IP: Dr. Lane of the Director of the NSF at CSSP National Forum

[Dave Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

Date: Wed, 17 Jan 1996 13:50:11 -0500
From: cssp () acs org (CSSP)


        Beacuse so many have requested a copy of Dr Lane's 
        commentary at CSSP's last meeting, we are 
        here providing an opportunity for unlimited forwarding
        to help serve the national science community.
                                        MARTY APPLE
        


National Forum on Setting Strategic Direction for PhD Supply/Demand
Council of Scientific Society Presidents, on December 4, 1995


Dr. Neal F. Lane, Director
National Science Foundation


Separating Science Policy from Science Fiction
Good morning.  It's an honor and a pleasure to join you today.  My thanks
go out to Marty Apple and the CSSP Executive Board for inviting me to
participate in this forum.  It's very important what you do--I want to thank
you and encourage you in your efforts.


When I first heard the title of this session, my thoughts inevitably turned
to all of the different directions and currents that have swirled around NSF
since I arrived just two years ago.  I sometimes say I've experienced
something like a ride on a speeding roller coaster.  I hasten to point out
that I have always liked riding roller coasters.


When I first arrived, everyone thought the Congress wanted to shut down the
parts of NSF that weren't considered "strategic," however one defines the term.


Then, earlier this year, there was talk among some in the Congress of
shutting down one of our directorates.


Two weeks ago, my perspective changed once again--as all of NSF was
literally shut down by the government-wide furlough.  That's when I actually
began to reflect on the good old days.


I am certain all of us would agree that we cannot separate the topic of
this forum from the larger issues shaping science and technology policy.
Our discussions of PhD supply and demand take on new dimensions of
complexity if the projections outlined in the balanced budget legislation
come to pass.  We would all experience a very draconian form of forced
population control, as the projected budgets would bring the equivalent of
widespread famine to research and education.  At the same time, the impact
of such huge cuts on the whole U.S. science and technology enterprise is
likely to reduce demand for scientists and engineers, severely impacting the
market for new PhDs as well as experienced professionals.  So, the picture
is cloudy but not bright! 


Let me take a moment to bring you up-to-date on where I think we stand in
the budget process.  If we look specifically at the NSF, there are no
famines in the immediate forecast.  I nevertheless would suggest that our
budget outlook goes from the tolerable to the terrifying.  If we look just
at our pending appropriation for the current fiscal year, FY 1996, the
situation is tolerable, at least for the moment.  Indeed, many in Washington
say that NSF has fared relatively well.


We are closing in on final numbers for NSF's FY 1996 funding, although this
particular piece of legislation--the VA/HUD appropriation--keeps running
into new obstacles.  NSF, in fact, seems to be one of very few
non-controversial parts of this bill. 


Our total funding would be just under $3.2 billion--$3.18 billion to be
precise.  This would be about $50 million below last year's level and $180
million below our request for FY96.  This entire reduction comes from our
research budget, which puts it down by 7 percent from the request, or
slightly below FY95.  Our education and human resources budget is also down
slightly from FY95.


As I noted, this bill still has a few more hurdles to clear.  The
conference agreement failed to pass the House last week, so the bill is now
back in the hands of the House/Senate Conferees.  In addition, the President
has signaled his intent to veto the entire VA/HUD bill because of deep cuts
in housing, EPA, national service, and other areas. 


Your guess is as good as mine as to how this endgame will play out.  Our
current funding runs out on December 15th, so we could be looking at another
shutdown just in time for Christmas--it sounds like efforts are being made
to avoid that.  The last shutdown was very damaging to productivity and morale.


One also doesn't have to look far beyond NSF or very far into the future
for the budget outlook to move from the tolerable to the terrifying.  R&D
throughout the government is pegged for deep cuts: 12 percent at EPA, 50
percent at NIST, primarily due to elimination of the Advanced Technology
Program, and the recently enacted Energy and Water Appropriations bill
contained cuts of 20 percent or more in nuclear, solar, fusion and other
areas at DOE.


