INTRODUCTION

Scientific research is exacting work, requiring not only long years of training but also high intellectual ability. Beyond this, one widely subscribed theory holds that within the scientific enterprise it is less the many "worker bees" than the few genuinely creative minds who make the most critical contributions (Kuhn, 1962). In any case, few would argue that the health of the enterprise requires a steady inflow of top-flight talent.

Since around 1993, graduate enrollments in most fields within the natural sciences and engineering have been declining, according to National Science Foundation data. It can be argued that this is simply a response to labor market signals and could be offset by recruiting more non-U.S. citizens. But the enrollment fall-off would more disturbing if it were found that the numbers of the very best U.S. students embarking on S/E graduate studies were falling faster than the total decline. Moreover, most careful observers would probably say that it is risky to cede away too many of the best minds raised here when many other countries’ universities and other research institutions show signs of becoming increasingly attractive to their own natives. In addition, other developed countries appear to be competing more actively now than in the past in the international market for top scientific talent.

In this paper, I will present some preliminary evidence on the apparent fall-off in interest in advanced studies in science and engineering by top young U.S. talent, make some assumptions for purposes of the present discussion about what additional research may show, and then focus on exploring conceptually the broad contours of the policy options available to policymakers and the constraints operating upon these. To preview the conclusions, as with many problems there do not appear to be a set of feasible, low cost, high efficacy options to choose from in this complex policy arena. First, it is not at all clear that simply facilitating the "natural" operation of the labor market by improving the information available to prospective students, though desirable and probably now technically feasible, will help much with the problem of declining attraction of the "best and brightest." It seems likely that it is market signals already that are dissuading many in this key group from pursuing advanced S/E studies. Policies designed to work directly on the supply side of the problem, such as enhancing fellowship and other graduate student support, would likely have an impact but would also have serious unintended consequences. By themselves, such policies ignore the demand side roots of the problem and indeed are likely to lead to further supply/demand imbalances in the longer run. While I find that certain modest supply side steps are probably desirable, the major conclusion is that a carefully targeted effort probably should be made on the demand side of the issue. I give some attention then to trying to sketch the design parameters of a feasible policy response that provides some promise of enhancing the attractiveness of advanced studies in S/E to the nation’s most talented young college graduates.

BACKGROUND: A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE UPS AND DOWNS OF THE S/E PHD LABOR MARKET

The essentials of this history are well known. The Cold War, in particular the Sputnik era, the scientific and technical possibilities of the atomic age, and the need to teach the baby boom generation of college students produced a burst of demand for scientists and engineers in the late 1950s and the 1960s, fed in large measure by public R & D and higher education spending. The scientific, technological and career prospects this burst created, along with the graduate fellowships and assistantships it supported, fed a large gain in graduate enrollments in the S/E fields. PhDs awarded in the sciences and engineering approximately trebled from 1960 to 1970 (Fechter and Gaddy, 1998).

A sharp cutback occurred in the growth rate of R & D spending in the late 1960s and 1970s. Some fields experienced real declines for several years. Also, in the early 1970s, college and university enrollments stopped growing rapidly as the cohorts associated with the big postwar jump in births passed on through the system. The federal government reduced its support of graduate fellowships quite abruptly (Breneman, 1975). In response, PhD awards began to fall off considerably in engineering, mathematics, and the physical science disciplines and leveled off in the biological sciences (Fechter and Gaddy, 1998; National Research Council, annual publication). Fewer graduate students created problems for the academic research economy which needs these relatively low cost apprentice scientists to produce its research products cost-effectively. Hence, partly as a replacement mechanism, the number of non-citizen graduate students in the S/E fields climbed sharply (although there had long been gradual gains in foreign graduate students and PhD recipients at U.S. universities). Such an increase was possible because U.S. science and universities were very attractive to foreign students.

Another noteworthy response to the abrupt downturn in demand developed in the S/E PhD labor market. For decades, a small share of young scientists, in large measure the most promising ones, had opted for additional post-PhD training as postdoctoral appointees (sometimes called fellows or associates or simply "postdocs") in academic or occasionally other research laboratories. Postdoctoral appointments are temporary research appointments undertaken by young scientists, usually immediately after obtaining the PhD, ostensibly to deepen and/or broaden their experience in research. The usual pattern is to move to a different university from the one where the young scientist obtains the doctorate in order to maximize new learning and cross-fertilization of ideas. In the past, typically, the young scientist remained in this temporary student/research associate status for a year or two before moving on to a faculty or other career research position (NRC, 1969). As late as the 1960s, the proportion of new PhDs taking such immediate postdoctoral research/study appointments was fairly modest, 20-30% in chemistry, physics and most of the biosciences, though already around 50% in the biomedical disciplines. Historically, those young scientists who chose the postdoctoral route were the "cream of the crop," disproportionately those from the best graduate departments, national fellowship winners and the like (NRC, 1969; Zumeta, 1985).

