White House Office of Science & Technology Policy, 25th Anniversary Symposium (pt.3) MIT

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MORGAN: Well, two of our speakers this afternoon have obligations elsewhere and need to get out of here on time. This has been just a fascinating morning of history taught by those who actually lived it.

We're going to move on now to talk about a set of issues related to the present and the future. But before we do, since many of you didn't live this history, I thought I should yield to the professor in me and offer a very short list of suggested readings, since this is a topic on which there has been, in fact, a great deal of academic endeavor.

We heard already this morning about several books that Bill Golden has edited, the most recent of which is called Science and Technology Advice: To the President, Congress, and Judiciary. It's a series of essays by more or less everyone who spoke this morning, plus a large number of others.

Another nice discussion of many of the issues we heard about this morning is a book by Greg Herken called Cardinal Choices: Presidential Science Advising From the Atomic Bomb to SDI. And it picks up the theme that was present in many of this morning's discussions about the very large role that defense and Cold War considerations have played through much of the science advice of that period.

Third on my list of four is a book by Bruce Smith, The Advisers: Scientists in the Policy Process, which is broader than just presidential science advising. It also talks about things like Defense Science Board and EPA Science Advisory Board, but has a chapter on White House science advice.

And finally, a lovely new book, which makes a very good companion to Hunter Dupree's classic that took science technology policy up to about the time of the Second World War is a book by David Hart, Forged Consensus: Science, Technology, and Economic Policy in the United States, 1921 to 1953.

Now it's also a great pleasure-- some of you have figured out what's going on here. Morgan is stalling a few minutes to get more audience into the room for our speakers. But it's also a great pleasure to be here at MIT, at this function convened by the Technology Policy Program, the first of what I believe is planned to be a series of functions of this sort in the years to come.

Technology Policy Program here has become part now of a larger organizational group, this Engineering Systems Division, which incorporates a number of policy and also management-related activities under one cross-cutting umbrella that cuts across several departments of the engineering college. And those of us who have worked in this area for a long time and observe activities at MIT are really rooting for this to be a big success, because to the extent things succeed at MIT, they will succeed in many other places.

TPP was built through 24 years of enormous effort and dedication by Richard de Neufville and a number of colleagues. And it's now, as you heard this morning, in the very capable hands of Dan Hastings.

This morning, Chuck Vest described TPP as, quote, "The largest program of its kind." It is the largest master's program in this field, though as a guest here, I guess I have to be well-behaved. I can't resist noting that the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon has the largest undergraduate program, the largest doctoral program, and the largest interdisciplinary tenured faculty in this area.

[LAUGHTER]

All right. Well, I've stalled long enough. We've got about half the audience back, so let me do three quick introductions. This session is called Cross-Cutting Issues, and the first speaker is Rita Colwell. She's going to talk to the topic the human capital crisis in science and engineering.

Dr. Colwell obtained a multidisciplinary education in bacteriology, genetics, and oceanography. Now she's had a very distinguished academic career at Georgetown University and at the University of Maryland. She's a member of the National Academy, and has held many important positions and served in many advisory capacities, including service as a member of the National Science Board, President of the AAAS, and a number of others. She currently directs the National Science Foundation.

The second speaker this afternoon will be William Wulf, and his topic is New Engineering Ethics: Great Achievements and Grand Challenges. Dr. Wulf's formal education was in engineering physics, electrical engineering, and computer science. His distinguished career has included a tour on the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University, time spent as CEO of Tartan Laboratories, and time on the faculty of the University of Virginia from which he's currently on leave, serving as President of the National Academy of Engineering.

And the third talk this afternoon in this session is by Dan Hastings, who's going to talk about technology and policy education needs. Chuck Vest has already given you a rather full introduction for Professor Hastings, who holds a PhD in aeronautics and astronautics. And after a distinguished tour as Chief Scientist of the Air Force, has recently returned, as I said, to a faculty position at MIT that involves appointments both in aero astro and as head of the Technology Policy Program in the newly created Engineering Systems Division.

[APPLAUSE]

COLWELL: Good afternoon. It's a genuine honor to join all of you today. And my thanks go to Chuck Vest and Daniel Hastings for inviting me and to MIT for hosting all of us.