Even deeper cuts appear on the horizon when we look toward the plans for a
balanced Federal budget by the year 2002 and the prospect of a one-third cut
in non-defense R&D.  If these predications come to pass, any problems with
overpopulation and oversupply will affect the whole science and technology
workforce--young and old alike.


Of course, the budget agreement under negotiation by the White House and
the Congress may improve this outlook, though that is far from certain.
Like many of you, I imagine, the first thing I did upon seeing the actual
budget agreement announced on November 19th was to perform my own informal
word search.  The first thing I noticed was that certain key words were
missing from the priorities specified.  Science was missing, engineering was
missing, technology was missing, research was missing.  


The public has no way of knowing whether these disturbing absences were the
result of omission or commission--though the difference matters little in
this budget environment.  The President has in fact addressed these
omissions in a letter to Congressional leaders expressing his support for
investments in R&D.


It is also true that if you read between the lines, you can imagine that
words like research and science are embedded in the document.  It makes
reference to education and the environment, both of which are inseparable
from science and technology R&D.  Moreover, the first priority identified in
the agreement is protecting future generations.  Nothing could be more
directly tied to Federally-supported R&D than the quality of life and
overall well-being of future generations.  


While all of us here in this room recognize this beyond any doubt, there
are lots of pressures on those who actually are sitting at the negotiating
table.  It's easy to lose sight of the future unless one is reminded that
there won't be the historical high return on investment if there is no
investment.


The budget outlook places a whole array of issues in a new light, and it
requires that we shift our perspective accordingly.  In recent talks--such
as at the nationwide town meeting last month organized by Sigma Xi--I have
stated that I believe we must focus our energies on what is real and in the
present, rather than what is not real and in the past.  Phil Griffiths
touched on this in his remarks.


My remarks today are entitled, Separating Science Policy from Science
Fiction, for this very reason.  While it's true that Washington can make one
feel like a stranger in a strange land, we have enough on our plates already
without being led astray by the imaginary and the illusory.


In order to decide what are appropriate avenues for science policy, it is
especially important that we understand how our role and contribution to
society have changed dramatically and irreversibly over the 20 or so years.


As leaders of the science policy community, we know better than most that
the Federal government's significant role in the support of science grew
from the contribution American scientists made during World War II.
Although in many nations the scientific community has been called upon to
help with a war effort; only the United States, through the articulation of
Vannevar Bush, adopted a genuine pact between science and the rest of society.


As all of us know, the agreement outlined by Bush in Science: The Endless
Frontier was reinforced, especially in our attitudes and rhetoric, by the
significant demands of forty years of Cold War.  The agreement garnered much
of its legitimacy and sense of irreversibility from the nation's overarching
national security needs.


Since the end of the Cold War six years ago, many in our community have
been debating the tenets of this compact between science and society--does
it need to be revisited, reformed, or reconstructed?  The implication being
that a simple rewrite and update of the compact could usher in a new golden
era.  Some wonder if the concept of a compact makes any sense in this
rapidly changing world.


Reality, of course, is not so simple.  In a very real sense, this debate
was eclipsed before it began.  A more divergent perspective on science and
technology has taken hold--a perspective that I believe we need to
understand and articulate.  


It seems to me something very different from the "compact" has been
emerging in practice over the last 10-15 years while many of us have
remained wedded to the old rhetoric.  The initial compact of the Vannevar
Bush era has evolved, perhaps without our conscious attention.


What has taken shape is a more expansive and multifaceted arrangement that
encompasses the larger R&D enterprise in the nation, both public and
private.  This includes, of course, industry, small business, national
laboratories, mission agencies, research universities, and state and local
economic development councils.  These, and others I have not named, are
critical components of the new, and as yet unbaptized, arrangement that has
grown from the original compact.  


This new arrangement is characterized by continuously evolving
collaborations to serve the national interest, collaborations which exhibit
among other things few boundaries and high degrees of flexibility, and which
hold significant implications for graduate education.


And so, as we continue to speak with reverence about the compact between
science and the federal government, we are, in fact, thinking of the past
more than the present.  I want to emphasize stridently that I am not
suggesting we lessen or eliminate the federal role in support of fundamental
research, primarily in our universities.  The recently released "Press
Report" of the NAS makes this point emphatically and unambiguously!


