"Science in the National Interest: A Shared Commitment” - MIT Symposium (Session 3/3) 2/7/1995

[MUSIC PLAYING]

MODERATOR: So I'd now like to begin the final speaking session of today's program. And it's my great pleasure to introduce someone you've already heard from through her questions-- that's MRC Greenwood. MRC's-- I think for many of you here who know her-- she's one of these unusual people, where after you've met them once for about an hour, you feel like this is a really close friend. So yes, a special warmth which she communicates instantly.

This is in spite of the fact, in my own case, that when I first met her here at MIT, Ernie had to come up for a trip-- almost the first thing she says to me is, she says, oh, Bob, she says-- this is stealing from a lawyer-- very into this joke-- how do you tell the difference between a dead hog on the highway and a dead dean on the highway? And the answer, of course, is that the hog is the one with the skid marks.

[LAUGHTER]

Anyway, in spite of that-- [LAUGHS]

In spite of that beginning with MRC, nevertheless, we have since, in fact, I think become quite good friends. At least, from my side. Anyway, MRC, as you know, as you heard earlier, is the Associate Director for Science at the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House and works very closely with Jack Evans. And as you also know, played a central role in producing this document-- Science in the National Interest.

MRC's background before coming to the government was purely in academia. She began as a undergraduate at Vassar, was a graduate student at Rockefeller-- that's right. Then went from Rockefeller to Columbia, from Columbia to Vassar, where-- that's where she ended up being Chairman of the Department at Vassar and a chaired professor. She then went from Vassar to UC Davis where she became Dean of Graduate Studies and was there for four years as a dean, so the dean's joke had content. She has a--

[LAUGHTER]

She has a distinguished research career in developmental cell biology, genetics, physiology, and nutrition. And specifically, she's done work which has been really wildly heralded-- leadership research on the genetic causes of obesity. She's been highly recognized with lots of awards, including, among other things, two years ago, election to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy. And it's a great pleasure to welcome MRC to chair this session.

GREENWOOD: Thank you very much, Bob. It's really a great pleasure to be back here at MIT, and it does-- he's just convinced me that I should stop telling my dean jokes. Maybe I should go back to lawyers, because these keep coming back to haunt me. Jack's talked about the crook on the shepherd's staff, and now I've had to hear about the dead hog again.

In the interests of preserving a good discussion this afternoon on this topic that we're going into now, which is extremely important and reflects on two of the goals that were articulated by Science in the National Interest, and that is producing the finest scientists and engineers for the next century and in developing a scientifically literate and technologically competent public workforce. The title of today's session this afternoon is, Education for our Future Industrial Needs. I guess I would argue that we are talking in broad terms, at least, about education for our future national needs, economically in industry, and also, of course, as the bedrock of the academic environment as well.

We're going to have four speakers, and I'm going to confine any comments that I have to some wrap-up comments at the end of the session so that we have an opportunity to hear fully from the four individuals who are with us this afternoon. At the end of a long day, I think it's best to get those who have come with their minds fully prepared to share their thoughts with us up forward. And then those of us who primarily came to listen and learn-- namely myself-- to have an opportunity, perhaps, to point out some commonalities between the perspectives expressed and those of us who are trying to work productively with the external communities to build this very important partnership between academia, industry, and the government.

Our first speaker this afternoon is very well known to any of you who are interested in the problems of drawing into the next century women and people from underrepresented groups who would be the leaders of the scientific revolutions of the 21st century along with the more traditional sources of students that we've been able to inspire for well over a century in our great research universities. Sheila Tobias has a distinguished career as a scientist and as a writer. Her recent book, Science as a Career-- Perceptions and Reality, is the third in a series of books that she's written for the Research Corporation as part of a long-term research and writing assignment in an area called "neglected issues in science education."

The first two, which I commend to you if you have not read them-- the first which are, They're Not Dumb, They're Different-- Stalking the Second Tier, and Revitalizing Undergraduate Science-- Why Some Things Work and Most Don't. Both of these issues, Stalking the Second Tier and Why Some Things Work and Some Don't, continue to vex us as we move into the future.

