Falling Behind? Boom, Bust, and the Global Race for Scientific Talent

Abstract

Falling Behind? Boom, Bust, and the Global Race for Scientific Talent Michael Teitelbaum Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2014, 267 pp. In Washington, doomsday prophets tend to be effective motivational speakers. They successfully persuade the electorate that their cause is worthy and prompt Congress to take action. In his book Falling Behind? Boom, Bust, and the Global Race for Scientific Talent, Michael Teitelbaum takes on a particular brand of doomsday prophet: those who see impending shortages in the science and engineering workforce. Teitelbaum walks his readers through five postwar cycles of boom and bust in the science and engineering workforce, which he argues have been driven to a large extent by political machinations set in motion by labor shortage claims (claims that have been almost universally rejected by economists studying the issue). The institutions that currently shape the science and engineering workforce are largely the product of policy responses to these booms and busts. As a result, Falling Behind? is more than just a work of policy history. It is also a cogent analysis of contemporary R&D funding mechanisms, high-skill immigration policies, and PhD program structures. Teitelbaum is well placed to write this book. Although he's a demographer by training, through his work on immigration policy and his time as vice president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, he has a long history of rubbing elbows with a wide variety of social scientists who are concerned with the science and engineering workforce. Teitelbaum's service on several distinguished immigration reform commissions in Washington enables him to provide a firsthand account of the political wheeling and dealing described in the book. Falling Behind? is organized around five cycles of boom and bust in the science and engineering workforce. The first three are uniformly instigated by government and strongly resemble political business cycles, which have been studied by economists. In the political business cycle literature, opportunistic politicians engineer booms (which end in busts) to improve their electoral prospects. Similar forces are identified by Teitelbaum in the science and engineering workforce during the first 50 years of the postwar period (rounds 1 through 3). These will be considered first. Rounds 4 and 5 are characterized by private-sector actors lobbying government and will be considered subsequently. Round 1 (1948 to 1957) is the postwar boom in the physical sciences stimulated by concerns about the lost generation of scientists from the and the growing threat of the Soviet Union. The atomic bomb proved that prowess in physical science was the key to national power but that the United States could not rest on its laurels. Congress responded by creating the National Science Foundation (NSF), although the most dramatic increases in the number of physical scientists came as a result of Department of Defense funding. The forces unleashed in round 1 were bolstered in round 2 (1957 to 1973) by the launch of Sputnik, the formation of NASA, and Kennedy's pledge to put a man on the moon. The buildup of the physical science workforce during rounds 1 and 2 came crashing down in the 1970s, when job prospects and federal mega-projects became scarce relative to their postwar peaks. Teitelbaum's round 3 (1975 to 1995) was instigated by a wide variety of federal initiatives, including the war on cancer, the Reagan administration's defense buildup, and public investments in science and engineering education. This boom came to an end with the end of the Cold War and the 1990 recession. Rounds 1 through 3 are distinct from rounds 4 and 5 in that they principally emerged as a result of political priorities and the growth of the national security state. Although the stimuli underlying these early booms varied in validity, the alarm and the response uniformly came from government. …

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