A New Era in Support for Science Research
Two days ago, President Obama set the remarkably ambitious goal of spending 3% of the US gross domestic product on basic and applied science research. If achieved, this level of investment would be the greatest in US history. Speaking before members of the National Academy of Sciences, Obama cited the tremendous successes of the past 50 years of US investment in science research and proclaimed, “The commitment I am making today will fuel our success for another 50 years.”
Wow. This type of explicit support for advancing science is something that the research community has not heard from the government in almost a decade.
The impact on computing research could be extraordinary. As explained in Peter Harsha’s analysis (he is the director of government affairs for the Computing Research Association), Obama’s policies call for a doubling of the research budgets for the key federal agencies that support computing research, in particular NSF, along with a wide array of additional targeted research investments. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that we are in a new era in federal support for science, something that has been urgently needed for years. The number of critical research problems has been expanding rapidly, and the entire field is poised not only for significant advances in our theoretical understanding of computation but also for the development of new technologies to address societal challenges in energy, healthcare, finance, education, and many, many other computing-reliant areas.
Of course, every new era ushers in not only great opportunities but also great challenges. There is a small but growing element that has become increasingly cynical and suspicious of universities. This is a matter not only of rising tuition costs for students, but also of the concept of tenure and the increasing specialization of sub-disciplines. A recent NY Times op-ed entitled, “End the University as We Know It,” by Mark C. Taylor, is typical in expressing a type of backlash against the US university system. In his editorial, Taylor begins by saying, “Graduate education is the Detroit of higher learning.” Sheesh!
I completely reject the position staked out by Taylor. However, he is not alone in holding this position, and I believe there is no denying that universities in the near future will need to balance, carefully, the single-minded quest for pushing the frontiers of knowledge against the public’s need to access, understand, and participate in university activities. Not paying attention to this could create a backlash that would risk squandering the tremendous opportunities laid out by President Obama.
Peter Lee @ April 29, 2009
What are your views on the university tenure system? Has it done more good or bad to the computer science community? Why should tenure system not be abolished and instead replaced with a contract system?
Finally, some Obama deficit spending I can get behind :) However as an American I do think its somewhat unwise that so much emphasis is being placed on research supporting graduation over primary education, which is obviously sorely lacking…
As per that Taylor article, I read it earlier today and was disgusted. It read to me as an angry rant of a humanities prof. complaining that his field is now essentially useless. His arguments about graduate student cost and lack of job potential are obviously solely based on his field and absurdly generalized to all of academia, and his idea that there isnt any interdisciplinary collaboration is obviously way of the mark as well (I guess theology depts dont really have anyone to collaborate with anymore). Putting everything into those groups is obviously just some way of trying to find a meaningful place for his area of study while not accomplishing anything new that interdisciplinary collaboration currently doesnt, not to mention it completely ignores dozens of other extremely important and applicable areas of study(IE large portions of engineering). I cant believe the NYT published that garbage..fortunately it appears from the comments that most of the readers had the same opinion
This indeed is a welcome and very ambitious investment in scientific research. Putting the amount into some context, the 3% of GDP investment is on the par with our country’s military spending and, in fact, is the same level of GDP military spending in 1999-2001. (See below the data pasted.) Let’s hope the science and education community will respond to this opportunity and the challenge in a responsible manner.
“The United States spends 4.06% of its GDP on its military (considering only basic Department of Defense budget spending, while complete military spending is higher by more than 50% due to additional DoD funding and funding of other federal military departments), more than France’s 2.6% and less than Saudi Arabia’s 10%.[10] This is historically low for the United States since it peaked in 1944 at 37.8% of GDP (it reached the lowest point of 3.0% in 1999-2001). Even during the peak of the Vietnam War the percentage reached a high of 9.4% in 1968.[11]”
Sung Lee
I disagreed with all the observations of Mark C. Taylor other than that of tenure system. Tenure system as we know today is doing a lot of harm to the university. Some of the top universities are glaring examples of this. Some of the professors make nice use of tenure system but there are more cases where it is being misused.
About tenure: It’s hard for me to make a credible statement about this since I have tenure and thus have a selfish interest. ;-) Having said that, I think it’s pretty clear that the tenure system has worked well, at least for computer science research. For example, tenure made it possible for me to take a risk and pursue a research direction without obvious funding possibilities. (See http://www.csdhead.cs.cmu.edu/blog/2009/03/09/claytronics-on-slashdot/.)
Without the tenure system, government agencies (like DoD), companies, and students would determine what kinds of ideas would get studied and taught. This would all be good to some extent, but it also needs to be balanced by the long-term, sustained thinking of academics. All in all, I think the current system does a reasonable job in achieving that balance. Could it be improved? Perhaps. But it’s not obvious exactly how.
You are amongst the few good exceptions. But in general we need real *CHANGE* in the academic circles.