By the late 1970s a distinctly different pattern was developing in the postdoctoral ranks. First, the numbers of postdoctoral appointees and their share of the new PhD cohort climbed abruptly in a pattern coinciding closely with measures of the slackness of the PhD labor market (Zumeta, 1985:especially pp. 22-26). Second, the typical time spent in the ostensibly temporary postdoctoral status began to grow (NRC, 1981), suggesting that young scientists were "backing up" in a relatively stagnant postdoctoral pool with insufficient outlets. Third, when he examined the self-reported motivations of more recent postdocs (1970s) compared to those of earlier eras, Zumeta found that those of more recent vintage saw themselves not only as becoming or extending their postdoctoral stay in order to await improved market conditions but at the same time investing further in their human capital, which they felt the market eventually would reward. But Zumeta also found that the big increase in the number of postdoctoral appointees included not just those who, from all indications, were the most promising of the PhD crop as in the past, but also for the first time a substantial number of young scientists who seemed to be less promising and to report that they became postdocs because they had few other options (Zumeta, 1985, chapter 3).

In 1985, Zumeta expressed concern that the disappointing labor market returns to postdoctoral training might be dissuading the most able students from pursuing this training which did show signs of improving their subsequent research productivity (see note 7, below). Although market conditions improved (from the standpoint of new PhD scientists) somewhat in the mid- and late 1980s – albeit in part because new PhD output had fallen off considerably in many of the S/E fields – this improvement was short-lived. Even as the economy boomed in the late 1980s, several analytical reports appeared forecasting a strong academic market for additional PhD scientists and engineers by the mid-1990s as colleges and universities saw 1960s era faculty members retire just as the children of the baby boom echo reached college age (Bowen and Sosa, 1989: National Science Foundation, 1989: 1990).

Graduate student enrollments responded fairly strongly and S/E PhD output again increased (Fechter and Gaddy, 1998). But, on the demand side, the economic setback of the early 1990s intervened and the much longer-lasting sluggishness and caution in university finances (Zumeta, 1998). Again, S/E graduate students completing the PhD faced limited permanent job prospects, the pool of postdoctoral appointees reached unprecedented size (Commission Professsionals in Science and Technology, 1997; Association of American Universities, 1998), and the length of postdoctoral stays grew (Regets, 1999). Meanwhile, the number of non-U.S. citizen graduate students and new PhDs in the S/E fields leveled off in the early 1990s after growing for many years. (Fechter and Gaddy 1998: 358; Sanderson and Dugoni, 1999: 18-19).

WHAT IS KNOWN ABOUT THE BEHAVIOR OF "TOP" STUDENTS

There is little to say about how the top tier of young scientists in particular have responded to these ups and downs for the issue has been little studied. Several single-institution studies have suggested that top baccalaureate graduates (by class rank, etc.) from certain elite institutions have been much less likely in recent years than their earlier counterparts to pursue graduate studies in the arts and sciences compared to professional schools (Goheen, 1984; Rosovsky, 1990). Reviewing a broader range of literature (but little specifically pertaining to the quality of those who pursue science and engineering studies), Bok (1993) draws a similar conclusion.

The most recent thorough empirical study directly pertinent to the issue was published by Hartnett (1985; 1987). He indicated that a motivation for his investigation was that the diminished prospects for academic careers might have hurt the relative attractiveness to top students of PhD studies in the arts and sciences compared to major professional fields (medicine, law, business). Thus, he sought to compare the quality, as best it could be measured, of then-recent cohorts of professional degree recipients in these fields with comparable cohorts of PhD recipients in eight arts and science disciplines, including chemistry, electrical engineering, mathematics and physics among the S/E fields. Because professional degree seekers and PhD seekers usually do not take the same graduate school tests, Hartnett’s procedure was to go back to a comparable national scale that most of them did have in common: the Scholastic Aptitude Test or SAT. After great expense and years of effort, he was able to construct a large sample of degree recipients from several cohorts and identify their SAT scores.

