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INTRODUCTION 2 Introduction In the decades since World War Two, the United States has developed a unique research enterprise. Unlike most other industrialized nations, which developed basic research capacity primarily in government and industry laboratories, the United States expanded basic research within its universities as an adjunct to graduate education.1 This coupling of functions has led to extraordinary success in the sciences and engineering. Two generally recognized factors have contributed to that success and the continued world-wide pre-eminence of the U.S. university-based research system: First, financial support for academic research and graduate education by federal and state governments, philanthropies, industries, and universities has significantly expanded and diversified the research enterprise; second, special reliance on the apprenticeship model of integrating advanced instruction and research has trained the nation's scientists on real research problems, not hypothetical exercises. Coincident with this success, however, much is changingâin both the universities and the forces that influence and support them. As new pressures now urge expansion of the enterprise, for example, student enrollments and faculty positions are holding steady. As exciting research opportunities proliferate, the costs of pursuing them has grown sharply. As a large number of academic research faculty hired in the 1960s and early 1970s will begin to retire in the 1990s, the number of students planning careers in academic research may be inadequate to replace those faculty. In addition, research facilities built during previous decades need attention; they require repair and renovation and, in some cases, replacement. Scientific instrumentation, increasingly important to new opportunities on the research agenda, requires continual upgrading. Finally, the topics of scientific investigation, the ways in which academic scholars pursue research opportunities, and the role of university administrators are challenged by increasingly complex social and political demands. Coupled with shifting economic, socio-demographic, and political climates in both U.S. and world society, these trends create a much different context for the academic research enterprise than the one that characterized its period of greatest expansion following World War Two. In the years ahead, these trends frame three major challenges to policy-makers in the enterprise and the nation: ⢠To ensure sufficient scientific and technical human resources. ⢠To maintain the overall quality of the nation's universities and their academic research, in an increasingly diversified enterprise with financial constraints. ⢠To enhance the nation's ability to address new scientific and technological opportunities and concomitant societal demands. Achieving consensus to respond to these challenges will not be easy. Views will differ and vigorous debate is likely as all who hold a stake in the enterprise wrestle with these difficult and complex challenges. As it responds to them, the United States should re-examine its methods of conducting and financing research to assess whether the enterprise should be modified or restructured, and to determine how best to re-energize the imperatives of its mission and maintain the pre- eminence of its institutions.
INTRODUCTION 3 Part One provides a framework for debating these issues and developing a consensus on the actions required. Three topics are addressed: ⢠The status of the current enterprise of academic research in science and technology. ⢠The emerging trends that affect the academic research enterprise. ⢠The major issues that will face research sponsors, university administrators, and academic scientists and engineers in the 1990s and into the 21st Century.
