By JOHN RICHARD SCHROCK
While on a lecture tour of Chinese normal universities in spring of 2008, I found myself in charge of a class of 60 biology student teachers while the regular university professors had to attend a campus event of “one heart” with the victims of the Wenchuan earthquake that had occurred a few weeks earlier. After describing our U.S. educational system, I posed a question to the students: “Will the future general citizens of China need to know: 1) less, 2) the same amount, or 3) more science than they know today?”
The whole class responded immediately with one voice: “More science!”
The response from U.S. decision-makers has been “less science” for nearly 40 years. As a result, the graduate-level science programs at a majority of U.S. universities must rely on foreign students. Without them, many U.S. university science programs would have to close. The U.S. simply teaches far too little science K–12 for general citizen science literacy, let alone to inspire and produce science graduates.
Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology recently released its report documenting how China universities surpassed the U.S. in graduating science doctoral students back in 2007. In 2019, the U.S. graduated 33,759 STEM PhD students while China graduated 49,498. By 2025, we will produce 39,959 graduates while China will produce 77,179. But about 42 percent of those U.S. university science doctoral recipients are international students educated K–12 in foreign countries. If we only consider the American-born students trained in the U.S., then China will produce more than three times as many science doctorates as the U.S. in 2025 (23,256 compared to China’s 77,179).
The just-released report by our National Science Foundation, “The State of U.S. Science and Engineering 2022” confirms China surpassed the U.S. in total annual science papers published (in 2017) and patents awarded (in 2019). The U.S. fell behind China in contribution to global research spending growth over the past two decades: China (29%), United States (23%).
In October 2021, the Center for Strategic and International Studies released “Winning the Tech Talent Competition: Without STEM Immigration Reforms, the United States Will Not Stay ahead of China.” And our National Science Board just released “International STEM Talent is Crucial for a Robust U.S. Economy” with graphs titled “International Students Disproportionately Earn Doctoral Degrees in Fields Underlying Critical and Emerging Technologies” and “Substantial and Growing Proportion of the U.S. S&E Workforce is Foreign-Born” and how “Over Half of Doctorate Holders Employed in Academic Engineering and Computer and Information Sciences are Foreign-Born.”
The National Science Board has released “The State of U.S. Science and Engineering 2022" report asserting “Building the STEM labor force through strengthening U.S. STEM education at the K–12 level will increase S&E capacity.” But this accurate statement provided no further actions towards increasing our K–12 science coursework or increasing science teacher training.
There are four problems. 1) U.S. national and state legislatures have made clear decisions to abandon nuclear science, particle accelerators, astronomy facilities, etc., thus moving this research overseas. 2) Education Schools refuse to expand science, assuming if you need a science snswer, you can just “look it up.” 3) Recent political actions have begun a decline in foreign students coming to the U.S. well before the pandemic, due to ongoing U.S. gun violence, anti-foreign nationalism and our anti-Asian and anti-Muslim violence. And 4) both legislators and education boards totally disregard our desperate need to increase K-12 science coursework and science teacher training.
Last December I sent three major reports on this U.S. decline in science education to over 500 members of state boards of education nationwide, and to the education czars in the four states that lack a state board. The facts were clear in those reports, documenting the long term decline in K–12 science coursework, the widespread shortage of well-trained science teachers, and state policies that are further eroding the quality and amount of science our future population will understand. It took us four decades to fall to the bottom of developed nations in science illiteracy. If we took immediate steps to turn this around, it would take another four decades to rebuild U.S. science productivity and literacy.
But the responses I received nationwide made it clear that there will be no turnaround. Only in America do we believe in a future of “less science.”
. . .
The Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology report is at:
https://cset.georgetown.edu/publication/china-is-fast-outpacing-u-s-stem-phd-growth
The National Science Foundation “The State of U.S. Science and Engineering 2022” report is at: The State of U.S. Science and Engineering 2022 | NSF - National Science Foundation
The Center for Strategic and International Studies report “Winning the Tech Talent Competition: Without STEM Immigration Reforms, the United States Will Not Stay ahead of China” is at:
Winning the Tech Talent Competition
The National Science Board “The State of U.S. Science and Engineering 2022” is at:
The State of U.S. Science and Engineering 2022 | NSF - National Science Foundation
John Richard Schrock has trained biology teachers for more than 30 years in Kansas. He also has lectured at 27 universities during 20 trips to China. He holds the distinction of “Faculty Emeritus” at Emporia State University.