Document Information
The U.S. Scientific and Technical Workforce
Improving Data for Decisionmaking
Concerns about the size and adequacy of the U.S. scientific, technical, engineering, and mathematics workforce have grown amid fears of a dwindling labor pool and concern that this may erode U.S. leadership in science and technology and could complicate mobilization of appropriate manpower for homeland security. In the past, such fears have failed to materialize, and surpluses have been more common than shortages. But this should not be grounds for complacency. Fundamentally, available data are inadequate for valid predictions. The RAND Corporation organized a conference to identify the limitations of the available data and explore potential improvements. The event brought together leading researchers, science agency policymakers, and statistical agency experts together to address ways to improve the data system for decisionmaking with respect to this workforce. This volume contains the proceedings of that conference, consisting of the papers delivered and discussed at the workshop, as well as RAND's synthesis of workforce data needs and opportunities for meeting those needs.
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Contents
Part I: Prologue
Chapter One:
Introduction PART II: Contributed Papers
Chapter Two:
Do We Need More Scientists?
Chapter Three:
What Will It Take for the United States to Maintain Global Leadership in Discovery and Innovation?
Chapter Four:
Does America Face a Shortage of Scientists and Engineers?
Chapter Five:
Data! Data! My Kingdom for Data! Data Needs for Analyzing the S&E Job Market
Chapter Six:
What Data Do Labor Market Researchers Need? A Researcher's Perspective
Chapter Seven:
What Data Do Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Agency Policymakers Need?
Chapter Eight:
What Data Do STEM Agency Policymakers Need? Workforce Planning for the Future: The NASA Perspective
Chapter Nine:
Meeting the Data Needs: Opportunities and Challenges at the National Science Foundation
Chapter Ten:
Opportunities and Challenges at the Bureau of Labor Statistics
Chapter Eleven:
U.S. Census Bureau Data and the Science and Technology Workforce
Chapter Twelve:
Opportunities and Challenges at the National Center for Education Statistics
Part III: Summary and Conclusions
Chapter Thirteen:
Rapporteur's Summary
Chapter Fourteen:
Priority Data Improvements
Appendix A:
Conference Agenda
Appendix B:
Biographical Notes on Contributors
The research described in this report was conducted for the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation by RAND Science and Technology.
This product is part of the RAND Corporation conference proceedings series. RAND conference proceedings present a collection of papers delivered at a conference or a summary of the conference. The material herein has been vetted by the conference attendees and both the introduction and the post-conference material have been reviewed and approved for publication by the sponsoring research unit at RAND.
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