In brief, Hartnett found that, in virtually all the arts and sciences fields (including all the natural sciences and engineering disciplines studied), the PhD recipients held a considerable SAT score advantage over the professional degree recipients and this gap changed little over the degree cohorts he studied: 1966, 1971, 1976, and 1981. The PhD recipients’ advantage was on the order of 25-35 points on each of the SAT scales (quantitative and verbal) for the three most recent cohorts, for which the data were more complete. However, in order to get test score data for both the PhDs and professional degree recipients, even Hartnett’s most recent cohort had taken the SAT test in the early 1970s so the data, while interesting, are now so old as to be of essentially historical interest. We are left with the question of how S/E has fared in the decision making of more recent cohorts, ideally of entering graduate students rather than completed degree recipients

The same year Hartnett’s journal article was published, the National Academy of Sciences and its sister organizations convened a steering committee "to examine the issue of whether graduate departments in the sciences, engineering and mathematics are continuing to attract an appropriate share of the brightest students" (NAS, NAE, IOM steering committee report, 1988). This group reported that it was quite concerned about the problem but did not have access to enough data or research resources to draw any firm conclusions and simply called for more research "into the nature and causes of the problem" (ibid.).

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS: NEW EVIDENCE ABOUT THE INTEREST OF THE "BEST AND BRIGHTEST" IN SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

Graduate enrollments in virtually all the natural sciences and engineering fields other than biological sciences have been falling since about 1993. Declines between 1993 and 1997 range from five percent in computer science to nearly twenty percent in mathematical sciences. (See graph.) Significantly, these declines are not confined to U.S. citizens in most disciplines although the declines are generally steeper among citizens. Only in computer science and electrical engineering (and just 1.6% in EE) have there been gains over this period in temporary resident students. Aggregating across all the natural science and engineering fields, the graduate enrollment decline from 1993 to 1997 was 8.6% for U.S. citizens and 7.3% for non-citizens (temporary residents). The negative trend in temporary resident students may signal a new problem – or simply a fact of life – emerging for the U.S. academic science enterprise: we may no longer be able to count on replacing U.S. citizen graduate students with non-citizens.

Within these recent graduate enrollment declines in S/E fields, what can be said about trends in the quality composition of the U.S. citizen group? There is no direct evidence to cite as yet but, with the cooperation of the Educational Testing Service, I have been able to analyze trends in the scores of all Graduate Record Examination (GRE) General Test examinees for selected years from 1988-89 through 1997-98. Each examinee completes a questionnaire at the time he or she registers for the test that includes a question about intended field of graduate study. Of course, no one can claim with great confidence that high GRE scores are a highly valid predictor of unusual scientific talent or creativity but they are an important indicator used by most graduate department admissions committees and there are few alternatives to choose from with broad national coverage across disciplines and a comparable scale.

Among the U.S. citizen examinees indicating intent to pursue S/E graduate studies, there is a general pattern of modest declines in mean GRE scores between 1988-89 and 1991-92, on all three of the General Test scales (see Table 1). On the verbal scale, the decline of 20-27 points in mean scores in the S/E fields over this period is quite comparable to the 26-point decline in mean scores of all examinees. On the GRE analytical scale, mean scores of all examinees changed only a little over this period (-3 points). Four of the five S/E field categories experienced decreases greater than this, ranging from a decline of six points among would-be engineers to –17 to -20 points each in physical sciences, mathematics, and computer science. However, there was a 7-point gain in the mean analytical score of students indicating intent to pursue graduate studies in the biological sciences. The pattern in the quantitative scale scores is somewhat similar but less steep: among all examinees mean scores fell just one point over the nine year period, while there were declines in three of the five S/E disciplines (i.e., among students claiming intent to pursue graduate studies in these fields) ranging from –6 points among would-be engineers to –14 points among prospective computer scientists. There was an 11-point decline among prospective physical scientists, virtually no change among those headed for mathematics, and a 10-point gain in mean scores for those seeking to become biological scientists.

These changes are not large and mean scores could be misleading. They might not be reflective of changes at the top end of the distribution with which we are most concerned. Table 2 shows the proportion of U.S. citizen examinees scoring above 700 on each scale. For all examinees, these proportions of high scorers decreased by 2-3 percentage points over the 9-year period on the verbal and quantitative scales but changed little on the analytical scale. The main differences between the would-be natural scientists and engineers and those interested in other fields shows up in the quantitative scale. Here, decreases in proportions of high-scoring physical scientists and computer scientists drive down the composite figure for S/E by more than four percentage points over the period while there is no change in the proportion of high quantitative scorers headed for non-science fields ("Total: All Other Fields"). Note also that the proportions of high scorers on the quantitative and analytical scales among those headed for biological sciences increased.

