Earlier this month, President Bush signed the 21st Century Competitiveness Act into law. This bill was guided through the U.S. House of Representatives by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other key Democrats from California, with strong bipartisan support, especially from Republicans on the House Science Committee. It reflects many of the recommendations of the National Academy of Engineering report, “Rising Above the Gathering Storm,” which focused attention on the steps America needs to take to remain competitive in the world economy. Previously, the administration led the way with the American Competitiveness Initiative, set forth in the president’s 2006 State of the Union address.
In a Nov. 17 speech at the headquarters of the American Electronics Association, Pelosi said of the Competitiveness Act: “I don’t want it to pass with just 230 votes. I want the issue of competitiveness to be truly bipartisan. I want 350 votes to make this a real mandate that the country can get behind.” In the end, the bill passed the House with 367 votes. In the Senate, it passed by a unanimous voice vote.
This legislation is a major step forward in an ongoing effort by the entire U.S. industrial community to improve competitiveness, particularly over the long term. Indeed, after the president signed it, he stated: “The bill I signed today will help ensure that we remain the most competitive and innovative nation in the world.”
While the high-tech industry considers this bill to be among the most important legislation in years, many Americans know little or nothing about it.
One major emphasis of the Competitiveness Act is to substantially increase the basic research and development budgets of key federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the Department of Energy’s Office of Science.
The funding of basic research by the federal government, especially research in the physical sciences, has been in a state of decline for the past 20 years. The overall R&D budget of the federal government has declined from 1.25 percent of the gross domestic product to 0.8 percent. Small increases in the last few years have not reversed the trend of diminished R&D spending.
Federal government basic research is of paramount importance to the high-tech industry: Breakthroughs such as the Internet, the Global Positioning System, the Web browser and Doppler radar are examples of the fruits of government-sponsored research.
Another major focus of the 21st Century Competitiveness Act is to spotlight the importance of math and science education and to improve the teaching of these subjects. The legislation authorizes $43 billion for STEM education: science, technology, engineering and math. The goal is to increase by 100,000 the number of American students majoring in one of the STEM subjects. Beyond enrollments, however, the legislation also contains creative programs designed to substantially increase the quality of instruction in these subjects and to encourage newly graduated young Americans to go into public and private schools to teach in these fields.
This emphasis on education, spearheaded by California Democratic Reps. George Miller of Concord and Anna Eshoo of Palo Alto and by Reps. Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., and Vern Ehlers, R-Mich., is a result of the worrisome trends that could greatly affect (and some say have already affected) the ability of America to innovate. Some of those trends are:
An 18 percent decline in the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded in engineering from U.S. universities over the past 20 years.
The continuing poor performance of American students in international tests in math and science. The latest test had American kids as low as 28th out of 40 countries in math.
A decline in the quality of the teaching of STEM subjects, especially in high school where, increasingly, the subjects are taught by teachers who did not major in those subjects.
The Competitiveness Act is timely. It has become law on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the launching of Sputnik on Oct. 4, 1957. When that happened, America got scared; but America also acted. Less than 11 months after Sputnik, President Eisenhower rallied Congress to pass the National Defense Education Act, which also emphasized research and education. It had a billion dollar price tag – about $7 billion in today’s dollars – and it was a huge success. For the next 50 years, America was clearly the pre-eminent economic and technological power in the world.
In the last 10 to 15 years, a presumption took hold in the United States that America’s leadership, economically and technologically, was a given and that we no longer had to follow the blueprint laid out by the NDEA. Schools and basic research budgets declined. But the world changed. Our global competitors learned what we did right, and imitated it to their – and the world’s – advantage. Concerns about outsourcing, and awareness of the advancing technological skills of China, India, and other countries, have been heard in Congress, which has now taken the first steps toward protecting our competitive future.
In many ways, the 21st Century Competitiveness Act is the son of NDEA. The challenge of advanced technological competition in the economic arena, from all corners of the world, is this generation’s Sputnik. Congress and the president have stepped up to the challenge.
We are under no illusions. What is authorized by this act is not necessarily what will get funded. If the appropriations committees fail to follow through, the country will lose the opportunity to take a page from its own playbook of 50 years ago and assure American leadership in the world of technology and innovation.
CRAIG R. BARRETT is chairman of the board for Intel Corp. and was a co-author of the “Rising Above The Gathering Storm” report. WILLIAM T. ARCHEY is president and CEO of AeA, the nation’s largest technology trade association. He is co-author of AeA’s “Losing the Competitive Advantage?” report. They wrote this article for the Mercury News.
