Symposium attendees learn that U.S. competitiveness lags

Francis Dietz
ASME Government Relations

The United States can no longer take its technological supremacy for granted because cutting-edge innovative research is increasingly being performed overseas, while U.S.-educated foreign students are increasingly returning to their home countries instead of staying in the United States.

That was the message delivered to some 175 attendees at the ASME-sponsored Engineering R&D Symposium last month in Washington, D.C., by an impressive group of speakers from government, industry and academia. The symposium was co-sponsored by 16 other scientific and engineering societies.

Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., who recently returned from a Congressional trip to China, India and Taiwan, opened the conference. The ranking Democratic member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Bingaman said that the trip opened his eyes to the possibility that those developing nations might soon overtake the United States in scientific discovery and innovation.

Bingaman noted that growing skilled workforces in those countries are enabling them to develop their own cutting-edge technologies, rather than using U.S.-developed methods to manufacture goods as they had done in the past.

"The paradigm of the U.S. producing cutting-edge R&D, which is then manufactured in lesser-developed countries, has been turned on its head," Bingaman said. He explained that some of America's biggest technology companies — such as General Electric and Intel — have large research and design centers in these nations because of the highly skilled workforces available to them.

During a trip to the headquarters of a large Indian software company, Bingaman said he was told that the workforce is so well trained that 1.2 million people applied for 10,000 jobs at the company last year. Of those that applied, 300,000 were given a standardized test; 30,000 were interviewed and 10,000 were finally hired.

In the United States, Bingaman pointed out, large companies often have to rely on a limited number of H1-B visas to acquire the high-tech workers necessary for success. "U.S. companies are not waiting for foreign students with visas to come here," he said. "They are simply building R&D centers there, where the intellectual capital is, and bypassing the U.S. visa issue."

ASME President-Elect Gene Feigel (left), with Sen. John E. Sununu and ASME President Harry Armen, who hold the Congressional resolution acknowledging ASME's 125th anniversary.

Bingaman and other conference speakers noted U.S. advances in nanotechnology, but warned that U.S. supremacy in that burgeoning field is also at risk. Taiwan, for example, has had a nanoscience center in operation since 1994. A second facility that was recently completed next to it is triple the size of a U.S. facility now under construction in New Mexico.

The approach of China, India and Taiwan to science and engineering innovation is more holistic than the U.S., according to Bingaman. Taiwan created a massive science park — in operation since the early 1980s — that encompasses universities, national laboratories and technology companies.

Originally built to assist its semiconductor industry by bringing those entities together in a synergistic approach, the park now is home to more than 325 microelectronics and optoelectronics companies, which can take advantage of the easy access to universities and national laboratories to aid in technology transfer to high-tech products. Bingaman explained that the science park concept is now being adopted in China, India and Singapore.

The science park concept and the emphasis on an educated workforce for a high-tech economy are only a couple of ways that the United States is being challenged in the high-stakes, high-tech game. While the U.S. invests a far greater amount of federal funds in research and development, Japan invests a greater amount as a percentage of its gross domestic product (GDP) on such activities, a distinction that U.S. Presidential Science Advisor John Marburger felt was overrated as a statistic.

Marburger noted that U.S. R&D investment is about 2.7 percent of GDP, while Japan's is about 3.2 percent. He said the U.S. and Japan are the only nations that even approach 3 percent. Using GDP as a barometer is unreliable because "government spending does not grow in proportion, so trying to make something track it precisely would require cuts elsewhere, and is not sustainable."

Marburger, who spoke after Bingaman, claimed that the Bush administration has invested an unprecedented amount of federal funding in research and development over the past four years. While reasonable people can disagree about the priority of specific research programs, he said, overall, the administration has exhibited a high regard for the importance of research to the health and well-being of the American economy.

The science advisor also noted that in an extremely tight budget year, in which the president is exhorting Congress to embark on a path to cut the deficit in half over the next five years, Bush still found the money to increase overall R&D spending by one percent.

Marburger — and Office of Management and Budget official David Trinkle, who spoke after him — also said that the focus should be not just on how much the government is investing, but how well the money is spent.

Trinkle said that the administration's Program Assessment Rating Tool is being successfully employed to improve program performance and assist in prioritizing scarce federal resources.
House Science Committee staff director David Goldston said that "attitudes [on Capitol Hill regarding the importance of R&D] have not changed, but budget realities have. Everyone knows we should do it, but not very many members are champions."

Goldston said that the jurisdictional changes in the Appropriations Committee this year were partly designed to enhance the status of R&D, but the result remains to be seen.

Both Kei Koizumi, budget analyst for the American Association for the Advancement of Science and William Bonvillian, legislative director for Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., noted the enormous budget bite consumed by interest on the national debt. In the proposed federal budget for fiscal year 2006, for example, net interest payments on the debt are approximately the same as for those of Medicaid.

One Congressional staff member, House Research Subcom- mittee staff director Dan Byers, explained afterward that although he normally does not have time to spend an entire day at briefings, the program was of such quality that he simply could not intellectually afford to leave.

In a particularly poignant address at the luncheon, James Duderstadt, chairman of the Committee to Assess the Capacity of the U.S. Engineering Research Enterprise, explained the findings of his committee's report on the same topic.

The overall federal research and development budget contains a subcategory known as the science and technology budget encompassing those funds used to generate knowledge, Duderstadt explained. That subcategory makes up roughly half of the overall R&D budget, and a substantial amount is dedicated to biomedical research, which is why universities are building life sciences centers rather than centers for physical sciences and engineering.

Complicating the disparity, Duderstadt noted, is a disturbing trend toward short-term, applied research at the expense of long-term, higher-risk basic research. He said that even in agencies such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, funding is increasingly being redirected toward short-term research with a quicker return.

In opening remarks at the luncheon, Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., co-chairman of the House Research and Development Caucus, told the audience to "get over the idea that getting involved in the political process will make you dirty."

Holt said the only way engineers can convince policy makers of the importance of research and development is if ASME members and members of other scientific and engineering societies interact on a regular basis with their Congressional representatives. Meeting in the district offices of Representatives and Senators, Holt said, can be just as valuable — and possibly more so — than meeting in Washington, D.C.

He praised ASME and the co-sponsoring societies for hosting the symposium and encouraged continued education of policy makers on Capitol Hill and in federal agencies. Symposium presentations are at www.engineeringpolicy.org.

back to meetings & courses