Rather, I am suggesting that this new perspective is a way to
recharacterize the roles and positions of all participants in the national
research and development system, as the system has evolved and matured.  It
is safe to say that our once narrow compact has blossomed into a cornucopia.


To those who are threatened by imminent changes in the old compact, I would
offer the comfort of reality--the reality that those changes have been in
play for some time.  The current R&D enterprise that has evolved from the
old compact is not now, and never will be, a cemented set of dogma.  Rather,
time and events have fashioned a dynamic and sometimes even spontaneous
system.  There will be no reversal of this momentum.


And for those who are rattling the parchment of the old compact and
demanding change, I would make sure that they focused their energies on
changing what is real and not what is in the past.


Discussions of PhD supply and demand often take this juxtaposition of past
and present and fact and fiction to new heights.  Thanks to Phil Griffiths
and the COSEPUP report, this occurs much less than it did a few months ago,
but the tendency has not been completely put to rest.


It's no secret that the changes discussed in the COSEPUP report and
elsewhere have taken some time to settle in with members of my generation,
myself included.  When I received my PhD some 30 years ago, the situation
was very different.  We generally could choose among several tenure track
positions upon graduation.  


There was also little doubt about our job security.  If our work was
adequate, meaning that both the funding agencies and our students tolerated
our presence, our futures fell readily into place.  Moreover, the fields
were not so crowded.  You quickly knew everyone, the literature was
manageable, and, at least in my own field, there was no shortage of
important, as well as intellectually challenging research topics to choose
from.  None of this is true today.  


We did experience periods of slow growth and no growth in the job market,
notably in the late 1960's after passage of the Mansfield Amendment.  But
very few of us ever had to play the games of postdoc roulette or get exposed
to the disease known as "adjunctivitis" that is epidemic among today's
academic job seekers.


Because most of us grew up in a different time, I've noticed that we often
tend to resist seeking innovative solutions to what are real problems and
instead simply try to turn back the clock.  We generally look to one of two
mechanisms to propel this journey back in time.  We first hold out hope of
returning to the days when research budgets doubled every five years or so.
That prospect is now so distant that it barely qualifies as fiction.


The other mechanism that I often hear discussed is what gets lumped under
the headings of birth control or population control.  It is a simple idea in
concept.  We would limit the supply of PhDs to create a roughly one-to-one
correspondence with some measure of the available job openings.  The number
of students entering programs would be tied to some prediction of the jobs
available upon graduation.


Despite its apparent simplicity, however, all of us can envision why such a
policy would be very difficult to implement.  Predicting future supply and
demand in any market is an inexact science, particularly predicting demand.  


Labor markets present their own unique difficulties--a fact that NSF
learned the hard way.  Even the most confident labor economist would
undoubtedly caution against installing a command and control economy for
science and engineering personnel.   


The problems of implementation are not the only shortcomings of this
concept.  Jaime Oaxaca of the National Science Board offers the insight that
saying we have an oversupply of people trained in science and engineering is
equivalent to saying we have an undersupply of ignorance.  We should ever be
so lucky.


Additionally, if such a control system were put in place, it could actually
worsen the situation.  For example, according to surveys of students and
departments, NSF supports only a small fraction--on the order of 5
percent--of the nation's nearly 300,000 science and engineering graduate
students.  With all modesty, we also think we support some of the best ones,
and the evidence bears out our thinking.  I wonder how many former NSF
graduate fellows are here today.


Therefore, if we were to cut back our support unilaterally, it could have a
disproportionately damaging effect on the nation's science and engineering
capability.  The best comparison I can think of is deciding to take off a
few extra pounds by giving yourself a lobotomy.


Rather than fooling ourselves with delusions of time travel and population
control, we should instead pursue the direction laid out by Phil Griffiths
and the COSEPUP report.  Phil has already raised what I believe are the key
questions.  


Given that more than half of PhDs now work outside academe, does it make
sense that time to degree has increased by 30 percent since the 1960s?
Does our quest for depth of disciplinary knowledge sacrifice the breadth of
intellect needed for work in a rapidly changing industrial environment?  
Can we balance the tradition of academic apprenticeship with the need for
real world experience?  
And finally, can we silence the siren's song of lifetime entitlements and
instead provide students considering the PhD with accurate information about
their career prospects?