She's been a college lecturer and administrator at City College of New York, Cornell, Wesleyan, and many other distinguished institutions around the country. She was educated in History and Literature at a famous institution here in the city of Cambridge, Harvard/Radcliffe. She's Phi Beta Kappa and holds a master's degree in European History and Politics from Columbia, and two honorary doctorates in Humane Letters, and one in Education. I've followed Sheila's work for many years, and I think it will be a real pleasure for us to hear from her first this afternoon. Sheila?

TOBIAS: I've decided to stand in the middle and use this portable microphone. Is it on? And the transparencies-- one of the things that happens when you change cultures, which I've done in my career-- I've begun to work with scientists, not in science-- is that you discover other means of communication, and I've become very attached to transparencies-- more, obviously, than the rest of you. So I'm going to stand right here and use my transparency.

Let me begin by noticing what was, for me, a serious missing issue at this meeting as I would formulate it. It's the question of how to maintain the attachment of young scientists to science who do not have jobs in science-- who are unemployed or underemployed. And if you talk to them, they have no certainty that they will ever be employed in science. I was surprised. There was nothing mentioned of the jobs problem, which is by now real and undeniable. And I just wanted to make sure that I mentioned it, if no one else did.

I think high on the priority list of the people going around the country to have these hearings should be of the need to figure out ways to increase demand for science-trained professionals. For me as an educator, education-- and I'm going to make that case today-- is one means, actually, of stimulating demand. To anticipate my remarks, if we can differently educate different kinds of students for different kinds of work in science, we can actually increase the demand for science-trained professionals.

But it would be remiss of me to let you believe that education is, by itself, going to do the job. I think as a nation, we have an obligation to find ways of continuing to supply students to government and industry and universities. We also have an obligation to continue to create a demand for them so they can have reasonable lives. And that's really why I am going to-- and the context in which I'm going to present my argument today.

You may wonder why-- and MRC misspoke, which I take as a flattery, that I am not a scientist. And you might wonder why the one person on your program who's not a scientist was the one person asked to talk with you-- open your discussion about undergraduate education in science. Now, I think the reason is that most of those scientists and mathematicians and engineers who are engaged now in education reform at the undergraduate level-- there are legions of them, they're very dedicated-- most of them are dealing pretty exclusively with in-classroom issues-- issues of pedagogy, issues of curriculum, issues of appropriate technology for teaching and learning.

Unlike them, because my background is social science, I've been dealing with what social scientists call the deep structures of undergraduate education. Not the means by which some immediately obvious problem can be solved by an improved technology or curriculum. My questions have been-- these deep structures have been questions like this.

Looking at whom we recruit to science and what we expect them to do with the science they learn in college. That, to me, is not beyond a conversation. That's something we should be discussing. Whom do we recruit to science in college? What do we tell them we expect them to do with their science in college?

What is the culture of the classroom in science? How does that culture, apart from intelligence or talent, serve to discourage other kinds of students from participating in science? What are the assumptions that are made by science faculty about teaching and learning? And how are those assumptions operationalized in the classroom? And when have they last examined those assumptions that they make about who can learn science and how people demonstrate ability to learn science and who can't?

How are we to teach vertical subjects? These are real, intractable problems. How can you talk about innovative means of teaching subjects that are highly vertical in their structure? How can you talk about different topical sequences when, as you know better than I, in social science, there is a comfortable nesting of concept within concept, and that is unique to science.

And above all-- and I want to put a handmade transparency here for you to look at as I mentioned this. Above all, how do we deal with the ideology of recruitment and advancement in science, which is based on my observations four support polls which are extremely difficult to get scientists to acknowledge and to break away from. The elitism-- that is to say, only the very best can do science. People with a very special quality of mind can do science. But if you're doing very well in political science or in literature, it may not bear at all on your capacity to do science.

Something I call predestinarianism-- a notion that if your talent for science is there at all, it's going to show up early, if at all. And if you haven't shown that interest, that talent, that inclination by age 15 or 10 or eight, there's really no point teaching you. There's really no point winning you to the subject, because it starts early, if at all.

