The Best and Brightest for Science

Is There a Policy Problem Here?

WILLIAM ZUMETA AND JOYCE S. RAVELING

University of Washington

Key words: college entrance examinations, engineering education, enrollment trends, graduate students, graduate study, public policy, science careers, science education, scientific personnel

1. 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 but 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 engineering1 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 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 chapter, we present preliminary evidence showing some signs of a fall-off in interest in advanced studies[2] 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, although desirable and probably now technically feasible, will help much with the problem of declining attraction of the “best and brightest.” Indeed, it seems likely that it is market signals 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[3] in the longer run. While we find that certain modest supply side steps are desirable, the major conclusion is that a carefully targeted effort probably should be made on the demand side of the issue. We give some attention then to sketching 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.[4]

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

The essentials of this history are well known.[5] 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, stimulated 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, opted for additional post-PhD training as postdoctoral appointees (sometimes called fellows or associates or simply “postdocs”) in academic or occasionally other research laboratories. [6] 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 were investing further in their human capital, which they felt the market eventually would reward.[7] But Zumeta also found that the big increase in the number of postdoctoral appointees included not just those who, from all indications,[8] 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 although it showed signs of improving their subsequent research productivity (see note 7). 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; Shapiro 1999). 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 Professionals in Science and Technology 1997; Association of American Universities 1998), and the length of postdoctoral stays grew (Regets 1999).[9] 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).

3. 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 (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.[10]

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. In order to get test score data for both the PhDs and professional degree recipients, even his 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, since PhD completion takes so many years.

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” (National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine 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.).

4. 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.[11] Declines between 1993 and 1998 range from nearly six percent in computer science to over twenty-three percent in mathematical sciences (see Figure 1). Significantly, these declines are not confined to U.S. citizens[12] in most disciplines although the declines are generally steeper among citizens. Only in computer science, electrical engineering, and aerospace engineering have there been gains over this period in temporary resident students, and the gain in aerospace engineering did not occur until 1998. Aggregating across all the natural science and engineering fields, the graduate enrollment decline from 1993 to 1998 was 8.6% for U.S. citizens and 3.6% 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.[13]

Figure 1. Changes in the Number of Natural Science & Engineering Graduate Students in Doctorate Granting Institutions, by Broad Field

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? One piece of indirect evidence is provided by trends in students’ test scores. With the cooperation of the Educational Testing Service, we analyzed trends in the scores of all Graduate Record Examination (GRE) General Test examinees for selected years from 1989 through 1998.[14] 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 which is the basis for the trend analyses reported here.[15] 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.[16]

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 1989 and 1998, 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 (bottom row). 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 -9 to -20 points 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 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.

Table 1. Mean GRE Scores of U.S. Citizen Examinees, by Intended Field of Graduate Study

Intended Field	Verbal				Quantitative				Analytical
	89	92	95	98	89	92	95	98	89	92	95	98
Biological Sciences	534	526	515	507	587	588	590	597	583	585	598	590
Math Sciences	537	527	516	511	693	694	686	694	637	628	630	620
Physical Sciences	545	534	518	510	643	631	625	632	604	593	606	595
Computer Science	536	528	519	516	650	643	634	636	610	598	602	590
Engineering	523	515	504	499	687	682	676	681	610	600	613	604
Behavioral Sciences	515	508	492	488	518	517	512	516	543	545	550	537
Social Sciences	497	489	475	473	487	485	480	485	514	516	520	511
Art	509	507	501	499	492	494	501	513	532	532	546	545
Other Humanities	567	561	551	547	530	532	531	537	563	567	577	566
Education	463	459	448	447	472	472	474	483	491	496	503	497
Health Science	484	472	458	455	509	503	507	521	527	522	533	529
Applied Biology	486	479	467