Before I start my talk, I'd like to point out, just hot off the press, is the NSF strategy in brief. If any of you are interested, I've left a few copies on the table. It simply describes how NSF operates, our strategic goals, and our core strategies.

Well, there's no question that OSTP has been vital to our nation's scientific and technological advancement. Just as was mentioned this morning, just as Merlin used his great visionary powers to counsel King Arthur on the affairs of Camelot, each science advisor has done a magical job advising our presidents on science and technology policy. And the variations of the theme have been fascinating to listen to.

The OSTP directors have brought a very rich and diverse set of perspectives to the position, ultimately steering our nation in a direction that's enhanced the growth and development of our society, our economy, and most of all, humanity.

It's fitting that we address the topic of the human capital crisis in science and engineering. Attracting women and minorities into these fields has been a concern of mine for some time, and so I've titled my remarks Confronting the Human Capital Crisis: Tapping the Talent.

I will talk about the future of the science, engineering, and technology workforce, though I do think that the charts we saw this morning comparing electrical engineering and parks and recreation and related subjects was pretty dramatic, if not devastating.

Then I'd like to talk a little bit about what NSF is doing through its efforts of recruiting women and minorities in its K-12 programs to develop the workforce. And this is an issue that is critical to all of us. It's been a theme running through many of the talks this morning.

At NSF, it's the very core of our vision and our mission. The National Science Foundation is as much about preparing a world class workforce as it is about discovery. Although we continually break new ground through the research and the education we support, we need people to turn that new knowledge into innovation.

Now, worrisome signals about the science, engineering, and technology workforce are much too familiar. We've heard of the shortages of skilled workers that have plagued the IT, the information technology sector, and the numbers of computer scientists coming out, 800 or so. That's appalling.

Well, here are some other data. While degrees in engineering, physical sciences, and math and computer sciences are either static or declining, as we have seen, other nations are boosting degrees in all these fields.

Carrying a little bit further from the data that was provided in the charts, let me put it another way. A 24-year-old in Japan, for example, is three times more likely to hold a bachelor's degree in engineering than a 24-year-old in the United States.

And the recent studies report that graduate enrollments in science and engineering have increased in the US for the first time in a decade. Unfortunately, that's the good news. The bad news is the growth is almost entirely the result of an increase in the number of foreign students.

Graduate enrollment in these fields among US students has continued to decline. From 1986 to 1997, bachelor's degrees in mathematics declined by approximately 30%, from 16,000 or so to about 12,000 or so. Since 1998, the number of doctoral degrees awarded in science and engineering dropped 5%. There was a slight uptick in 1999, but that was due, as I said earlier, entirely to foreign student enrollment.

Well, the lesson that we should take from these examples is not that we should discourage foreign students. It's about tapping the full range of the nation's native-born science and engineering talent. We're simply not producing enough workers trained in science, math, and engineering to meet the needs of today's technology-based society. And that's where the crisis is.

I quote from a report released in January by the US Commission on National Security for the 21st century. I'm sure that most of you are familiar with it. And it states very bluntly, "The inadequacies of our systems of research and education pose a greater threat to US national security over the next quarter century than any potential conventional war we might imagine." Very strong words. If ever there were any question about the nation's need to develop its science and engineering talent, this should banish all doubts.

Well, what should we be doing about this situation? The title of another recent report suggests an answer. It's Land of Plenty: Diversity as America's Competitive Edge in Science, Engineering, and Technology.

That report, it provides the findings of a congressional commission on the advancement of women and minorities in science, engineering, and technology. We refer to it as the COMSAT report. It was chaired by Representative Morella from Maryland, and it was co-chaired by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson from Texas.

It issues a very clear call, a warning. We are making some strides toward including everyone in the general workforce, although we do have a distance to go, but there's some progress. Unfortunately, we're not making significant progress in changing the composition of the science and engineering workforce. It still looks mighty exclusive. Well, in the parlance of my children, pale, male, and they would say stale, but I didn't say that.

Although white males make up about 42% of the US workforce, they constitute nearly 70% of the science, engineering, and technology workforce. Women of all races and ethnicities make up only 15% of the S&T, the science, engineering, technology workforce. African Americans and Hispanics of both genders, male and female, account for about 3% each.

The general workforce already reflects much more gender equality and racial and cultural diversity. Projections show that growth in the US labor force through 2008 will come mostly from women and minorities. The growth will come from expanding the pool of science and engineering talent, and we need the talent of every worker in order to compete and prosper.

