I'm still a Craig Barrett fan.
Barrett has a year left to run Intel before turning it over (most likely) to Paul Otellini. It's a reflective time. And in a recent talk with News.Com, he reflects on the "complacency" of America.
As Intel CEO this doesn't matter much to Barrett. The company can grow anywhere. But as an American it must upset him, especially since, before joining the company he was an assistant professor of materials science at Stanford. He's walked the walk of education.
So what should Craig Barrett do next? I have a few ideas.
It starts by speaking out, forcefully, on the biggest challenge facing U.S. technology -- our failure to train the next generation in science.
I see this firsthand. My son started this school year excited about math. But his teacher faced a classroom filled with kids who couldn't pass the basic skills test. He taught them, and let my son languish. Now my kid wants to be an actor. That may change next year, or it might not.
As a corporation, Intel has long been doing its part by supporting University research, in places like Pittsburgh's Carnegie-Mellon University.
But it's time to do more. Here are just a few ideas:
- I know it's a stunt, but how about a National Math Bee?
- Every city should have a high school like the Bronx High School of Science. Whether they're created within the public system or as charter schools, centers of excellence that push the best young science minds are needed urgently.
- We need a major PR push toward covering science regularly in the mainstream media.
- Insert your ideas here
U.S. science needs a kick in its rear end. I think Craig Barrett is just the man to administer it.
As a scientist with a Ph.D. from a good school, this is an issue of serious concern to me. But I believe that the problem goes deeper than education.
I am on the job market after another postdoc, and the job openings that would justify educating more scientists just aren't there. If anything, the average market value of a scientist seems to be going down in real terms. Biotech is booming, and infotech is post-boom, but in chemistry (my field) and other basic sciences the trend has been down for a while.
Part of it is due to excessive regulation (a real problem in the chemistry biz, and I speak from experience), and foreign competition probably plays a role. Still, I think that the biggest reason is economic. Due to the accumulation of prior research, it takes longer and longer for a scientist to get up to speed on a new problem. Once up to speed, he (every now and then, she) typically finds that the low-hanging fruit has been plucked long ago. In short, I think that a point of diminishing returns has been reached in large areas of basic science (again, excluding biotech and infotech).
American industry has basically stopped funding basic research, presumably because it doesn't make money anymore (there was a time, not long ago, when it made lots of money). The students may not understand the fundamental economic causes, but they know that the fast track to big bucks no longer goes through the physics department. If anything, science education gets in the way of the gormless optimism that the market really rewards.
I don't think that a PR campaign, or even an expansion in the science education budget, can make a dent in this problem. A massive government investment in basic research might make a difference, if it was big enough (raising the budget of the NSF by a factor of 10 or something similarly ambitious). It may be, in the final analysis, that we're simply starting to reach the limits of what science can do.