Today the alarm is sounding about a new threat: the rising technological prowess of China and India. In response, Congress and President Bush recently enacted legislation intended to produce more scientists and engineers. While educators disagree over whether more American scientists are, in fact, needed, they do agree that for the United States to remain economically competitive and to confront complex problems like global warming and energy shortages, the quality of teaching in science, mathematics, and engineering must be improved at all levels.
In the coming months, The Chronicle will publish a series of articles on what colleges are doing, or not doing, to improve instruction and training in those fields. As national attention on science teaching grows, it remains to be seen if America's response will resemble the vigorous one that followed followed the release of Sputnik 50 years ago this October, or a muted echo.
Fifty years after Sputnik, new concerns about international competition in science drive a sprawling research bill.
Chinese scientists work in a national medical-genetics laboratory in
Changsha. China is expected to soon outpace the United States in the
number of doctorates awarded in science and engineering. (Photograph
by Guang Niu, Getty Images)