extraordinarily important role in this state, which is home to the Johnson Space Center, telecommunications giants like AT&T, national security companies such as Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, semiconductor history makers like Texas Instruments, energy leaders like Exxon Mobil, and a rapidly expanding biotechnology sector anchored by the Texas Medical Center, the largest medical center in the world. In a part of our country with so much at stake in having a robust and diverse science and engineering pipeline, cutting any science program seems "penny wise and pound foolish."
But in a spirit of efficiency, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board has set the minimum threshold for program survival to 25 students graduating in a five-year window. You might just be thinking, "Well, let's be honest. If they can't meet this low graduation number, they ought to be closed." However, according to the American Physical Society, if this threshold were applied to all physics programs in the country, 526 of the 760 would have to shut down. And tragically, only two physics programs from the nation's 34 HBCUs would still be open.
With so much concern over the cost of higher education, this is a trend that just might be catching on. According to numerous reports, Governor Rick Scott of Florida is already considering a similar move. Is your cash-strapped state far behind?
The production of physics degrees is but one reason to maintain the existence of physics programs. Even with the longstanding federal funding for physics programs, our country has never produced much more than 6,000 physics graduates a year. (More typically, it is between 4,000 and 5,000.) Yet the entire enterprise of modern science, engineering, and medicine requires strong and available physics departments to teach the extensive physics curricula required by nearly every technical discipline. As an academic dean, my firm belief is that it will be extremely difficult to attract highly qualified physics instructors to universities that don't offer physics degrees, which inevitably will disproportionately harm minority students we work so hard to recruit. And the impact on high school science education might be just as significant. Teachers today are increasingly required to hold a degree in the discipline they teach. How will we fill the shortage of high school physics teachers if states across the nation follow the lead of Texas?
More than 50 years ago, Sputnik raised the specter that our nation's poor science and engineering education was putting our country at risk. We responded swiftly with the National Defense Education Act. Today, with intellectual might arguably more important than military might, this disturbing policy action should concern all of us.
"Oddly, science and engineering play an extraordinarily important role in this state."
Maybe I am uninitiated on the possible meanings of this statement, and prefer not to criticize a well-written article that I personally believe _needs_ to be written again and again. As a native Texan who has always seen technological enterprise as a dominant force, I ask... oddly? Substantiate.
Chuck, that's really interesting. What was car reliability being so poorly engineered back then and apparently, only in that decade? I've heard that residential construction in that decade was poorly engineered and shoddily made. What was going on during the 1970s to encourage or demand such lousy quality in both fields?
Most automotive engineers will admit that vehicle reliability was poor in the '70s. Even the staunchest apologists will admit that the reliability of cars in North America climbed when American automakers realized they were in a dogfight in the late 1980s. That's another way of saying, "We could have made better cars, but we didn't start doing it until we were forced to."
where I mentioned the shift in the mid-70s to smaller Japanese cars, which seemed to me like an '"evolutionary" process at the time. But I was thinking of mileage and small size, not lousy engineering--I didn't realize that was going on at the time. That would obviously add a big impetus to the shift!
Going from the '60s to the '70s, when American engineers were most notable for building lousy cars, there was a precipitous drop in esteem for engineers.
You know, I think this whole thrust towards STEM that occurred during the Sputnik years also gave engineers a lot more respect, to bring in the topic of a thread from another article:
Good point, Ann. Sputnik was easy for the masses to support, especially given the way American politicians were characterizing it. Given the fear of nuclear war at the time, many Americans believed that Russian spacecrafts would be flying overhead, flinging hydrogen bombs down on us from on high. Lyndon Johnson famously said, "I do not believe that this generation of Americans is willing to go to bed each night by the light of a Communist moon." For pure sense of national mission, it's tough to match that.
Alex, that's an interesting point about many Sputniks instead of just one. Not only did the one Sputnik sway public opinion and galvanize US education efforts, its singularity made the whole issue easy to understand for many people, as well as making it easy to believe we could "win". I think the fact that now there are many Sputniks makes it harder to identify the issue--which is basically the same--harder to sway public opinion, and harder to galvanize education efforts.
Dean Orsak closes with the observation that Sputnik catalyzed a whole generation to get going on science and math. The problem today is that there's no such singular issue to sway public opinion, yet a thousand tiny Sputniks are out there undercutting the U.S.'s able to maintain its position. We need to get going on STEM. Here's an interview I did over at InformationWeek with former Intel chairman Craig Barrett on STEM.
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