These are difficult questions, but I also know that our community is well
on its way to answering them.  Phil gave several examples.  At NSF, a Task
Force of the National Science Board is addressing some of these issues as
they relate to NSF's support of graduate and postdoctoral education.  The
task force is expected to present its preliminary findings later this month.
I anticipate that this is only the beginning of the Board's deliberations on
this important matter.


In addition, NSF's Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences
hosted a workshop on graduate education this past June.  It concluded that
"A more diverse mix of skills and aptitudes would better enable Ph.D.s to
take advantage of a changing career market."


A number of NSF programs have already begun working with the university
community to pursue this line of thinking.  Today, for example, if you
receive postdoctoral support from NSF in Chemistry or Mathematics, you can
use that support to gain experience in industry.


Therefore, the strategic direction we should set for PhD supply and demand
is coming into focus.  Phil and his COSEPUP colleagues have discussed the
compass headings that can guide us, and now it is up to all of us to set our
sights on the true course.


To conclude, let me return to the issue that makes all of this so important
and compels us to accelerate our progress.  I spoke earlier about how we are
facing a one-third decline in non-defense R&D by the year 2002.  We don't
know how the numbers will actually play out, especially for individual
agencies and programs, but it is clear that we are not ushering in a new
golden age for science.


Rather, our great nation is talking about carrying out a high risk
experiment to determine whether you can cut R&D by that substantial fraction
and still uphold a position of world leadership in the 21st Century.  One
way to think about this is that, if you damage a muscle, the muscle
atrophies and never returns to its previous strength, often resulting in a
limp that lasts for the remainder of one's life.  The question is:  Can we
run the risk of having America limp into the 21st Century?


To NSF, the injury caused by a one-third cut would involve numbers on the
order of $1 billion per year.  If we just extrapolate from our present
levels of activity (not that we would do this; but it conveys the message)
that means we would grant 6,000 fewer awards and would support 8,000 fewer
scientists, 1,500 fewer postdocs, and 7,000 fewer graduate students.  And
this is just NSF I'm talking about.  There's the famine and forced
population control I mentioned earlier.  Skeptics will say just "set
priorities" and fund the most important things, of course, but forget any
thought that we would not cut outstanding research and outstanding
researchers and students.  There is no way to avoid that outcome!


When one considers the societal benefits of NSF's supported work, we begin
to see the high risk I mentioned earlier that is inherent in this
experiment.  Where will we get the next Doppler radar system?  Or the next
breakthrough in plant genetics or breast cancer research?  What about hot
start-up companies like Netscape Communications--will they continue to take
Wall Street by storm if the Federal support that sparked them fades away?


While none of us can answer these questions with precision, we could
probably come up with some very sound educated guesses.  In fact, we need
look no further than the recent study on R&D by the President's Council of
Economic Advisors.  The Council stressed that "maintaining or increasing
this country's R&D effort is essential if we are to increase the rate of
productivity growth and improve American living standards."


I would like to close by referencing a provocative passage written by the
eminent historian of science, Derek J. de Solla Price.  In his timeless
volume, Science Since Babylon; Price writes: 


"...science is part of the central core of our world, and it is a core that
is in the process of violent change, creaking and grumbling in the process
and threatening us with uncontrollable deluges and eruptions.  In this age
we need an informed and intelligent public to whom science and its workings,
even in crisis, is not a mystery."


What is most interesting to me about these words is that Price wrote them
over two decades ago, yet his observations of creaking, grumbling, and
crisis apply equally well to the risks we face in our own era.  


Therefore, his challenge to all of us to reach out and inform the larger
debate has assumed even greater relevance with the passage of time.  That is
a strategic direction that applies equally well to both PhD supply and
demand and to improving our fiscal fortunes.  And you can help inform the
larger debate with a unified voice that captures the common thread that
connects all the various components of the science and technology enterprise.


Thank you.  I look forward to your comments and questions in our discussion.