America must respond to global educational challenge to maintain its place in the world
By Martin C. Jischke
Last summer, while visiting higher education institutions in India and China, I was escorted to a laboratory at Shanghai's Ningbo University where a professor was working on a research project with three graduate students. The professor and one of the students were Chinese. The other two students were from Argentina and Malawi.
The same scene at any major American university would not be remarkable. Students and professors from all over the world come to our country for access to the best higher education in the world, but these students had chosen to study in China. Everywhere I went in Asia, I saw signs of a new commitment to education. University enrollments are growing, investments in research are mushrooming. Gleaming new laboratories are being built. Students and professors are being recruited globally.
As they have shifted to free-market economies, the governments and the citizens of these nations and others have recognized that education and research pay off in economic growth and improved quality of life. It is time for America and Indiana to renew their commitment to empowering individuals through education.
When I compare what is happening in these emerging nations to recent trends in the United States, I am concerned about the future of our country. I believe we are experiencing a global sea change that threatens not only our universities, but also America's security and its economy.
The strength and prosperity of nations in the 21st century will be determined by the level of education of their people, and especially by proficiency in the sciences and engineering. Few would argue that point, but America has been slow to act.
Twenty years ago, the United States, Japan and China each graduated a similar number of engineers. South Korea at that time graduated about half as many. But by the year 2000:
• China had increased its engineering graduates by 161 percent to 207,500;
• Japan had effected a 42 percent increase to 103,200;
• South Korea was graduating 56,500 engineers — an increase of more than 140 percent;
• Indian universities, by conservative estimates, were turning out more than 100,000 engineers annually.
Meanwhile, the number of U.S. engineering graduates had declined 20 percent to fewer than 60,000. According to the National Science Foundation, if current trends continue, by 2010 more than 90 percent of all scientists and engineers in the world will live in Asia.
These numbers are only part of a disturbing picture. Students in our middle schools and high schools, to an alarming degree, are poorly prepared to study science or engineering in college. Even worse, relatively few are interested. Between 1992 and 2002 the number of collegebound students who planned to study engineering declined by more than 30 percent. Meanwhile, more than half the U.S. work force in these disciplines is approaching retirement.
We also are faltering in the crucial area of research. Since 1970 funding for basic research in the physical sciences has declined by half as a percentage of the gross domestic product. Other nations — especially in Asia — are increasing their research and education investments with a clear agenda: They want their universities to be the best in the world, and they believe one result of achieving that goal will be economic leadership for their countries.
America should not be so arrogant as to believe global leadership is our birthright. It can only be sustained in the same way it was achieved: through hard work and a determination to invest in ourselves.
The Association of American Universities, a consortium of our top 62 research-based institutions, recently sent to President Bush and Congress a proposal for a national initiative to increase research funding, improve the teaching of quantitative disciplines and foreign languages in public schools, and enhance partnerships among government, private business, and educators at all levels.
The AAU — which I currently chair — has recommended a commitment on the scale of the National Defense Education Act of 1958. This was America's response to the Soviet Union's launching of Sputnik. By seizing the lead in the early days of the space race, the Russians shocked America into action. Ironically, as the AAU pointed out in its recent proposal, the greatest significance of Sputnik was America's response to it. We woke up and went to work educating a new generation. I am grateful for both patriotic and personal reasons: A National Defense scholarship allowed me to get a university education. It's time to wake up again.
Martin C. Jischke is president of Purdue University.
To the News Service home page