鈥淭he US is like a frog that is slowly boiling in water. It doesn鈥檛 jump out because it doesn鈥檛 notice it is about to die.鈥� So says Steven Chu, director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, about growing concerns that complacency will lead to the US losing its global scientific pre-eminence within a decade.
Fear of falling behind prompted the US National Academies of Sciences to propose a plan of action on 12 October, Rising Above the Gathering Storm. One significant stumbling block, says the report, is immigration policy. 鈥淎fter 9/11 we became less welcoming,鈥� says Chu, who helped draft the recommendations. 鈥淲e must more than reverse that now.鈥�
Meanwhile, China and India are investing heavily in their university systems. China produces eight times as many graduate engineers as the US, and India five times as many. And US students are falling behind: 12th-graders recently performed below the international average for 21 countries on a test of general mathematics and science knowledge.
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The NAS report advises the US government to boost investment in education and research by $5 to $7 billion per year. 鈥淭his is not a lot of money, compared with the roughly $8 billion a month spent on Afghanistan and Iraq,鈥� says Michael Lubell, the American Physical Society鈥檚 director of public affairs.