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Scientific Workforce, Supply Side

Last week the National Science Foundation published a report titled, “An Emerging and Critical Problem of the Science and Engineering Labor Force. The report makes the case for “a troubling decline in the number of U.S. citizens who are training to become scientists and engineers, whereas the number of jobs requiring science and engineering (S&E) training continues to grow.” The report may stoke up debate over the supply of scientists in the U.S., and what, if any, sort of problem might be associated with recent trends.

Debate over the supply of scientists in the U.S. was a big deal in the early 1990s, with congressional hearings and a at times nasty public debate (for a quick review see this.)

In an essay in Science (in PDF and subscription required) that should be required reading for anyone thinking about this issue, Donald Kennedy, Jim Austin, Kirstie Urquhart, and Crispin Taylor decry considering the supply of scientists without also considering demand. A few lengthy excerpts:

“If there is one domain of science policy in which bad estimates have become routine, it is the one we used to call ‘scientific manpower.’ Time after time we have been warned of impending shortages which, with evergreen consistency, are subsequently transformed into gluts, to the dismay of those most affected: the future practitioners of our disciplines. Somehow, the predictors seem to forget that calls to increase future supply should bear some relationship to the present balance between supply and demand.”

“The National Science Board has apparently not profited from that harsh lesson. Now, expressing concern that few native-born citizens are entering scientific careers, it calls for an intensified national effort to expand domestic production. Meanwhile, unemployment rates for scientists are going up; according to the American Chemical Society, they have doubled among chemists over the past 2 years.”

“What is going on here? Why do we keep wishing to expand the supply of scientists even though there is no evidence of imminent shortages, and most jobs are in the private sector, where they are immune to management by policy fiat? First, there is a widespread belief that economic progress depends on science and technology; why shouldn’t we have more of such a good thing? Second, policies are set mainly by elders, who, like the institutions that employ them, have little incentive to downsize their operations. Instead, academic reward structures and government funding priorities tend to perpetuate the “train more scientists” status quo.

There’s one more, uncomfortable, explanation for calls to increase the supply of scientists. The present situation provides real advantages for the science and technology sector and the academic and corporate institutions that depend on it. We’ve arranged to produce more knowledge workers than we can employ, creating a labor-excess economy that keeps labor costs down and productivity high. Maybe we keep doing this because in our heart of hearts, we really prefer it this way.

The consequences of this are troubling. To be sure, the best graduates of the most prestigious programs may eventually find good jobs, but only after they are well past the age at which their predecessors were productively established. The rest—scientists of considerable potential who didn’t quite make it in a tough market—form an international legion of the discontented.”

I had a little dust up on this issue with some colleagues in the atmospheric sciences. You can read the exchange here.