Harry Targ
A spokesperson for Purdue University testified
before a Congressional research and technology subcommittee on November 13
warning that the United States is “losing a cadre of innovators that will never
come back.” (Maureen Groppe, “Congress Hears Warning About Consequences of
Research Cuts,” Journal and Courier,
November 14, 2013, C1). The university spokesperson was echoing warnings that
have been coming from his university and major research universities all around
the country.
Purdue’s President, Mitch Daniels, not unlike other
university presidents, has committed increasing shares of his budget to
building so-called STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)
fields. While support for STEM fields in higher education is not in and of
itself a danger to higher education, Daniels has been implying that the United
States has been falling behind other, potentially economically and/or
militarily competitive nations, because of inadequate STEM funding. And, he has
recommended that expanded allocation of resources for scientific and
technological research and education should come from cuts in vital programs
such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. In addition, as Governor,
Daniels was a leading proponent of the privatization of social services and public
education.
The threats of the United States falling behind some
fictional adversaries is a similar “meme” to those that have been articulated
by economic, political and military elites at least since the end of World War
II. A “meme” is generally understood to be an “idea, behavior, or style that
spreads from person to person within a culture.” It is a framework for bundling
ideas into a common theme that can be used in speeches, writings, and rituals. The
meme or idea of falling behind some imagined competing or threatening force has
been misused by political leaders over and over again.
When World War II was coming to an end, members of the Roosevelt and Truman administrations were concerned that the economy would return to the depression of the 1930s. What stimulated economic recovery during the war, of course, was the mobilization of the military, corporations, universities, and workers to engage in massive research and production of war material to defeat fascism.
In the context of the winding down of the war, one
CEO serving in government recommended that the United States create a
“permanent war economy” to maintain the high level of economic and military
mobilization and thus forestall economic decline. Support for high levels of military
spending and corporate/government/university cooperation required a rationale.
This rationale became the “meme” of the international communist threat. It justified
the misallocation of societal resources for continued war production that has
been a central feature of federal policy ever since.
The threat of “falling behind the Soviets”
reverberated in the mass media after the shocking October, 1957 Soviet projection
of an earth satellite into space. All of a sudden Americans were made to
believe that their institutions were inferior to the enemy and that a new
commitment of resources was needed to beat the Soviets to the moon and expand
dramatically the American war machine.
Three years later the threat of falling behind the
enemy was used by presidential candidate John Kennedy to mobilize support and
encourage new rounds of huge investments in military expansion. Kennedy warned
of a “missile gap” that had emerged between the two super powers, a claim that
was admitted to be false within a year of the new president’s assuming office.
Twenty years later presidential candidate Ronald
Reagan referred to the “window of vulnerability” that had emerged in the 1970s
as a result of Soviet/United States arms control negotiations. Although the
United States agreed to limitations in arms production the Soviet Union, he
claimed, continued their arms buildup creating this vulnerability to Soviet
power. Consequently, President Reagan between 1981 and 1987 spent more on the
military than the entire period of U.S. history from 1789 to 1981.
With the end of the Cold War, the meme shifted to
wars on “drugs” and today “terrorism.” All of these manifestations of the
“falling behind” meme led the United States government to waste trillions of
dollars and the loss of millions of lives of Americans and peoples in other
countries such as Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
Returning to “the STEM crisis,” Michael Anft, in a
recent article (“The STEM Crisis: Reality or Myth,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, November 11, 2013), points out
that there is much research showing that U.S. higher education is not falling
behind some possible competing nations, that American universities are
producing as many STEM college graduates as are needed, and that the institutional
spokespersons, from universities, the corporate sector, technology associations
and others, may be motivated more by institutional interest than demonstrated
need.
Further, in an August 30, 2013 article, Robert N.
Charette (IEEE Spectrum, http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/education/the-stem-crisis-s-a-myth) challenges
a variety of claims made by advocates of more resources for STEM fields. Among
these are the following:
-Many workers in STEM fields do not have STEM
degrees and those who hold such degrees do not necessarily find work in their
fields.
-STEM jobs have changed over time. For example,
long-term engineering jobs have been reduced while shorter-term project driven
hires have increased.
-With repeated shifts in the economy, it is
difficult to project what STEM job needs will be over long periods of time,
five or ten years from now.
-Some studies find that the supply of STEM trained
college students exceeds the demand for their labor. In one study by the
Economic Policy Institute it was found that more than one-third of computer
science graduates in recent years have not been able to find jobs in their
chosen field.
-Many STEM jobs have been outsourced. In addition,
international workers with STEM qualifications have been enticed to take jobs
in the United States, often receiving smaller salaries than American workers.
-Salaries of those working in STEM fields have been
stagnant, much like the broader work force. This is so, some economists suggest,
because demand for such trained workers has declined over the last several
years.
Charette discussed possible reasons for the
hyperbolic calls for quantum shifts toward STEM fields in universities and
public investment. He refers to a cycle of “alarm, boom, and bust” that has
governed phases of the public policy meme affecting foreign and domestic
policy. Recently, the federal government has been spending $3 billion each year
on 209 STEM-related initiatives, amounting to “about $100 for every U.S.
student beyond primary school.”
Charette identifies powerful forces in the country
that gain from this massive allocation of societal resources. Corporations want
a large pool of trained workers from which to choose, thus cheapening the cost
of labor. State governments and the Federal government measure their successes
in part by how many scientists and engineers they help produce. In addition, a
third to one-half of the budgets of large universities come from government and
corporate research grants in the STEM fields as public funding for universities
has declined. And finally, about 50 cents of every dollar in the federal budget
goes to the military, homeland security, and space exploration.
As Charette points out; “The result is that many
people’s fortunes are now tied to the STEM crisis, real or manufactured.”
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