The broad patterns over the years from 1988-89 to 1997-98 are very similar if we narrow the definition of high scorers to focus on those scoring 750 or above (Table 3). The proportion of very high scorers on the verbal scale is very low and declining similarly among both would-be S/Es and those headed for non-science fields. The proportion of very high scorers on the analytical scale has changed little overall but declined slightly among S/Es, and the proportion of very high quantitative scorers is down around four percentage points among prospective S/Es but little changed among those headed for other fields.

Another way to view the data is to ask whether there have been notable changes over time in the distribution among fields of the high scorers (>700) or very high scorers (>750). This analysis asks more directly about the relative attractiveness of S/E studies as compared to other fields to evidently high ability students. Again the findings are very similar whichever cutoff point is used (see Tables 4 and 5). In terms of high scorers on any one of the three scales, S/E has lost some ground over these last nine years. Comparing the 9-year changes in the shares of high scorers headed for S/E fields to those headed for other designated fields, all the S/E fields except biological sciences have lost ground while non-science fields (see "Total: All Other Fields") have gained significantly in their attraction (at least to the point of stated intent) of top students.

All these proportions and shares are based on the total number of U.S. citizen GRE examinees in a given year. It is important to note also that the number of GRE test-takers has fallen off considerably in the last few years (Figure 1). The number of U.S. citizen General Test examines was around 219,000 in 1988-89, climbed steadily to a peak of 301,000 in 1993-94, then fell in each succeeding year to a level of around 248,000 in 1997-98. Numbers of examinees by intended graduate study field for the four years for which detailed data were available for this analysis are shown in Table 6. Interestingly, among these four years, the peak year for total examinees was 1994-95, with about 293,000 examinees (just 2.6% below the 1993-94 peak). But, among the available years, the peak for examinees reporting intent to study S/E fields was earlier, in 1991-92, with the 1997-98 figure 16% lower and slightly below the figure for 1988-89.

Juxtaposing the decline in numbers of test-takers headed for S/E fields with the earlier-discussed modest fall in proportions of would-be S/Es who scored highly produces a picture of apparent decline in interest in S/E among top students that is more complete and more sobering (see Tables 7 and 8). Compared to the 1991-92 peak, the number of high scorers on the quantitative scale headed for S/E fields in 1997-98 is down 21-22% (depending upon whether the 700 or 750 score cutoff is used) while the number of such top students headed for other designated fields ("Total: All Other Fields") has been essentially stable over this period. Moreover, the 20%+ declines in top-scorers headed for S/E fields in aggregate is net of a large gain in such students headed for the biological sciences. All the other S/E field categories show declines in top scorers, ranging from –4% in number of 750+ scorers headed for computer science programs to declines of more than one-third in both 700+ and 750+ scorers headed for mathematics and engineering. Thus, the declines in top GRE scorers headed for graduate studies in the natural sciences and engineering, biological sciences excepted, appear to be consistent (not likely to be a single-year aberration), sizable, and disproportionate (i.e., larger than the declines in all GRE examinees and in all those who say they are headed for S/E fields).

 WHERE ARE THE TOP STUDENTS GOING?

If top students appear to be turning away from graduate studies in the sciences and engineering (other than biological sciences), where are they going instead? This is obviously a very important question but a complex one to answer. A clue about a part of the answer may come from examining the trends in the indicated graduate study field destinations of the top GRE scorers, although of course young people may pursue professions that do not require this test or may be opting out of graduate studies entirely to go directly into the workforce. To begin with the GRE data, Tables 7 and 8 show that, within the "non-science" field set, the only specified field with a notable increase in top scorers is "health science" (this is ETS terminology).

Upon investigation, this field grouping turns out to dominated by applied, master’s-level health professions and includes few basic science specialties or research-oriented doctoral degrees. Thus, it is grouped with the non-science fields, not the S/E fields. The dominant fields, in terms of numbers of graduate students and recent growth in enrollments, making up this category are speech/language pathology, physical therapy, nursing, veterinary medicine, and public health. The first two of these professions accounted for 48% of the total gain over 1988-89 to 1997-98 in numbers indicating intent to pursue graduate work in the "health sciences" category. Tables 7 shows that, among 1997-98 GRE test-takers who scored above 700 on the quantitative scale, there were more headed for these applied health professions than for the biological sciences and the increase in high scorers was about twice as large in absolute terms in the health fields. At the 750+ level (Table 8), the numbers of would-be biological scientists and health professionals were closer but the health professions experienced more growth over the recent period.

