COMMENTARY - LA TIMES

When Science Flees the U.S.

The trend could have ominous consequences.

By David Baltimore

David Baltimore won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine,
for his research in virology, in 1975. He has been president of 
Caltech since 1997.

November 29, 2004

The United States is the richest nation on Earth, the world's 
biggest beneficiary of the global economy. But will it last?

Not that long ago, the "global economy" meant that routine 
factory jobs were going overseas. The unions squawked, but 
others recognized that the U.S. could concentrate on high- 
value-added commerce: discovery, innovation, high-technology 
manufacturing, knowledge-based industries. And we've done very 
well developing technology and growing our economic base in 
these areas. So well, in fact, that such development seems like 
an auto-catalytic process or a "virtuous cycle" that will 
continue propelling us forward for generations.

But the system is overtaking us. We no longer have a lock on 
technology. Europe is increasingly competitive, and Asia has 
the potential to blow us out of the water.

In the last 20 years, many of the students in American 
universities who majored in the sciences and engineering 
came from Asia. Today, significant numbers are staying in 
Asia because the schooling there is so improved, and because 
we have made it harder to study here. And Asian scientists who 
have been successful here are returning home. None of this is 
lost on the governments of, say, India and China, which are 
putting huge sums into modernizing their science infrastructure
and universities.

The proof of their success is the number of U.S. companies 
opening laboratories in China. Intel and Cisco are leading 
the way, and many others are seriously looking at the possibility. 
Wages there are a third of wages here, and some estimate that the 
cost of employing an engineer in China is as little as a tenth of 
the cost of employing the same person in the U.S.

But the key is not only cost. These companies have found that the 
Asian workers are as good as ours, as imaginative as ours - and 
they work longer hours and are more dedicated.

Where does all this leave the U.S., a nation with so many who are 
poorly educated and whose educational system does a particularly 
ineffective job with math and science. We have more people who 
believe in the devil than who believe in evolution. Why?

There are so many reasons I can call out only a few. One is lack 
of federal leadership in funding schooling that emphasizes math 
and science, another is our fragmented educational system that 
leaves so much to local control, another is general anti-intellectualism 
and the cult of the sound bite. But I think that the major failure 
is our inability as parents to pass on our culture to our children.

I say "inability" because I truly believe that parents want to do 
better but do not know how. One reason is the downgrading of family 
life in the two-wage-earner home, another is the speed with which 
technology changes how kids spend their lives and how people communicate; 
yet another is a lack of will when it comes to imposing discipline on 
children. And one that particularly galls me is the denigration of the
 word "stress."

When I grew up, we worked hard, played hard and never thought to minimize 
our activities because of stress. Sure, people were under stress and some 
cracked under it, but leading a "stressful" life was honored because of 
the accomplishments that could be achieved by those who could handle it. Today 
we deify the spa, not late hours solving problems at school or work. Caltech's 
high-achieving faculty and students are seen as weirdos because of their 
intense focus, but even here, some graduate students and postdoctoral 
fellows are seeking a more balanced life.

Now, what are the implications of all this? If technology is done well 
and more cheaply abroad, we will either have to seriously reduce salaries 
here or see the technology-intensive jobs go abroad. If technologists 
continue to be plentiful in foreign countries, wages there will only 
rise. Demand could fall at home, which would further drive down wages here.

This will have huge implications for our domestic industries as Asians 
open their own companies. The harbinger is Taiwan, whose citizens we 
have been training for decades and where many competitive industries 
already exist. And Taiwan is a small island with only 20 million people. 
China, an entrepreneurial powerhouse in the formative stages, has 1.3 billion.

So the cascade could begin: If America becomes a less affluent society, 
we will see a diminution in support for the research that is critical to 
our future. There are already clouds on the horizon: because of the 
deficit, federal budgets will get tighter and science funding is likely 
to suffer. The economic recovery is generating too few jobs. Silicon 
Valley still has lots of vacant space. The venture capital industry 
is scared and conservative.

These trends are real. We cannot afford to ignore them. We must think 
deeply about the realities we face. We need to respond to the newest 
challenges of globalism. A fortress-America approach will get us nowhere.