Is the American science and engineering dynamo slowing down? Indications have emerged in recent years that our comparative advantage over Europe and Asia is slipping. In an insightful paper published last month by the National Bureau of Economic Research, Harvard economist Richard B. Freeman compiled the evidence of the United States’ relative decline from its position of unparalleled leadership in the second half of the 20th century.
The United States is still a world leader in science and engineering, but a relative decline is surely in evidence. One indication of the trend is that the share of papers U.S. scientists publish in major journals is falling. According to the National Science Foundation, American scientists published 31 percent of all scientific papers in 2001, down from 38 percent in 1988. The share of papers in the Chemical Abstract Service dropped precipitously, from 73 percent in 1980 to 40 percent in 2003. Meanwhile, the number of federal grants that younger scientists receive has plummeted, as has the United States’ relative share of total doctoral students worldwide. Perhaps most tellingly, the proportion of science and engineering doctorates awarded in Asia and Europe is rising, but numbers in the United States are flatlining.
The problem isn’t a “shortage” of scientists and engineers in the United States, Mr. Freeman points out. In fact, the opposite is the case. The United States happily imports scientists and doctoral candidates from elsewhere to create an unattractive glut of low-income, low-prospect career paths which native-born Americans are increasingly avoiding, opting instead for lucrative opportunities in business, law or medicine. About 60 percent of all scientists and engineers with doctorates in the United States today are foreign-born, Mr. Freeman reports. Many of these do not stay in the country.
In the short term, this poses no problem for the United States: Labs are manned, biotech firms are staffed and innovation proceeds apace. But outsourcing our own scientific expertise to willing foreigners is a losing proposition in the long run, and the flight of U.S. expertise elsewhere can pose grave national-security problems. The U.S. military advantage cannot last if our best scientists and engineers are nationals of competitor nations like China.
That nation’s record over the last decade is astonishing. China produced few or no doctorates in the mid-1970s, but it now awards something like 10,000 science and engineering doctorates annually. Fifty-two percent of all academic degrees in China are in science or engineering.
It’s not immediately clear what the United States can do to remedy the situation. Closing the borders to foreign scientists isn’t an option. Economists who theorize that “convergence” governs modern economies suggest that competitors inevitably close in on leaders. Even if that is true, it hardly removes the need for the United States to devise innovative ways to sustain its leadership position.
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