That expansion must come from the mostly untapped potential of underrepresented minorities and women. And I'd like to say that that, in fact, represents America's competitive edge for the 21st century.

The National Science Foundation is committed to building a science and engineering workforce that's inclusive and draws on all the talent in the nation. And in fact, people don't really view the NSF as a people agency.

We fund 200,000 people every year. 70,000 or 80,000 teachers, 35,000 to 40,000 graduate students, undergraduate students, high school students, faculty, and various programs. That is not even to mention those that are touched by the IMAX films, Public Radio broadcasts, and so forth, which reaches out to about 50 million people.

I'd like to tell you a little bit about some of the things we're doing at NSF to address this issue. I'll begin with recruitment of women and minorities in science and engineering, and then I'll talk about the K-12 education programs.

One of the newest programs at the National Science Foundation-- it went on the web just a month ago-- addresses the very small numbers of women in science and engineering. It's called ADVANCE.

The program intends to catalyze system-wide changes in universities. That is, to induce change in the universities and colleges that will foster a more positive climate for women to pursue academic careers.

And ADVANCE also aims to bring more women into science and engineering. It addresses what we inelegantly refer to as the two-body problem or the trailing spouse, and that is to provide an opportunity for funding for women who are returning to the workforce or who are moving because their husband has taken a position in another institution. It's an opportunity for them to have funding in order to move with the spouse.

And it's also open to men, spouses of women who have received a position in an institution. It allows them, the husband to apply, since he's part of a two-body problem.

The message is that NSF values and rewards the hard work needed to change the conditions for women in science and engineering. And this will give participants an opportunity to make a real difference over the long term.

Now I'd also like to mention the Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation. These alliances target the underrepresentation of minorities in science and engineering. It's about 10 years old. The program links two and four-year educational institutions with business, industry, and government. And there are now about 28 alliances across the United States.

The key features of the success include a summer bridge program to help high school graduates prepare for college, as well as provide them with research experiences and mentoring. A study done by the National Science Board back in 1988 shows that one of the most powerful correlates of success in science and engineering measured by a senior position or success in a prize, a Nobel Prize or last reward or full professorship or whatever is the opportunity to do research in a laboratory with a mentorship being provided.

Now the programs have made a real impact on the number of degrees awarded to minorities in the alliance institutions. In 1990, before the program began, degrees in the first group of institutions, the two-year institutions, totaled under 4,000.

By the year 2000, this had increased to more than 7,000. For all of the alliance institutions, the total by the year 2000, last year, was over 21,000 degrees, a number that continues to grow. And I would say that's success by any measure.

I should also underscore that NSF's largest investment in women and minority scientists and engineers is through our ongoing research and education efforts. NSF support for women researchers, for example, has tripled over the last decade to about $500 million, about half a billion dollars. We still have a long way to go, I certainly would admit that. But we are reaching out and cashing in on the talents and skills of many more of our citizens.

Now another area where we need to do a better job tapping the nation's talent is with a K-12 science and math education. Here's where attracting more women and minorities to bolster the S&E workforce really begins.

Today, however, far too many girls, women, minorities fail even to cross the threshold into science and engineering. We know that there are lots of obstacles and stereotyped cultural conditioning that begins to appear very early in life. And we refer to the grades between four and eight as the valley of death. And interestingly, not only for girls, but also for boys, where the interest that's so keen in the first few grades in science, engineering, discovery wanes and is socially sort of dissuasive.

Now I've often told the story of how when I was in high school, girls were simply not allowed to take physics. Yes, that's true. More to the point, my high school chemistry teacher told me I'd never make it in chemistry. Girls couldn't do chemistry. Later on in life as an undergraduate student-- and I won't say where-- applying for a graduate fellowship, my department chair said that he didn't waste fellowships on women.

Well, today, no one would ever say outright they would not waste a fellowship on a woman. Yet when we consider how to attract women and minorities to science and technology, we really have to begin by re-examining our assumptions about education across the board, from kindergarten to lifelong learning.

And this is an absolute imperative for today's children if they're going to participate successfully in the workforce of tomorrow. And yet, too many of them leave science and technology and just abandon it before they leave high school. This is all part of a much larger challenge.

