In recent years, it has at times felt like the “sky is falling” on sciences in the United States. The answers to two recent popular questions about science and technology could determine whether or not Chicken Little was right: (1) Is the era in which Americans dominated science and technology over?; and (2) have all the truly important, challenging questions in science been answered? The geological community is better at ignoring than answering these questions. It’s time we step up to the plate.
National decline
On May 3, the New York Times reported that U.S. dominance
in science and technology is ending. The story was based on dramatic drop-offs
in the “authorship” of U.S. patents by American citizens, the proportion
of doctoral degrees in science and engineering earned by Americans, the number
of American Nobel Prize winners, and the number of American-authored papers
in major professional journals.
Similarly, Thomas L. Friedman, in the April 22 New York Times, noted
the American decline in science, deploring the lowering proportion of Americans
graduating with bachelor’s degrees in science and engineering (less than
half the percentage in China and Japan), as well as flagging U.S. governmental
support of research. Friedman and others emphasize the drastic drop in foreign
graduate students in science post September 11, but concede that some bureaucratic
obstacles to issuing visas are diminishing.
Figures from the National Science Foundation report on science and engineering
degrees are modestly discouraging. Specific data for the earth sciences is chilling.
From 1966 to 2000, total bachelor’s degrees almost tripled, but the proportion
of science and engineering degrees fell from 35.2 percent to 31.8 percent. For
master’s degrees, the proportion of science and engineering degrees declined
from 29.2 percent to 21.0 percent, and doctoral degrees dropped from 64.5 percent
to 62.8 percent. While the total number of four-year degrees in earth, atmosphere
and ocean sciences rose from 1,712 in 1966 to 4,047 in 2000, the proportion
of these precipitously declined from 0.9 percent to 0.3 percent of all science
and engineering degrees. Advanced degrees in earth, atmosphere and ocean science
declined as well, but less severely.
The American Geological Institute (AGI), which publishes Geotimes, also
continuously monitors supply and demand in the geosciences. The 2002 AGI Annual
Report shows total geoscience enrollment falling from 47,301 in 1983 to 15,725
in 2002, a decline of 67 percent. Geoscience degrees (essentially majors) in
the same period tumbled from 6,827 to 2,680, a decline of 61 percent. We as
a profession need to take a mature look at these sobering numbers and proactively
respond more aggressively than we have thus far.
Geology in the twilight zone?
Part of our discipline’s enrollment problem may be linked to changes in
science overall, but I doubt it. John Horgan presented a strong argument for
the rapid demise of challenging, exciting scientific discovery in his 1996 book
The End of Science. The focus of geology continues to shift rapidly from
classical analyses and interpretation to practical application, but I doubt
that we have lost our “edge” of discovery.
Sitting in on Geological Society of America symposia and “Hot Topics”
sessions at the 2003 fall annual meeting, and taking a cursory survey of recent
journals, I saw that current research typifies historic standards. A mixed bag
includes both mundane, pedantic “who really cares?” topics together
with fascinating, potentially breakthrough studies. In any case, few, if any,
of us envisioned how much geology would change from 1960 to 1970, with the plate
tectonics revolution. I do not think our science is anywhere near its twilight,
except of course if we fail to place its future in the hands of the best and
brightest. We can and must effectively deal with that problem.
Optimists or pessimists
Less than 7 percent of all high school students currently take an earth or space
science course, with almost 90 percent taking biology (see Geotimes,
September 2002). The high school student population increased markedly from
1990 to 2000, as did the number of science teachers. The collective biology-physics-chemistry
teaching corps rose 12.2 percent, two-and-a-half times as much as the earth
science teaching corps. We obviously do not have enough highly motivated and
inspiring folks teaching geology in high school and beyond. The present job
market leads bright young folks to make a simple economic calculation: Too much
time and effort is necessary for an uncertain future in the five “job areas”
traditionally pursued by geoscientists — petroleum, environmental science,
mining, education and government. Too many of us in university classrooms have
allowed our science to become weak or irrelevant or vocationally limited.
Some of these problems and solutions to them were recently addressed in the
two-part Geologic Column in April and May 2004, “The
Department You Save May be Your Own” by Lisa Rossbacher and Dallas Rhodes,
as well as in September’s Geotimes. The common
theme is this: Not enough of us are engaged actively in this battle. More need
to ask the hard questions about the geology profession, not sit on the sidelines
oblivious to what is required of each of us to improve the situation.
I hope James Branch Cabell (1926, p. 129, The Silver Stallion) was not
correct when he wrote: “The optimist proclaims that we live in the best
of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true.”
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