The notion that science is a calling so that the undergraduate with multiple interests and multiple talents who's not yet sure if she or he wants to go to law school or maybe medicine or maybe geology or maybe literature is considered not a serious student of science. Because serious students of science are quite single-minded, with some exceptions. But to reveal to your science instructor that you're wavering between science and some other subjects is to be taken less seriously.

And altogether, what we in social science call a solipsism, meaning that there is a tendency on the part of instructors of undergraduates to extrapolate back from their own experience-- to see some students as younger versions of themselves, exciting to teach, exciting to open these doors to, and others as not interesting at all. And so underlying the-- whether or not we change a curriculum or change a pedagogy-- it seems to me if we don't change some of these ideas about who can do science when that ability to do science first manifests itself, and then how we deal with students who perhaps are a little different, I don't think we're going to make much progress as regards inclusiveness.

In the course of my research, I've had to formulate some new questions and invent some new methodologies to get at new truths. For example, I asked the question some years ago, what would happen if we enrolled extremely able learners from fields other than science in traditional introductory physical science courses-- physics and chemistry at college? What would it be like if they were in every way equal, or potentially equal, to their instructors in intelligence, in ability to focus, in self-discipline, in verbal fluency-- only different in one variable-- that they were new to the field. What could we learn about how science is packaged, how it appears to otherwise extremely intelligent students?

The reason I formulated the question that way is, it's very hard for teachers teaching undergraduates to get the kind of feedback from them that they take seriously. Because after all, the undergraduates are very young. They can't articulate exactly what their problems are, and they do have problems that good learners don't have. And from that research which MRC's recommended to you-- the book was called, They're Not Dumb, They're Different-- emerge what I call a Tier Analysis of the typical college introductory course in physical science. And I'll talk about the introductory course a couple of times today, as well as the major.

In essence, that when the professor looks out at the sea of faces in early September of a new year in an intro physics or chemistry course, and those are the two fields I've studied-- he or she looks out and sees, consciously or not, a small group of students who remind him or her of themselves as younger learners who are exciting to teach, who are-- I call them the First Tier-- students who-- in fact, I go so far as to say probably would teach themselves. Almost doesn't matter what curriculum-- what pedagogy. They are dedicated to becoming scientists or to learning science at a fast clip.

And then everybody else is lumped together. Again, perhaps not consciously, by the professor as Them. As a group of very different students whose needs whose reasons for being there are somehow mysterious, whose response to the material is unfamiliar, who are very hard to teach, and whose learning styles are difficult to understand.

And what I tried to do in this first research about undergraduate science teaching and learning was to offer to the science community a slightly more refined way of thinking about the Them in that surface-- namely, that it consists of a number of different kinds of students. Not to deny that there is a First Tier, who are younger versions of themselves-- really easy and a joy to teach. But that among those who are unfamiliar are gradations of difference that are as different, one from another, as they are from the First Tier. And that the most interesting group within that-- and I'll come back to them several times today as regards demand-- is the Second Tier.

The Second Tier of students I have defined operationally as otherwise extremely able young people who are going far in their lives by means of other disciplines and whose alienation from science through that first negative experience comes back and haunts the science community. They become the journalists and the editors. They become elected or not-so-elected officials.

[LAUGHTER]

They become spokespeople. I didn't want to say it, but if you insist. Many of them become lawyers. They are out there, and they bring with them, from the limited experience they have in science, three lessons that are not reversed. One, that they're not very good at it. You let them know that quick. Two, that they don't like it very much. And three-- and this is a natural self-defense of a bruised ego-- that it's probably not very important. And off they go into the world.

So the Tier Analysis was perceived by me and by others as very significant. It became obvious to me that we needed to look not just as where things were not going well, but also at who does the job well. And I did another study called Revitalizing Undergraduate Science in which I looked at a number of cases where science was being taught successfully. And my definition of successful was high recruitment, high retention, high morale.

