My senior year in high school, I was voted "Most Likely to Discover the Meaning of Life Through Differential Calculus." The following year, in college, I received an A in my calculus IV class. Five years later I graduated with a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering. Now I'm working on my master's degree.
The only thing is, I'm working on a master's degree in public policy, not chemical engineering.
Why didn't I become a chemical engineer? The question has been on my mind a lot the past year, from the time of former Harvard President Larry Summers' inflammatory hypothesis of why women are underrespresented in science and engineering to his resignation last week.
Both women's and racial minorities' underrepresentation is an important issue not just from a social justice viewpoint, but also from an economic competitiveness viewpoint. Science and technology fuel economic growth, but three forces are beginning to erode U.S. preeminence in these fields.
First, globalization has increased competition for talented scientists and engineers. Historically, the United States filled its labor shortage of scientists and engineers by "importing" them from other countries. For example, 38 percent of doctorate-level scientists and engineers in 2000 were foreign born. Due to globalization, however, other countries are becoming competitive with the United States and attracting scientists and engineers who otherwise would have come here.
Second, U.S. immigration policy has gotten stricter since Sept. 11, making it harder to get a visa. This impedes the brightest international students and researchers from coming to the United States and strengthening its science and technology sectors. In fall 2003, U.S. universities recorded their first decline in foreign enrollment since 1971.
Third, demographic trends raise the concern of who will replace retiring scientists and engineers of the baby-boom generation. From 2010 to 2025, the share of the college-age population that is Hispanic, African American or American Indian/Alaska- Native will increase from 32 to 38 percent. These groups, however, earn bachelor's degrees in science and engineering at less than half the rate of whites and Asian/Pacific Islanders.
Given these forces of globalization, immigration policy and demography, what should the United States do to ensure it has enough scientists and engineers to remain competitive? The obvious move is to start developing the untapped potential of underrepresented groups-both racial minorities and women.
During the last year, however, we have been fixated on whether women have less intrinsic ability in science and engineering. I am fine remaining open minded to the possibility of innate differences between the sexes, but we should not let that debate serve to justify the status quo. Over the past 40 years, women have gradually increased their presence in science and engineering-an advance hardly explained by genetic differences.
Furthermore, even if innate differences do exist, it may not have to do so much with ability as it has to do with preferences. Social science research has shown that girls are more interested in people, social values and humanitarian and altruistic goals. Boys have expressed more interest in things, theoretical values and abstract intellectual inquiry.
Whether this difference is the product of nature or nurture is up for debate. If it is due to innate differences, though, that does not excuse the current degree of women's underrepresentation in science and engineering. It just means these fields need to be marketed with more of a human face.
And they can be. Engineers develop life-saving drugs, environmentally friendly fuel sources, prosthetic limbs and safer roads. Organizations such as Engineers Without Borders help communities in poor countries develop clean water supplies, irrigation systems, bridges and wastewater treatment systems.
In addition to marketing science and engineering in ways that may appeal more to women and racial minorities, we need to change the cultural attitude that math and science are hard subjects that are acceptable to be bad at. So many Americans have no shame saying, "I'm bad at math; I can't even balance my checkbook." But, you'll never here someone saying, "I'm bad at reading; I can't even understand the newspaper."
Turning back to me, I left engineering because it left me unfulfilled. Working at a chemical plant just does not lead to direct, visible improvement of the human condition. Thus, it is no surprise that I am now studying the "save-the-world" field of public policy.
So, while I may never discover the meaning of life through differential calculus, I have enjoyed applying my mathematical talent to my economic and statistics courses here at Duke.
Preeti Aroon is a graduate student in public policy. Her column runs every other Wednesday. Toss in your two cents and learn more about the topic of this column at: http://preetiontheweb.blogspot.com
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