Students headed for medicine, law, and business generally take specialized tests designed for the graduate schools of their profession rather than the GRE. It seems plausible that the decline in GRE test taking might be accompanied by a corresponding rise in numbers of examinees taking these other tests. Ideally, one would want to look at such patterns by age or baccalaureate cohort but at the moment all we have are some gross data about recent trends in numbers of professional school applicants, matriculants, test-takers, and mean scores. From these data, law schools seem unlikely to be attracting many students who might otherwise opt for S/E careers. Between 1991-92 and 1997-98 total applicants (unduplicated count of individuals applying) to U.S. law schools dropped by 26,000 (27%) and new matriculants decreased slightly. Mean LSAT scores were virtually unchanged over the period while those for matriculants actually fell by two points (from 157.0 to 155.0).

Such indicators as are available regarding interest in medical school and quality of applicants suggest that some more top students may have headed in this direction in recent years. Generally, numbers of top students and total applicants have tended to move in similar directions in graduate professional fields (Adelman, 1985; Bok, 1993). Medical school applicants (unduplicated number of individuals applying) jumped from around 36,700 in 1992-93 to 45,500 in 1996-97, but have since fallen below 40,000. New matriculant numbers grew until 1994-95 (to more than 15,500) but have been virtually level since then meaning that, however much interest there is, educational opportunities in medicine are not growing. Both applicant and matriculant mean scores on the MCAT verbal reasoning test have gradually increased in the 1990s, which does not prove that more top students are taking the test but is suggestive. In short, medicine may have attracted the interest in recent years of more of the top students who could have pursued S/E research careers, but it is not clear that they are all being accommodated in the medical schools since enrollments are flat. Perhaps some of these students are "spilling over" into the non-M.D. health professions mentioned earlier.

There are also mixed signs in the area of graduate business education. The number of GMAT examinees annually has climbed steadily in the 1990s and now approaches the number taking the GRE. Significantly, average scores have also climbed, by 20 points between 1992-93 and 1996-97. Complete and comparable graduate enrollment data are not available but the number of MBA awards appears to be leveling off. This field could be attracting more top students within a level total, but we cannot tell from the data available.

GENDER AND RACE/ETHNICITY DIFFERENCES

Significantly, the declines in numbers of high GRE scorers headed for S/E graduate studies are concentrated among males and whites. Between 1988-89 and 1997-98, numbers of male U.S. citizens indicating intent to pursue graduate studies in S/E and scoring 700 or greater on the GRE quantitative scale have fallen by nearly 2,000 (-17%), as shown in Table 9. The only S/E field showing an increase in interest among male high scorers was biological sciences. Also, the numbers of high scoring males indicating plans for graduate study in other specified fields (i.e., outside natural sciences and engineering) grew by 725, or nearly 13%, as the number of high scorers interested in S/E declined. The number of high scoring women headed for S/E fields has increased, but fairly modestly, by around 300 individuals per year, or less than 10%, for all the S/E fields combined. There were decreases among both women and men in mathematical sciences, computer science, and engineering (though the change was very small for women in engineering). In sum, the patterns for women have not offset the sizable declines in the number of high scoring men headed for S/E. For both sexes, however, biological sciences is an important exception: it continues to attract healthy increases in top scoring students.

Turning to the race/ethnicity categories, the numbers of cases are very small so the data for all the natural science and engineering fields have been combined (Table 10). There have been healthy percentage increases between 1988-89 and 1997-98 in the numbers of high scoring students (>700 on the GRE quantitative scale) headed for S/E in each race/ethnicity group: Asian-Americans- +22%; African-Americans- +50%; and Hispanic-Americans- +50%. But since the original bases were quite small, the actual additional numbers of high scorers are also fairly small: 283 additional Asian Americans in 1997-98 compared to 1988-89, 203 African-Americans and Hispanics combined. Unfortunately, this total gain of less than 500 high scorers is far more than offset by a decline in white high scorers headed for S/E of more than 1,700. Notice also that rates of increase were greater in high scorers headed for non-S/E fields ("All Other Fields") than in those headed for S/E among all the race/ethnicity groups.

While these trend data are interesting and suggestive, tracking trends in field designations of GRE test-takers is inherently limited in its ability to identify accurately changes in patterns of graduate enrollment by top students. In addition to the limitations on GRE validity as a predictor of scientific potential, we cannot be sure how precisely examinees’ stated intent about graduate field of study matches with who actually enrolls in graduate school. Among other considerations, it may be that decreases in quality potential students of the magnitude shown are not large enough to affect enrollments of highly capable students, given selective admissions.

To begin to remedy this latter limitation, I have secured access for analysis to a data base containing quality indicators on successive cohorts of newly-enrolled graduate students from leading departments in several science and engineering disciplines. The S/E disciplines included are biochemistry, mathematics, and mechanical engineering (entering graduate student cohorts, 1989-1996); and chemical engineering and physics (entering cohorts, 1992-1996). The data file was developed for the purpose of analyses of graduate attrition and retention by the Association of American Universities (AAU), a national organization of leading research universities, and is maintained by the Educational Testing Service. The departments included that have provided adequate data for analysis for all or most of the above years range from 22 to as many as 29, depending upon the discipline and precise period to be covered (see graphic on AAU data base). The data file permits analyses of the GRE scores and other quality indicators by citizenship, sex, and race/ethnicity as well as by discipline. Department quality rankings (by discipline) from the latest assessment by the National Research Council (1995) can readily be merged with the AAU file. For the S/E disciplines covered at least, these student quality trend analyses should go a long way toward establishing whether leading departments, and many of those in the above-average to good quality range represented within the AAU, have been able to maintain the quality of their cadre of U.S. graduate students.

Second, in order to investigate both recent and longer-term trends in the relative attractiveness of graduate studies in S/E compared to professional schools and other careers more fully than has been done in the past, I have secured access to a series of surveys of the senior (undergraduate) classes of colleges and universities who are members of the elite Consortium on Financing of Higher Education (COFHE). (See graphic listing the COFHE schools.) The surveys with adequate and comparable response rates at the institution level for all years cover the senior classes from 1982, 1984, 1989, 1994, and 1998 from six or seven of the COFHE schools (approximately 4,000 students per year). The surveys ask students from these elite schools about their immediate and ultimate graduate school plans. COFHE has done some follow-up studies of the 1982 and 1984 cohorts and has found that the initial responses about graduate school plans were reasonably valid for these cohorts at least.

My analyses will focus on shifts in the patterns of graduate school plans of S/E majors and high ability students (measured in this data set only by self-reported undergraduate grades) compared to all of these elite school graduates. These analyses should at least broaden the picture as to how the graduate school destinations of top students have changed over the years, in particular those who would be prime candidates for graduate S/E studies. To date, the conventional wisdom about the decline in attractiveness of S/E relative to the professions seems to be based largely on single institution studies comparing two cohorts separated somewhat in time (see earlier discussion).

Clearly, the discussion that follows is preliminary for there is much further research and analysis to be done on this issue. But for purposes of policy discussion here, I will assume that the indications of disproportionate declines in the attractiveness of S/E graduate studies to top students are borne out in further studies. Given that assumption, I will now briefly explore the contours of alternative policy responses.

• Let Market Forces Work

Given the predilections of the U.S. policy system, particularly in regard to labor market policies relating to the highly decentralized and prickly world of higher education, public policymakers might well elect to simply let the market work here. If more of the very best U.S. students elect medicine, business or other professions so be it, at least until conditions in these alternative fields become so congested that S/E research careers begin to look relatively more attractive. Labor markets are inherently cyclical and many possible policy interventions may do more harm than good (Freeman, 1971).

The problem with leaving the current system alone is that it may be seriously out of balance. The recent report on Trends in the Early Careers of Life Scientists by a committee of the National Research Council’s Commission on Life Sciences (1998) and scholars such as Massy and Goldman (1995) have noted that the U.S. academic research and graduate training enterprise employs graduate students in relation more to current research and undergraduate teaching needs than to the ultimate demand for the services of finished PhDs in the labor market. Thus, if demand for PhDs in relatively permanent career positions grows only slowly, as it has in recent years, while the training system grows independently in response to the continued growth in academic R&D funds that appears likely to be available, student quality may fall (especially if international students are not so readily available as in the past) and graduates may continue to back up in substantial numbers in the temporary postdoctoral pool. These unattractive prospects would tend to further depress interest in S/E studies among the best students whose career options in the professions, or information technology, should be the strongest. Such a result, especially if the best U.S. students could not be so readily replaced from abroad, must eventually affect the quality of the U.S. research effort, economic competitiveness, and perhaps ultimately the nation’s capacity to understand as a society, economy, and polity the essentials of the scientific age.

In such a scenario, the usual suggestion that prospective graduate students be provided more and better information about their career prospects in various fields, while desirable on principle and now more technically feasible than ever, is unlikely to help much in attracting the best students to science and engineering if the tale told by the market data is relatively unattractive. It seems likely that the best students will also have the best alternative prospects in other fields and, in the past, "hot" fields in terms of general student interest have usually been most attractive to the top cadre of students as well (Adelman, 1985; Bok, 1993).

In response to decreasing interest from top students, universities might well respond to clear signs of weakness in the graduate student pool by reallocating discretionary resources to enhance graduate assistantships so as to be more attractive to these students. This is a logical response for them in the current decentralized decisionmaking regime, but to the extent universities are able to do this, does nothing to help on the demand side in terms of PhD career opportunities in S/E. It might simply increase the "logjam" problem at the output end of the graduate education pipeline as universities are tempted to increase total enrollments as they get more good applicants in response to improved student support opportunities. Depending upon the extent of market information provided or available to students, such an approach, by itself, could even be regarded as misleading to them. More or richer graduate fellowships or assistantships also necessarily mean additional resource costs.

• More Government Support for Graduate Fellowships and Assistantships

This step is of course broadly similar to allowing universities to take the initiative but permits federal agencies more control over how (e.g., more competitive fellowships or higher pay for existing research assistants), in which fields, and to what extent enhancements are made. To limit public costs and ensure some input from academe, some form of matching incentive grant mechanism might be used. The disadvantages are similar to those that apply to the lassez-faire approach – more or better graduate student support may well add to supply-demand imbalances at the PhD end of the system as more students (not just top students) are attracted – but the costs in this case are borne more directly by the taxpayer.

• Adjust Immigration Policies to Import More Non-Citizen Graduate Students

Federal immigration policies might be employed to encourage more recruiting of competitive S/E graduate students from other countries. As has sometimes been done in the past (although not with much precision), immigration policies might conceivably be more effectively manipulated to respond to shortfalls of highly qualified potential scientists and engineers.

Such an approach raises the question of whether the U.S. should, as a matter of national policy, raid the young brainpower of the rest of the world, particularly the developing world, primarily to staff its own academic R&D enterprise at low cost. Moreover, signs are emerging that the pool of available non-citizen students may not be as bottomless (or at least as inexpensive) as it once appeared. The direction of scientific capabilities and career prospects in many of the countries that have contributed many S/E graduate students in the past seems to be on the way up, potentially encouraging more students to stay home (Desrusseaux, 1998; Lloyd, 1998). The recent declines in non-citizen graduate students and PhD recipients in most of the S/E disciplines already noted may be a warning sign of this. In any case, it seems likely to become a problem in the long run.

Moreover, other developed countries are competing more aggressively for S/E graduate students (e.g., Maslen, 1998), which raises the stakes. There are also some potential domestic political problems with perceptions that there are too many foreign graduate students in U.S. universities, especially state universities, being subsidized by public funds (Wilson, 1999). While the subsidy claim is dubious, given what these students contribute to the research enterprise and the fact that they have to compete for admission on a quality basis, the perceptions are real and may be exacerbated by further growth in non-citizen enrollments even if these can be achieved.

• Demand Side Approaches

If market signals are now being correctly read by top students but there is a market failure (positive externality) in regard to the long-term social benefit of having at least a stable flow of top U.S.-origin talent into advanced S/E training, then it follows that policy should take stimulative steps on the demand side. The federal government could in principle do this but it is practically difficult for it requires committing additional resources into the future. Yet, no other actor in the system possesses sufficient leverage to materially affect demand for research scientists and engineers.

One hoary suggestion along this line is that the federal government commit to supporting the research program of virtually every PhD scientist trained in a reputable institution and not otherwise employed in R&D. Moving substantially in this direction would no doubt make career prospects for S/E PhDs much more attractive than they are now and should have a corresponding impact on the supply of U.S. students interested in graduate studies, though not necessarily only on the top talent. While some other countries have arrangements more or less like this via government-sponsored research institutes and the like, they can typically bound their commitments by controlling the supply side much more directly than is the case in the U.S. Such a centralized human resource planning approach seems clearly a poor fit in the U.S.

A more modest and viable approach that more directly targets the young talent issue could focus on the postdoctoral stage. The federal agencies, mainly NIH and NSF as the largest supporter of postdoctoral fellows and associates, could apply some leverage linked to its funding on universities to upgrade these positions selectively. With the aid of some matching from institutions now extensively supported by federal funds, the idea would be to create a gradually increasing and ultimately significant number of "senior research fellow" positions open on a competitive basis to postdocs who had proven themselves beyond the PhD, over, say, 2-3 years in the standard postdoctoral track. (In the majority of cases, the standard track implies working as a research associate on a faculty member’s grant-supported project.)

Candidates for the "senior fellow" positions would propose a project of their own and need not elect to locate at their current institution. Proposals would be competitive and peer reviewed and positions would be guaranteed for 2-3 years, perhaps renewable once upon submission and review of another proposal. The positions would be designed to be competitive with junior faculty positions in terms of salary, benefits and research support. This should not be prohibitive since a young scientist seeking to build a research record in this type of position would be unencumbered by most of the teaching and other obligations of a faculty member. Some individuals might perceive better long-run prospects for a tenure-track or other "career" research position arising from such a post than from beginning a career as an assistant professor (particularly if 5-6 years of support were a realistic possibility). More broadly, the idea would be to increase significantly and predictably the number of attractive relatively junior research positions available so as to expand demand for young scientists enough to affect the decisions of very able students considering S/E careers.

Some of the funds for this initiative could come from reallocation from existing research programs in the same fields – which already support many postdoctoral positions – but substantial new resources would surely be needed to have the desired impact on the market. To try to maximize the effect on decisions of U.S. students, policymakers could consider giving preference in the awards to U.S. citizens, but this probably flies in the face of too many academic and other values to be viable.

Besides new costs, this proposal also has other problems of course. For example: How could laboratory space, now at a premium in many S/E fields, be made available to a significant number of additional, relatively autonomous junior scholars and, at the same time, appropriate collegial arrangements facilitated? Would universities offer overwhelming resistance or could enough incentives and facilitating devices be designed in to make them at least willing to participate? Might not such a program have to be extensively adjusted for the peculiarities of research arrangements in different disciplines? Would this make it too complex to administer? Most importantly, could a program of this kind significantly affect the decisions of the best and brightest young people at a feasible net incremental cost? Though it would expand research positions for young scientists and engineers, it could not assure that universities, industry and government created any additional more senior positions. So, ceteris paribus, the career pyramid in S/E research could become even more peaked than it would be without the program, but hopefully with a larger cadre of highly able candidates.

• Addressing the Decline in Interest in S/E by Whites and Males

Turning to the supply side of the equation for a moment, the apparent fairly sharp decline in attraction of top scoring whites and males to S/E, while female and minority numbers of top scorers have generally increased, may need to be addressed. This finding suggests programs designed to interest young people in S/E may need to be broadened in appeal. Yet, supply-side approaches alone seem destined to fail unless the poor post-PhD prospects facing even the best young research scientists and engineers are improved.

 CONCLUSION

The data do not yet permit a firm conclusion that the flow of the very best U.S.-origin students into graduate programs in the natural sciences and engineering is declining, but the evidence is accumulating that this group is disproportionately turning away from S/E careers. This poses potential problems for the national interest both in the short term and the longer run. Yet, it is not clear that the nation can (or should) easily replace these top students with their equivalents from other countries.

The past pattern of explicit human resource policies for PhD-level scientists, to the extent these have existed at all, has been to work mostly on the supply side of the problem by varying graduate fellowship support and at times encouraging the provision of better market information to prospective students. Indeed, when R & D support or forecasted demand for faculty increases, students do appear to respond readily. But when demand falls off (or does not materialize as predicted), the long production cycle means that many young scientists are ‘stranded" for extended periods in postdoctoral research/training posts designed to be temporary, with little pay, security or autonomy. This pattern, with the postdoctoral pool building up over a number of years and now extending the total time in PhD plus postdoctoral training for many to 10-12 years, may well be what is discouraging the most able students from S/E studies now.

Following from this analysis, two types of policy suggestions were made. First, efforts to interest more high potential U.S. students in S/E should be broadly focused, not too strictly limited to women and students of color, for the decline in interest by top scoring white males seems to be too steep for a limited focus alone to do enough. The main proposal made here is for the creation of a new matching grant program, strongly encouraged by the federal government’s leverage over major research institutions by virtue of its R & D grants to them, designed to fund the substantial improvement of the status of a significant subset of postdoctoral appointments. The new awards would be competitive, probably renewable once, and targeted at the best of more senior postdoctoral appointees through a peer-reviewed proposal process. These "senior research fellow" positions would be designed to be reasonably competitive with junior faculty positions so as to increase the number of attractive, autonomous early career S/E research positions significantly. While this should add to the aggregate academic research product, the main purpose would be to impact the demand side of the market enough to affect the decisionmaking of the most able prospective graduate students of U.S. origin.

To make a lasting difference, these new positions should ideally not be subject to the inevitable up and down cycles of aggregate R & D programs or academic posts. Fiscal partnerships involving universities, industry, and foundations as well as the federal government could help with this but can never make any program invulnerable to budgetary pressures. Nor can a program of this type, even with provision for multiyear support, address the problem of the ultimate narrowing of the career pyramid at the point where the fellowship period is exhausted. Still, it should have some value in encouraging those able students with high confidence in their abilities and an interest in pursuing S/E research at least through young adulthood who might otherwise never even enter the competition (i.e., enter graduate school), or have their opportunity to contribute to science.

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