And in these places I found-- and it is not, perhaps, central to all of your interests but I'll report it anyway-- that in most places, it wasn't the gimmicky curriculum. It wasn't the brand new pedagogy, however well-defined these are these days. It was really a quality of attention to students' needs-- a set of expectations that were realistic. In some of the fancier schools, students would say that this course did not play to my strengths. In these places where science was more popular, and where it was doing a very, very good job, a variety of strengths would generate a successful and winning experience in science for the student. And so we learn from that.

But the third study MRC remembered, also for Research Corporation, which produces these books and distributes them at almost no cost, is a study of science as a career. And I want you to consider, as I go through these remarks, the role that science education at the undergraduate level could play in promoting science more generally among the public. We've talked some about that today-- the need to package it better, to sell it better, to convey to the public what it needs to know. And I've heard the term "science literacy" use loosely, as if there was a binary distribution of people-- those who are extremely well-educated in science and those who almost know nothing. And I want to raise the possibility with you that there is a population out there of people whom we could educate as undergraduates in science for different purposes who could serve us very well in promoting science.

What we're challenging in the book that we're writing right now is the common view that demand creates supply-- that we have to wait passively for demand for science-trained professionals to make itself felt. And then in response, supply will be generated. We're trying to make the case that we can stimulate demand by restructuring supply.

And the argument goes like this. If we were to target some different populations-- let me find my next one-- of undergraduates-- now, not just for the first course, but actually through the major. If, for example, we could get this Second Tier to stay in science longer, to do more science-- and I'm not talking here about PhDs by any means, but at least through the major or through a substantial chunk of science in combination with other majors-- we could, I think, by itself-- by increasing the numbers of students who are pursuing science at the undergraduate level, improve the quality and the numbers of people teaching high school. That's obvious.

Even more importantly, I think, is to increase the mix of people practicing a wide range of support activities for science. And before you perhaps dismiss the notion that there are a wide range of support activities for science, let me throw on the transparency board a list of tasks for science that Linda Wilson, who is president of Radcliffe and herself a chemist, has come up with just for you to contemplate as I make the case. That among the tasks for science are all of these. There are 10 there.

You can read at your leisure-- of which discovery of knowledge-- of new knowledge, which we heard much about today-- is one, and an extremely important one. And one for whom, I would not venture to challenge you, only a few extremely talented people are qualified or qualifiable. But forgotten very often in the education agenda at the undergraduate level is that there are many other tasks in science, for science, that will support science to which other kinds of students might be directed, whose interest in science is real, whose capacity for learning science is substantial, but who are not necessarily going to a PhD or going to become a principal investigator or going to do bench research for most of their lives.

And so when we talk about increasing the mix of people who pursue science at the undergraduate level, it shouldn't be misunderstood that we're going to flood the graduate schools and the PhD programs with all of these, especially in a time of jobs shortage. But rather, that we could create from these populations a group of people who could do different kinds of jobs in science, which in the aggregate together, would promote science in the community. They could become a support system for science.

And the third value in looking to educate the Second Tier, so-called, or students like them, is that it could provide a jump start in demand for science-trained professionals in other fields. In other words, there are two specific target populations that I think we are missing in our recruitment of undergraduates to the science major. One of them is the student who likes science very much, would enjoy doing science, might even do it through the master's degree in order to participate in science in a different way than at the bench. The second population that I think we've ignored out of the elitism or perhaps the solipsism-- you can choose your cause-- is the group of students who are on their way to other professions, quite determined to be in law or in business or in journalism or in government, but for whom the science training at the undergraduate level could give them a base from which they could become good problem solvers, to be sure. But a base from which they could bring a pro-science orientation to whatever realms in which they operated later-- bring that science orientation to insurance or to banking or to any of these others.

And I think those two populations might have a nice overlap. I don't want to demarcate any more than you have demarcated in the past. But I think that an effort-- a real campaign to attract such students to the science major, possibly altered in some ways, would be very useful. And let me move now, in the interest of time, to some of those models.

In the research we did for this book, we found a number of programs that are limping along. They don't have as much support nationally as they might. And let me just see if I can-- here we are. And let me just go through some examples of these.

Some of the majors that will attract these two different target populations are going to look a little different from some of the majors that have really been designed to move students efficiently and rapidly through the undergraduate program so that they can move on to graduate school in science, clearly. And because there's been no central national interest in these populations, a number of schools have had to be inventive on their own-- bootstrap their way into some of these imaginative programs. And I've just put them into some categories for the sake of walking you briefly through them. And if you want much more information, I'd be glad to tell you where these are taking place.

One route is the enhanced traditional-- a traditional major in the physical sciences that is enhanced or enriched with something else. And often, it is the "other else" is another science. It has always struck me, as an outsider, as remarkable how little chemistry a physics major has to learn, or knows, even, by the time he or she finishes. Or the absence of biology in a rigorous way from the straight chemistry majors' career line. Or of course, again, from physics. And so in these instances, they haven't gone all the way to modifying the major and challenging that. But they're trying to offer some enrichment in a lateral direction-- in a sideways direction for their undergraduate majors.

Others have taken the next step and recommended or created closely-knit strong minors. That is to say, the student doesn't have the freedom to choose any minor, but a particular minor has been designed in conjunction with the discipline that's offering it, such that the student with the strong major and strong minor is having an integrated coherent program. And among those are chemistry with business in a number of places-- physics with business, where the business courses are not the ordinary business courses, because they might be not as too and maybe to elementary. But courses in legal issues of regulation would be a business course that the physics major would be emboldened to take as part of this dual major-- a strong minor.

The next away from traditional would be the dual major-- actually two majors where some amount of the science is lopped off. It has to be. There's a limited amount of time credits that could be gotten. Others go so farther-- they are actually interdisciplinary. I refer you to University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has now a material science program people can take in the biological line or in the chemical line or as an engineering major. My typing leaves something to be desired. "Applied science," that was supposed to read.

And we are informed by Werner Wolf, who is at Yale and who wrote an article in Physics Today recently, that when he did a survey of what physics majors take in addition to their major, he found, to his shock, that only 2% even take computer science courses. Fewer than 1% take chemistry courses. And they are not, many of them, involved in applied science. That's going a little farther afield, but it is being considered by a number of places.

There are places where science and technology are formally integrated in non-engineering programs. And then, close to my heart, are places where a core sequence of some science is being offered or sold to social science majors-- those people who will move into government, who will be in regulation, so that they have something equivalent to what the premedical student might have. Or maybe even, ideally, equivalent to what the MIT undergraduate would have who would major here in social science or core-- and I put in parentheses-- coherent science sequence for business and economics majors.

So you can see where I'm going with this. It seems to me that we are depriving a group of extremely able, if differently configured, undergraduates of an opportunity to learn science sequentially and learn a lot of it. This is not physics for poets. At the same time, we're depriving ourselves-- yourselves as a science community-- of the support and the promotion and the commitment to science that such a population would have if treated seriously and if educated at the undergraduate level. And with that challenge and an invitation to read this book, which has-- there's a chapter from which this comes-- a chapter called "Restructuring Supply--" let me turn to John Armstrong who's my counterpart for Graduate Education. Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

You're not?

GREENWOOD: I think actually, our next speaker is Jim Vincent, who joined Biogen as its chairman and CEO in 1985. As you know, Biogen is one of the leading biopharmaceutical companies in the world. He formerly served as President of Allied Health and Scientific Products, which is a subsidiary of Allied Signal.

He's a member of the Board of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, Boards of Trustees of both Duke and the University of Pennsylvania. He was selected by Industry Week, I was interested to notice, as one of the Top 15 Industrial CEOs in America in 1990. And New England Business Magazine named him Business Person of the Year.

He received his own bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering from Duke and a master of business administration from Wharton Graduate Business School at the University of Pennsylvania. So he is already one of these well-integrated individuals that is taking a science background and a business background to very great heights indeed. And we'll be happy to hear what perspectives you can give us this afternoon, Jim. Thanks.

VINCENT: Thank you, MRC. I think it was Yogi Berra, as well, who when I was young and playing football in my younger days, said that C students rule the world. So I didn't worry much about that stuff, even though I was headed for a business career. But now that I have heard John [INAUDIBLE] today talk about the PhDs and professors taking over, and also you see the Republican Party, how they're staffing the new era and the new people and the professors and PhDs are taking over, I think I'd better rethink that paradigm.

I was interested also in Sheila's remarks. I learned something today, which I'm going to tell you that I'm going to engage in some solipsisms today. And also, I learned something that I think my kids, who are in their 20s, are going to really appreciate. That instead of having to hear about when I was a boy and I walked up and down those cobblestone hills both ways to that one-room schoolhouse, I can now say, well, I'm going to have a solipsism for you now, as we go into whatever conversation that relates to something like that.

When Chuck wrote to me, I was quite shocked and taken aback. Chuck Vest, in giving me my remit and wanting me to comment on what changes are needed in undergraduate science education to better prepare students in the future for future needs of the biotech industry and industry in general-- and realizing that the last time I really visited science on an academic basis was when I left Duke University with my mechanical engineering degree in hand in 1961. I'm going to do that, but it's going to be brief, quite frankly, because I think most of this from the perspective that I bring to it in industry in these last 30 years in the electronics business-- the first half of it in semiconductors and in biotechnology-- went from a spark chaser to a bug man in biology in the last half of it-- has been good-- has been good news. So I don't have a lot of things really to delve into there from the viewpoint of the customer, if you will, in industry.

Then I'd like to switch, though, to more-- a few comments about concerns and threats I see at the institutional level which, if not dealt with successfully, will impact undergraduate education, just as it will impact everything else that goes on in the institution. And in that, although I want to comment a little bit about some of this government discussion that's been going on, I also want to jump to some other subjects that don't relate to how government's going to impact the lives of these institutions.

Again, let me come back and say, I think that the educational institutions of this country at the university level that are doing the undergraduate training of our students in science and technology are creating in the main-- of course there's differences and gradations, but in the main-- product and students that meet the needs that we have in the main. I think also you are winning the global competitive battle in market standing and reputation. If you think of this in industry terms, the way we would in big or small companies, most any industry would kill to be in the position that higher education is in this country at both the undergraduate level and the graduate level in terms of the quality of what you're producing and the demand that you have and the worldwide demand that you have.

You could probably-- if you opened your doors, a large percentage of the institutions of this country could fill their classes with students from totally outside the United States. That's quite a testimony when you think on a relative basis of competitive setting. These folks have been at it, some of them, a lot longer than we have in this country-- in Europe and other parts of the world-- in China and Japan.

I would also comment that, in my experience-- again, crossing over from electronics in my days with Texas Instruments, when I spent almost 10 years outside the United States building businesses in Europe for them, and then going and living in Tokyo and building businesses in the Far East from Japan, starting the first non-Japanese semiconductor wholly-owned business in Japan to take on the Japanese in their home country, down through Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, and so forth. And in the process of doing that, and since then-- as well in the health care industry-- hiring students-- undergraduate science and technology students, graduate-- into many of these different settings-- that I have commented and continued to comment for years that I think that we in this country, as compared to our counterparts in Europe, in Japan, and other parts of the world, are better preparing students, at least to come into industry from the point of view of the kinds of industries with very rapid change, et cetera, that I've been involved with.

What do I mean by that? I mean it most in the breadth and diversity of the problem-solving skills that the young students are prepared to deal with. They may contain, as compared, for example, to their Japanese or European counterpart-- they may contain, at least if I go back 10 or 15 years-- I'm not as current on this point today-- they may have, in their memory banks, less rote detail that they can use instantaneously in a subspecialty of a subject than their American counterparts. But in the main, I have found them to be more adaptable and more nimble in climbing the new learning curves that classically have to be dealt with in a very-- in an environment of very high rates of change, and that I've lived in.

Also, I think you're in a healthy situation from the point of view of the markets for your graduates-- are very strong. I hear complaints, I hear concerns just like I hear it, for example, in my Penn experience at the Wharton School for the graduate MBAs. They wring their hands a lot these last several years about how, oh my god, it's so much more difficult to get a job, and so on, and so on. When you really scratch on it and look at it, most of them in that setting are still winding up with two and three jobs for a person.

What they're finding is-- and I think this is a lot of this translation of greater difficulty-- is that the market is restructuring. It is a realistic fact that Fortune 500 world has been shrinking in employment for 15 years. We read about-- this is true. This is true. And all of the growth in the economy in terms of new jobs has come in the entrepreneurial economy.

So that changes the challenge that both our undergraduate students have, be it science or whatever, and our graduate students. They have to look different places. They have to be taught to think differently about how they go to a job search. It's not like when I came out and 87 companies show up and the big decision was, which seven or eight do I want to interview with, and what competitive system do you design to divide up who they can talk to? That's a-changing. And I assume that's also true here at MIT. And I would suggest that that's going to get more so.

So teaching them how to think differently about how to go about a job search and where the jobs are-- the Willie Sutton approach. Where is the new money? Don't go to parking meters. Where's the money? Where are the banks? It's different places, different techniques. And I think that explains a lot of the-- what is perceived as more difficult, less demand, and so forth.

And then, of course, you have this concern that I hear-- I hear at some of the other schools I'm associated with. I'm sure you have it here, as well-- the hand-wringing of the faculty, from time to time, is, oh my god, here comes the sharks from Wall Street stealing our science students that we have nurtured so assiduously and carefully. And it's going to derail their entire-- what's this going to do? Are they going to take all of them? Are we going to have no more engineers and no more science majors in this country?

I would suggest to you, I wouldn't-- gee, I think it's a testimony of a couple of things. Number one is, you're developing problem solvers that are flexible, that are needed. And I would just say the second thing is, markets have a way of working those things out. Even though Sheila wanted to react before the market, I would suggest markets will deal with that. You'll either get saturated on the non-scientific endeavor side, or those areas that need more scientists will balance out in terms of how they adjust the demand and the price of labor in that sense.

So I just conclude, in terms of where we're at today on undergraduate science training, that we should feel proud about-- very proud about this track record, both domestically and on a global basis, and that we should be thinking about, how do we do more of the same? It doesn't mean we can't improve, of course-- but not get complacent, as any success story. That can be the seeds of disaster.

Because there's no question-- no question that-- and I won't have anything new and fundamental here, but the threats on the horizon to the institutions that, if not dealt with skillfully, could impact the undergraduate as well as graduate educational experience, I think, are-- many of them are obvious, and many of them are quite complex, and it's not straightforward to figure out how to deal with them. So let's go on and point-- let me try to highlight a couple of those. And we'll put this in the category of, maybe, the bad news.

No question-- I guess sitting here-- I sat here and heard all of the comments today, which I found most informative. A lot of it-- I must add for you that it's-- some of it is like inside the beltway in insider baseball kind of stuff, so that if I react to some of this in a way that doesn't sound like I'm connecting very well, I'm probably not. Some of this I'm hearing, some of these words I'm hearing for the first time-- lingo and some of the subtleties and nuances you talk about between the government and everything else I'm straining to connect with. So if I miss here, just give me-- cut me a little slack if I'm off base and correct me, and you can get me later, in the questioning.

First and foremost, clearly, the economic playing field is changing. Of course it is. It's changing a couple of very significant ways. We've heard a number of hours today about how it's changing on the government funding level. And that's the subject-- the number one subject as I go traveling the country and run into academics today.

That is the subject that everybody wants to talk about. I would suggest to you it's also changing in another very significant way, as the days of double-digit tuition increases have got to come to an end. And they're coming to an end quickly, I would forecast for you. And the days of when you sit down with university budgets and face the issue of, how are we going to discipline the increase in expenditures? And you walk up to that cliff and then you back away and say, oh, I can't do that. I can't cut this. Let's just increase the student body some more and dodge that bullet for another year-- I suggest those days are going to have to come to an end as well, as a continuing source of revenue.

Now, let me, first of all, come to the external-- what I'll call the external part of that-- the outlooking-- what can we-- if I were sitting here and I were in Chuck's shoes, what-- or the faculty, what can we do about this, the external part? And specifically as it relates to government? Now-- and then come back for a minute to looking inward-- what can we do institutional? Maybe some thoughts and ideas there.

It seems to me that in the external one as it relates to the federal government-- state, I guess, a little bit, but mostly federal, in this case-- there's the approach that's the heat and there's the approach that's the light. There's two potential parts to this.

I would call the heat part is the classical one of, the pie is shrinking, oh my god. And the way to respond to it is, we've got to sell more. We've got to promote more. We've got to field more lobbyists or whatever we do, however we influence that equation down there inside the beltway. What we have to do is step up the pressure so we get a bigger piece in a zero-sum game of the pie for us. That's the heat part. That's been the classical way.

Most of these things have been dealt with, unfortunately, in Washington for too many years, in my opinion. And I get fed up with it in terms of the industrial issues that I deal with. The health care-- having been involved in spending some very serious personal time in the health care debate in the last year and a half, I got it right up to here with that's what-- it was about-- not as what's best for the country, what's good public policy. I hear that less and less and less in Washington over the past 10 or 15 years.

The light part is the one that says, if we think about it, I think there is maybe a better shot today than-- at least in my relevant political observing life of the last 15 or 20 years-- a better shot today that we can create a new paradigm on a number of fronts here with these tectonic plate changes that seem to be, maybe, occurring. Maybe they are that significant.

And I do believe that we have-- we do have some people down there that-- on the Congress side, for a change, that really are pretty good thinkers. They are professors. They are academicians. Certainly, on the Republican side, this is a whole new experience compared to what it was 25 years ago. I believe many of them really are interested in ideas, in experimentation.

And we see things happening now that looks like it-- at least a greater chance, again, than I've seen for a long time that we will take seriously getting the budget balanced and get an amendment to help bring pressure to that. Getting a line item veto for the president? My god, I think that would be wonderful-- so we could hold that person accountable, for a change.

So anyway, a lot of these things that are being talked about, whether it's the Contract with America or whether what follows that, on the Democratic side-- I don't think this is all Republican. And I think you see these votes in both sides, House and Senate. You see new coalitions forming here that are both Democrat and Republican.

So the point of this is this-- that, again, back to Yogi Berra-- I think he said, if you-- when you come, don't-- always remember, when you come to a fork in the road, take it. And so I would suggest this-- that in addition to going and thinking about the old ways of approaching this, of how can we make sure we get our-- maximize our piece of that pie in the zero-sum game, et cetera, et cetera-- I would encourage you-- and it's not just for the academic and educational establishment, I think it's for other establishments in this country-- to put some serious energy into thinking about the light part of, put yourself in the position of, "maybe some of these leaders and leaders-to-be in the future are in a position of wanting to do some change here with the idea of what is best public policy for this country."

Or put themselves in the role of a CEO of a corporation, where that's what you're trying to optimize all of this, and what is best for employees, customers, shareholders, suppliers. And you're in the role of optimizing it. And the last thing you need, when you get into heavy duty water carrying and when you've got problems on your hands and you've got to deal with-- changing your mission, you've got to deal with downsizing-- the last thing you need is every part of your organization coming at you from the angle that just says, take care of that other person over there, not me. I deserve more. You can't cut me.

You never solve anything that way. Fairly obvious, but if the people are serious down there about trying to change that, they're to need some of that kind of help, because they sure as hell are not going to have all the ideas in the world.

I would also just offer a few-- I'll jump around here for just a little bit. Clearly, I think a relevant question is, what should be the size of this establishment going forward? We have a different set of needs now. Again, the Cold War is over. The academic establishment has been in the business of being what I call the line research organization for the government for quite a number of years for defense, for atomic-- nuclear policy and so-- it's over-- largely over.

That alone would indicate there's got to be a major rethink of what is the-- what is the right size, going forward, of the global resource we're putting into this? I found it unbelievable to hear, this morning, the comment that here we are worried about some serious resource issues across the board, and you have the Galvin Commission saying, not only don't you need a $400 million increase in the DOE laboratories, you can run it on a hell of a lot less. But the budget comes forward with a $400 million increase. Isn't that incredible? Isn't that incredible? That's that mentality of, you never cut or destroy anything.