Most of us are familiar with the results of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study, better known as TIMSS. It's become almost a mantra, unfortunately. The study compared the average performance of US students to students in other countries. Although US fourth graders performed above average in the study, performance declined by eighth grade. And by the 12th grade, US students were right at the bottom.

The most recent TIMSS study, repeated only for the eighth graders, was released just a month ago in Washington. We had a press conference. It gives us some reason to be hopeful, but it still shows a long way to go, because some of the individual school districts made it to the top of the international rankings. And so that suggests that, yes, we can raise the performance of US children through improvements in the quality of K-12 education.

Now we at NSF are really pleased that the president has asked us to lead the math and science partnerships called the No Child Left Behind education initiative. At the center of NSF's FY 2002 budget request is $200 million of a five-year, $1 billion investment. And this will be used to strengthen and reform K-12 science and math education.

NSF will provide funds for the states and the local school districts to join with institutions of higher learning. For example, the local school districts in Boston with MIT. The goal is to help ensure that all K-12 students have the opportunity to perform to high standards in science and math.

And we're asking scientists, mathematicians, engineers at universities and colleges to work with educators in the elementary, middle, and high schools to achieve some very ambitious goals. The partnerships program aims to strengthen math and science standards, to improve curricula in textbooks, and to raise the quality of teacher professional development. Bringing research experiences into the classroom really should help improve student achievement.

But the program doesn't end just there. We hope to eliminate the performance gap between minority and majority students and reach underserved schools and students in creative new ways.

Well, let me point out just one other program that's very important that's been proven very successful, and that's our GK-12 program, graduate student K-12 involvement. The program works with having an individual scientist and an institution or an engineer, a higher education institution partnering with a teacher in the elementary, middle, or high school, and developing a program to enhance science and math education.

Funding goes to graduate students. They receive a stipend of $18,000. And we hope with the new money provided in our budget to raise the stipend to $20,500, though for the graduate students in the audience, we would like to raise it to $25,000.

In any case, this provides an opportunity for the student, who receives the stipend has grant fees and tuition covered, to then spend 20 hours a week with a school teacher in the elementary, middle, or high school, providing the content, the mentorship, and the excitement of the research. And perhaps schoolchildren will learn that engineers do things besides drive trains.

Well, let me stop here. I look forward to a bit of discussion. My simple message is one of always pushing ahead, constant improvement, meeting ever tougher challenges. We've made some tremendous steps forward across our society. In some areas, science and technology has inspired the progress that we have made. In other areas, we've trailed. Now we can change that, and I know that all of us are committed to making a difference. Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

MORGAN: Do we have a question or two? Yes?

AUDIENCE: I think it's marvelous, the programs you've outlined. And how are we getting [INAUDIBLE]? But the thing that concerns me is-- I looked at all the figures and data. The thing that concerns me is, what about the other end? Is it realistic to think even at the K-12 level that unless people can see a secure future in the sense that if you get a good education and do well that there'll be a good job for you? Is it realistic to think that people will flow into these fields?

For instance, I think we may have a crisis in biological sciences, because we already have an enormous oversupply of people in postdoctoral positions. That may not be oversupplied compared to some measure of demand, but it is compared to jobs. And so is someone looking hard at what we do at the job end?

COLWELL: Well, there's a very serious anomaly. On the one hand, we were increasing H1-B visas to bring in nearly 200,000 people technically trained from other countries. 55,000 from India alone from the Indian Institute of Technology, and other very productive institutions there at a time that now we are seeing a cascade in job opportunities. In other words, we cannot address our needs for science and technology talent by importation. It doesn't work.

What we need to do is reflect on how we are educating. And in fact, to produce students who graduate, who are flexible, and who will be prepared as they must to have seven or eight career changes before retirement. You and I could expect to stay in one job or one kind of-- for example, I'm a microbiologist, and I'm still doing microbiology. That isn't going to happen for those who graduate this spring.

And so we need to not only focus on how we're teaching our students, but also on what we're teaching them, and then for the expectations that we are providing them. We do have a tremendous need for mathematicians across all of society. I don't think we will have a glut even if we are successful in the push that we're making to put more money into mathematics. I could go on and on for an hour about that. I won't.

MORGAN: Yeah [INAUDIBLE] question. Unfortunately, we have a hard 3 o'clock deadline for [INAUDIBLE]. So I'm going to stop now, and perhaps there'll be an opportunity for another few questions a little later in the program. The program will run full time. Thank you very much, Rita.

[APPLAUSE]

WULF: Sorry. Thanks, Granger. I want to add my thanks to Chuck and Dan for hosting this anniversary celebration symposium. I think this is really nifty. And to get sorted many of the former science advisors here at the same time is really pretty special.

When Dan asked me to speak today, he asked me to in essence repeat the talk that I gave at the annual meeting of the National Academy of Engineering last fall. And so in some sense, this is going to be an abbreviated version of that.

The full talk tried to first talk about the kinds of contributions that engineering has made to our quality of life, and the second half was to look forward and ask, what are the challenges facing engineering for the 21st century? I'm going to lop off the first self-congratulatory part of the talk altogether, and I'm going to focus in on just one challenge for the 21st century, a challenge that I think may be the greatest one that we have to face. And it is, in fact, engineering ethics.

Now what Dan didn't tell me was that I was going to be talking right after Harold Shapiro talked about ethics. He was vaguely apologetic about not being a scientist. I'll be vaguely apologetic about not being an ethicist as well.

I want to start out by making it clear that I believe that engineers and engineering by and large are very ethical. There are courses in engineering ethics at many universities. There's a stack about two, two and a half feet high of books that have been written just in the last five years on the question of engineering ethics.

ABET 2000, the criteria by which engineering schools are accredited, require an exposure to ethics, at least in the context of a capstone project. And every single engineering society has a professional code of ethics.

The one that most of them are modeled on is from the National Society of Professional Engineers, and it starts out saying that engineers will hold paramount the health and safety of the public. And then goes on in great detail, some 170 or so separate points of specific responsibilities that engineers have to their customers, to the public, and so on.

So with all of that in place, why did I try and tell the academy that I thought one of the greatest challenges for the 21st century was engineering ethics? It's because I think the practice of engineering is changing, and changing in a way that raises new kinds of ethical issues, ones that engineers at least haven't had to face before.

The existing codes of the vast majority of the books, the context in which the ABET requirement is written all deal with what is known as micro ethics. And I don't mean micro to mean small or unimportant, but rather, ethics that have to do with the behavior of an individual as opposed to macro ethics, which deal with the behavior of the profession as a whole.

Perhaps illustrating the point with another field will help. In medicine, the ethical codes that a doctor subscribes to for his or her individual behavior bear an amazing resemblance to the engineering ethical codes. The behavior of the individual is specified in very similar ways.

But medicine has had to deal with some of these macro ethical problems, which engineering has not. The most easily accessible example is allocation. If there are less organs to transplant than there are patients who need them, how do we decide which patient gets them? That's not a decision for the individual doctor.

Similarly, if there's less medicine than the number of people ill, or if there's simply less time for the physician to allocate to all of the people who are ill, how do you do triage? How do you decide who gets the attention and who does not? Again, those are macro ethical questions, because they're questions that either the profession has to decide upon, or perhaps better, society informed by the profession needs to decide.

Well, I said the practice of engineering is changing in ways that raise these macro ethical problems. I'm going to focus on just one such change, again, in the interest of time, and that's the issue of complexity. Particularly, complexity arising from information technology, from biotechnology, and perhaps in the near future from nanotechnology.

Simple fact is it is possible today to build systems for which it is impossible to predict all of their behaviors a priori. It's not just hard. It's not just if you thought about it more, you could do it. It is literally impossible.

Perhaps the best way I can illustrate that is from my own field in computing. We've got some physicists in the audience, and so maybe somebody can give me the exact number, but I believe that there are kind of order of 10 to the 100th elementary particles in the universe. I'm looking at Allan Bromley to tell me whether that's right. Okay, he's saying it is. It's 10 raised to one followed by a couple of digits. Maybe it's 120.

I want you to compare that to the number of states in my laptop. By state, I simply mean the number of patterns of ones and zeros in my laptop. That number is 10 raised to 10 to the 20th power. So whereas the number of atoms in the universe is 10 to the one followed by two zeros, the number of states in my laptop is 10 raised to one followed by 20 zeros.

If every atom in the universe were a computer and every one of them could do 10 to the 100th operations per second, there isn't enough time since the big bang to examine all of the states in my laptop. Okay? That's the sense in which I mean we can build systems that are so complicated that it is impossible to predict their behavior. It's not that there isn't an algorithm, which given enough time could determine all of the outcomes, all of the behaviors. It's that there isn't enough time.

A very concrete example of this was a report issued by the Naval Research Laboratory. One of my areas of research has been computer security over the years. And there was an NRL report about 1993, if I remember correctly, that looked at the reasons for about 50 security failures, lapses in security that happened.

Because the way these 50 examples were selected-- the numbers I'm about to give are not necessarily representative of anything. But of those 50 examples, 22 were errors in the specifications, errors in the sense that a property which was thought to be essential for the correct behavior of the system, it in fact turned out to be the vehicle by which somebody could crack the system.

In every case, it was because the particular way that the cracking was done was not anticipated for exactly the reasons I'm describing. The system's too complicated. It's impossible to predict its behavior.

So the question then is, how does one behave ethically in such cases? What does it mean to ethically engineer when you know that the system that you build will have behaviors that you did not predict, some of which might be negative, some of which might be absolutely disastrous?

And in fact, we have to begin to rethink the process by which we engineer. I mean, the kind of standard process you're taught in engineering school is that somebody gives you a specification for a problem, for a solution to a problem. You go find a design that affects that solution. You build it. You test it. Go home.

Well, I'm sorry. The error's going to be back in the specification, or the problem's going to be back in the specification. So how do we modify the process by which we behave?

I think there's no better example right at the moment than people are talking about remediation of the Everglades. We're about to do some multi-billion dollar re-engineering of the Everglades. Let me tell you, that's one of these complicated systems for which we will not be able to predict the consequences of what we do.

And yet, doing nothing is not an acceptable solution either. Doing nothing is also a conscious decision, and it will have consequences. So how do we ethically engineer in such a circumstance?

I've got another example, but we're going to run out of time, and so let me defer that to any questions, or defer that to questions at the end. I wish Harold were still here. It might get into a more interesting conversation. Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

MORGAN: Well, I will make the first question to Bill, and then Bill, if time runs out and the two have to run for a cab, I will alternate. So a question. Yeah?

AUDIENCE: Well, although we can't-- although we can't know the-- although we can't know the states of a particular future, we can-- and Dr. Morgan has just written about [INAUDIBLE] in some way that we have some idea about-- like say in the case of the Everglades, we have some idea what will happen over a small period of time. Of course, we don't have large periods of time. And how would you think about that?

WULF: Yeah, I'd like to have some conversations with people who are more expert than I, but a plausible suggestion is that instead of design-- sorry-- specify, design, build, test, you say, well, let's specify a little and design a little and build a little and test a little, and then go back and ask what's happened. But that's a much more organic interaction with whatever it is that you're producing than engineers are accustomed to.

MORGAN: Yes?

AUDIENCE: On the question of large numbers and the impossibility of specification, isn't it a question partly of how and what you specify? Ordinary statistical mechanics is a way of dealing with very, very large numbers. Maybe only 10 to the 30th rather than 10 to the 100th.

But most of the states become outliers on a distribution for which certain macroscopic variables can be defined fine. [INAUDIBLE] in most of the situations one encounters take care of. I mean, can one deal similarly statistically with these large numbers?

WULF: Let's see. In the case of continuous systems, maybe. The trouble with digital systems is that they're not continuous. A one-bit change can lead you to a state which has no relationship to the state you changed from. You don't have continuity. And it's a problem.

MORGAN: [INAUDIBLE] Dr. Colwell. There was one over here that I [INAUDIBLE]. Yes?

AUDIENCE: Rita, we've heard a lot about workforce, and we've talked about micro and macro, and I and everybody applauds what you and others are doing. In a big macro picture sense from a national point of view, if there is a crisis, as your title says, and there is, including the workforce minorities, women, and human beings, what in a big picture sense can we try to do to bring some elevation of political awareness so that there's policy action on this critical, critical issue?

COLWELL: I don't think we've ever had a time more salubrious with respect to the White House actually saying that education is the number one priority for the country. And I think what we need to do is ensure that we take advantage of this wonderful opportunity when there is a focus on K-12 education.

