Council Member Calls for Follow Through on America COMPETES Act

In August, in an extraordinary show of bipartisan support, the America COMPETES Act was passed overwhelmingly by Congress and signed by President Bush. That bill authorized increased funding for scientific research and enhanced math and science education from kindergarten though post-graduate college studies. Yet, Congress failed to provide the funding necessary to fulfill the legislation’s promise. Lawmakers now can right that wrong. The Senate has approved the spending, and now the House and the president must act.

This funding of about $1 billion a year, relatively small compared with the $12 billion monthly cost of the Iraq war, will reap benefits for years to come in the form of new products, services and solutions to pressing challenges ranging from environmental and economic concerns to space and energy exploration.

The private sector and higher education for years have advocated a commitment to funding scientific research. Home-grown discovery and innovation have strengthened our nation and our way of life. Even before the information-technology revolution, studies were showing that as much as 85 percent of the growth in Americans’ income per capita was because of technological change.

By leading the way, Americans have carved out a competitive position that has been the envy of other nations for more than a century, but we need to understand that our primacy is increasingly being challenged by the very same forces of technological innovation that we unleashed.

Because of rapid advances in wireless technologies and the Internet, communication is no longer bound by the constraints of physical location and time. Thus, education and training, research and development, collaboration and investment can occur at any time between any number of entities anywhere worldwide. The Internet-driven economy is not a matter of simple competition; it is one of America’s capacity to innovate and thereby continue to have economic growth.

If trends continue, China’s economy could rival ours by 2020 and India’s could catch up in the 2040s. Those countries, with large populations and educated work forces, are only two players on a global stage.

Unlike the world of yesterday, which ran largely on manual labor, the world today runs on information and advanced technology, which can be developed only through science and research. While attempts to quantify the return on investment in science and technology have resulted in incredibly diverse estimates, economists agree that, when new knowledge is quantified in a market environment, it creates fuller employment, capital formation, increased profits and surpluses for reinvestments. In short, university-based research and innovation drive economic growth.

The national Council on Competitiveness recently issued a Five for the Future competitiveness agenda, which highlighted science and technology as a keystone to America’s long-term economic success. This call to action describes leadership at the frontier of science and technology as a critical advantage in an increasingly competitive world. We must leverage the power of our universities—they are responsible for about half of the nation’s basic research—and their partnerships with private business and government.

The next president will be able to shape an agenda that either supports or subverts science, technology and innovation. If we demand answers of the candidates now, we are less likely to have to ask what went wrong in the future. Will Americans be so complacent as to let the nation slowly become a second-rate economic power with a middle-of-the-road standard of living during the lifetimes of our young-adult citizens?

Luis M. Proenza is president of the University of Akron and a member of the Council on Competitiveness and President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology.