AAU Initiative Targets Nation's Economic, Security Challenges

With China and India on the doorstep and U.S. universities facing an attrition of science and math students, America must do more if it wishes to produce the well trained scientific and technical workforce necessary to remain competitive in world markets. That is the overarching theme of a new national education and innovation initiative proposed by the Association of American Universities (AAU).

A white paper released by AAU details the National Defense Education and Innovation Initiative, which aims to meet economic and security challenges the U.S. will face over the next half-century. The paper contains recommendations for policy changes and investments, primarily by universities and the federal government.

AAU, an organization of 62 leading public and private research universities, points to the country’s need to address economic challenges from the emerging economies of Asia and post-9/11 national security threats. These challenges, AAU states, are evidenced by such statistics as a leveling of federal basic research funding in the physical sciences and engineering and the rise of Asia and Europe over the U.S. in the number of science and engineering doctoral degrees awarded.

AAU cites as a model the bold actions taken by the federal government to maintain American economic and military leadership following the 1957 launch of the Sputnik satellite by the Soviet Union. In the years immediately following Sputnik, Congress enacted the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) -- an initiative that upgraded education at all levels, tripled the federal investment in basic university-based research, and created NASA and the Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Similar to NDEA, the AAU initiative makes recommendations designed to strengthen the nation’s capacity to perform basic, university-based research; cultivate American talent in the sciences, engineering, mathematics and foreign languages; and continue to attract and retain the best talent from overseas. For universities, the recommendations include:

• Re-examining doctoral education, particularly in science-related and language disciplines, to develop ways to shorten the time it takes to obtain a Ph.D., improve completion rates, and broaden the scope of Ph.D. education to better prepare students for a wide range of careers;
• Taking steps to reduce attrition among undergraduates in the sciences as well as under-representation of minorities and women in science-related disciplines;
• Giving undergraduate students, as well as current and future K-12 science teachers, greater opportunities to participate in university research; and,
• Creating accelerated teacher certification programs for individuals with expertise in STEM and foreign language and area studies disciplines.

For the federal government, AAU recommends:

• Increasing federal investment in basic research supported by the National Science Foundation, NASA, and the Departments of Energy, Defense, Homeland Security, and Commerce by 10 percent annually for the next seven years; and,
• Increasing by 5,000 the number of graduate fellowships and traineeships supported by current programs at federal science and education agencies, creating a new graduate fellowship and traineeship program at the Department of Energy Office of Science, and expanding the Department of Defense National Defense Education Program.

The AAU report is available at: http://www.aau.edu/reports/NDEII.pdf

Links to this paper and more than 3,000 additional TBED-related research reports, strategic plans and other papers can be found at the Tech-based Economic Development (TBED) Resource Center, jointly developed by the Technology Administration and SSTI, at http://www.tbedresourcecenter.org/.