And I think the big problem has been the disconnect-- I call it the scorched earth-- between the elementary, middle, and high school and the higher education. Somehow we have risen above it, which is sort of bizarre. And we need to reconnect, and it is our problem. And I think if we can take advantage of this, this really excellent opportunity and time that we have, we can make a big difference. I really do.

And I really worry about simplistic solutions. They're not simple solutions. One of the things we would like to do-- and I'm going to give you a little commercial here-- is establish centers focused on the science of learning and teaching, and to develop these centers just as we so successfully did for engineering research centers and science and technology centers-- they are a big success-- where we require the industry, the local school system, higher education, the community, and private foundations to be partners and totally responsible.

Provide opportunities regionally for teachers to regain their professionalism, to regain their pride of profession, and then to have a place to go for the best practices, curricula, et cetera. Anyway, I think this could be very effective.

MORGAN: Very good. Here's a mic.

AUDIENCE: Yeah, Rita, I'm sorry. I came in just on the tail end of your talk, but I know what's in it, so it's--

[LAUGHTER]

COLWELL: You've heard it before.

AUDIENCE: I've heard it before. But the question I have for you is this. If you remember back in the mid 1980s, the National Science Board and the National Science Foundation made a big pitch for increased numbers of scientific and technical personnel. If we had followed through with that, we would have not had quite as bad a decline as we've had. I mean, the timing was absolutely correct.

However, the political system beat us to death. And the reason that I know so well is I was on the National Science Board at the time and chair it one time in that period of time, and we literally got slaughtered. That's the only word I can say for it.

And the reason we did was that we had a small recession which lasted for a year or two and a few chemistry PhDs were driving taxicabs. And we just got killed.

Now the problem you have is we are now looking at an economy which is not as robust as it was this time last year, and the issue-- my concern is that we're going to end up with the same kind of response. And if we do, then the next time around-- I mean, it will simply be now twice as bad as it was the time before.

How do we get people to understand that this is not a response to whatever is doing today? And interestingly enough, I have to say this. In the 1985, '86 problem, the universities did not help us.

COLWELL: Well, Mary, there is a difference. Today from that unhappy period of time-- which I remember so well because I too was on the science board with you, as you'll remember.

The difference is that we have had an attitude in the past which served us well, that we would educate the best and the brightest, and they would lead us-- and they did-- into the future as the best in our fields. The difference now is that the technological work skill demands are across the board.

And so in order to be an auto mechanic, you've got to know mathematics. You have to know something about computers. In fact, you have to know about computers, because there are probably 20 or 30 of them under the hood. So I think we have a different kind of challenge than we did at that time.

And also, when you try to predict directions, if you try to predict for kids where they will go, that is a mistake. Again, changing education so that we educate kids who will be lifelong learners, who will be self-educated. And of course, distance education, as MIT is doing so well in making available in its curricula, another way of educating that's very, very important in a new century. So there are differences.

MORGAN: I think we have time for just two more questions. There's one there.

AUDIENCE: There's a great deal of complaining about the lack of people moving into science and technology, but I would suggest there's no real economic evidence that that is a problem. You are not finding the kinds of salaries for engineers that are being paid for MBAs going into consulting companies.

And so when a company president complains to me about the shortage of engineers, and I said, well, would you pay as much as you do for the top MBAs, he said, well, of course we couldn't do that. And there you are.

COLWELL: Well, that's anecdotal, and it's valid. But let me counter with an anecdote as well. A friend of mine who's an African American mathematician, he finished his PhD early last year before the H1-B visas were full, were completely exhausted. They were all taken. And he could not get a job. But as soon as the last of the H1-B visas were gone, then he had several job offers.

So I think there is something very-- there's an important message there that we are not looking to our Native Americans, and we're not providing the job opportunities. And we're using an artificial source for filling the jobs that are very important. And the IT jobs do pay 60% more than the average wage, so they're not exactly crummy jobs, so to speak.

WULF: No, in fact, that's something that ought to be very disturbing to us. A new engineer with a BS degree gets from 50% to 100% more than a person graduating with a BA Degree, on average. And yet, in the face of that, we're still losing market share. We're still getting a smaller and smaller fraction of those people who do enter college, who even have the appropriate math and science prerequisites, opting not to take engineering.

