Category Archives: Universities

Leverage Universities to Transform State Economy

Leverage Universities to Transform State Economy by Mark Kushner (dean of the College of Engineering at Iowa State University) and P. Barry Butler (dean of the College of
Engineering at the University of Iowa):

Iowa’s colleges of engineering are driving innovation and economic development by doing state-of-the-art research and seeding new companies. We are responsible for $80 million per year in research expenditures – the vast majority of which comes from out of state – with an economic impact of $250 million. The investment we make in faculty researchers has a nearly 15-to-1 return.
Where we invest determines the jobs we produce, the innovation we spark and the wages Iowans earn. We need rock-solid, unbiased data to make those decisions. The data from California say that the amusement-park industry provides $22,000 per-year jobs and the information-technology industry provides $100,000 per year jobs. What are we willing to invest and risk for $100,000 per-year jobs?

The tough part is not convincing people that investing in science and engineering education is wise. And while I agree with the authors I don’t think that is the correct data to look at. The authors want more money invested in their schools of engineering.
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Science and Engineering Doctoral Degrees Worldwide

Lagging Engineer Degrees a Crisis by Kevin Hall:

Relative to the sizes of their populations, Asian nations are graduating five times as many undergraduate students in engineering as the United States. A study by Engineering Trends determined that the United States ranks 16th per capita in the number of doctoral graduates and 25th in engineering undergraduates per million citizens.
…
U.S. universities continue awarding more doctoral degrees in engineering than universities anywhere else. But the American Association of Engineering Societies said foreign nationals received 58 percent of the U.S. doctoral degrees in engineering last year: 3,766 degrees out of 6,504. A decade earlier, they accounted for less than half.

I doubt that US universities are awarding more doctoral degrees than others are. Even if that is true I doubt it will last for even 5 more years. You might measure this in various ways including: absolute number of doctoral degrees awarded or using a per capita number. I believe several European countries are ahead today on a per capita basis. On an absolute basis I would be surprised if China or India isn’t already ahead. But if neither is, that will not true for long. I tried to find some good data online and wasn’t able to find anything certain in the time I took. Lost Dominance in Ph.D. Production sites a National Bureau of Economic Research report:
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Science and Engineering Fellowships Legislation

Senators will propose legislation to spur innovation from InfoWorld:

John Ensign, a Nevada Republican, Joseph Lieberman, a Connecticut Democrat with support announced by four other senators will propose legislation that establishes 5,000 science and engineering fellowships, redirects 3 percent of government agency R&D spending to specific areas of research and provides automatic green cards for graduate engineering students, the senators said Wednesday.

And on the same topic, Senators Promise ‘Brain Drain’ Bill:

According to Sen. George Allen (R-Va.), the U.S. is averaging 50,000 engineering graduates a year, with 40 percent of those from overseas. India is averaging 150,000 engineering graduates a year while China is graduating 250,000 engineers every year.

The Future of Scholarly Publication

Scholarly journals’ premier status diluted by Web by Bernard Wysocki Jr., The Wall Street Journal:

In the U.S. a powerful open-access advocate has been Harold Varmus, a Nobel laureate, former UC scholar and former NIH director. He’s now head of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. He co-founded Public Library of Science with Berkeley’s Dr. Eisen, backed by a $9 million grant from a private foundation. Charging authors a fee of $1,500, the group launched its first peer-reviewed journal, PLoS Biology, in 2003, and also distributes its contents free on the Internet.

I have nothing against Journals trying to stay in business. I do however, think the internet has created a better method of distributing information than existed previously. And, given the current state of the internet, I do object to scientific knowledge being kept out of the scientific and public community. The ability to use the internet to more effectively communicate new knowledge should not be sacrificed to protect the old model journals had for sustaining themselves. They should find a way to fund themselves and make their material availalbe for free on the internet (I think some delay for free public access would be fine – the shorter the delay the better). Or they should be replaced by others that do so.

Luckily sites like the Public Library of Science (freely accessible online scholarly publications) are offering such an alternative.