MORGAN: I think that both in the interests of getting two of our panel members out to a waiting cab and giving Dan his whole time, we should stop here. My apologies to the couple of you who still have questions. Thanks again to both Rita and Bill.

[APPLAUSE]

HASTINGS: To finish up this session, which was to look at some of the cross-cutting issues that are affecting the human capital in this country, I want to talk a bit about the need for an integrative technology and policy education. I subtitled this Bridging the Gap.

And the question I want to address today was actually framed by Donald Kennedy, I thought very well, in his insightful book Academic Duty. And in the final chapter he asks the question, can the universities really make a difference with respect to the big problems facing us? And in the actual chapter, the big problems is capitalized, which I can't quite say it that way.

He suggests that the list of challenges facing us ranged from arms proliferation and disarmament to ethical issues in genetic testing and counseling, as we heard today at lunch, to utilization in centers and health care systems. And these issues are indeed intellectually exciting and analytically demanding.

However, the problem is that they do not come in disciplinary packages. And furthermore, he asserts in his book, those who wish to work on them face suspicion in the academy, which he asserts stems partly from the traditional academic reluctance to do, quote, "applied work," and partly from the considerable difficulty of being an interdisciplinary scholar.

And he points out the critiques often heard in these messes that it's so valuable to go to. The critique of those who engage in interdisciplinary work is often their work is watered down or somehow has gone soft. And therefore, it's hard to encourage people, academics to actually think hard about some of these issues. He points out, however, that these issues are indeed real and complex, and they're problems of large scale, and they need the attention of thoughtful intellectuals.

So then the question as he frames in the last chapter of his book is whether the academy can overcome the resistance of departmental structure to re-engineer itself in the face of these challenges. And in this talk, what I want to argue that part of the answer to this big question lies in educating leaders flowing out of a new vision of engineering, which to some extent you heard from Bill Wulf and his emphasis on engineering ethics. This new vision of engineering is going to operate at the interface of technology and policy.

Now in terms of building that argument, I first want to argue that we live in a world of two cultures, and I think we've heard quite a bit about that already today. And secondly, in a world of accelerating technological change with profound social consequences. And President Shapiro made a very good case for some of the consequences in terms of the stories that guide us in our lives here.

And thirdly, I'm going to argue that the paradigm for engineering is changing. And from this new paradigm can emerge the kind of leaders that can transform the academy, if we allow it to actually happen.

The first thing to consider, of course, is here in the first part of the 21st century of modern day America, we see a staggering technological change and innovation. So the reality is even though as Representative Porter pointed out, many in the Congress may not entirely appreciate the worlds of science and technology. Our lives have been fundamentally transformed by science and technology.

It's hard for those people who are much older-- and you talk to people much older, you compare people [INAUDIBLE] today, it's hard to understand the dimension of the changes. So I even talk to my own sons who live in a world where there's always been CDs and VCRs and transatlantic phone calls, and they just don't think of anything else. That level of communication has just changed their lives in ways that they don't even completely appreciate.

Now an awful lot of that, of course, has flowed from the success of what's occurred in the academy. A lot of the inventions and discoveries-- not all of them-- have flowed from the academy. And in that sense, a disciplinary formulation has proven to be, you've got to say on the basis of the evidence, remarkably successful.

However, we still live in a world of two cultures. Many people, as Representative Porter suggested, who end up in leadership come up through a liberal arts education. The liberal arts education very correctly emphasizes the human condition, but gives relatively little shrift to the increasing scientific and technological forces which are changing our understanding of the world.

Many of the people who end up with this liberal arts education end up in law and public policy positions, which teaches them very well to articulate their cases, but does not teach them very well fundamentally if they're talking about science and technology exactly what they're actually arguing about. Sometimes this leads to amusing results, and sometimes worse.

What was very interesting to observe in reading about the voting issues in Florida was the debates over voting machines. Whereas those of us trained in more of the technocratic tradition would have said, well, there's a fundamental issue about uncertainty here, which is fundamentally unresolvable. But it was just hard to get that point across to people.

By contrast, many like myself who've been educated through a scientific indication end it with a technocratic view of the world, which often does not take account of the role of human beings. I thought that one of the ways to understand what President Shapiro said at lunchtime today was to hear the fact that he was articulating a view where human stories are at the center of the way that human beings actually think. And often in a technocratic view of the world, it's just not clear that people understand that.