We Need a New Sputnik | From the Bell Tower

Steven Bell, Associate University Librarian, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA -- Library Journal, 10/1/2009

In last week’s column I pointed to the rise of the low-cost, no-frills, bargain basement online university. In a world of rising tuition, crushing student debt, and job uncertainty, convenience-driven adults may increasingly choose to forego the traditional college experience and all of its amenities for more affordable, possibly lower quality, online education. For academic librarians, a radical shift of this sort could have tremendous, and not good, consequences.

But hold off just yet on thinking the days of academic libraries are over. There’s another side to this issue that demands this country’s attention. Low-cost higher education might have some appeal, but there’s one benefit it could never provide—the research function.

Things look dismal on the research front
At the same time I was reading all those doom-and-gloom articles about the demise of traditional higher education I came across an article in BusinessWeek, “How Science Can Create Millions of New Jobs” by Adrian Slywotzky. In some ways it out-dooms-and-glooms all those articles predicting the demise of traditional higher education.

The problem is that we need lots of new jobs to re-build our economy—something along the lines of 15 million jobs to replace all of those lost in the last year and new ones to provide opportunities for all the individuals who will enter the workforce in the next few years. But it probably won’t happen without some drastic change. According to Slywotzky, “The pipeline is dry because the U.S. business model is broken. Our growth engine has run out of a key fuel—basic research.”

Missing ingredient
Research is the engine of discoveries that ultimately spawn industries that can employ millions. Right now there isn’t a single American industry, writes Slywotzky, that can produce even a few million jobs in the next three years. To better understand the severity of our crumbling research infrastructure one only needs to study the demise of Bell Labs. Here’s just a glimpse of what Bell Labs contributed:

Fax transmission, long-distance television transmission, photovoltaic solar cells, the transistor, the UNIX operating system, and cellular telephony. Each of these innovations laid the groundwork for vibrant new industries. The transistor alone is the building block for computers, consumer electronics, telecom systems, high-tech medical devices, and much more.

So why isn’t Bell Labs still a fountain of research innovation and discovery? It’s been decimated by the loss of funding and jobs. In 2001 Bell Labs employed 30,000 staff. Today it employs 1000. The same story can be told about other research labs, and as a result technological breakthroughs—the kind that build industries and supply jobs—are getting fewer and farther between.

The challenge of Sputnik
While the article doesn’t specifically mention the role of the university in providing the next generation of researchers, it is clear that the brainy PhDs who made all those discoveries at Bell Labs received their education at colleges and universities—the type with extensive and expensive infrastructures to support complex research. With our research infrastructure teetering on the brink, it is vitally important to keep research universities strong and healthy so they can continue to produce an adequate supply of well-prepared scientists who can work for research labs.

American higher education has experienced just a few major shock waves that changed everything in the industry, such as the Morrill Land Grant Act and the GI Bill. These two propelled massive growth, as did the other major shockwave, Sputnik. After Sputnik, Kennedy’s space race filled higher education’s coffers and launched massive growth at research universities. That’s what we need now. But how are we going to do this when our institutions are suffering their worst budget losses in decades, and they now face competition from a growing number of alternate providers who bear none of the expense of maintaining a research infrastructure?

Look to the future
I don’t have the answers, and I haven’t come across them. But I did see a ray of hope in another article covering a related problem—the lack of students being recruited into math and science.

According to this Chronicle of Higher Education article the federal government needs to stop the “brain drain” among minority students. The number of minority students entering science and math disciplines has changed little since 1990. So it looks like we have entered a sort of vicious circle. If we don’t recruit more students into the science and math disciplines then we won’t produce enough of the skilled graduates research labs need to fuel their innovation and without research scientists the industrial labs slow erosion will continue unabated.

Cheap, online higher education has its merits. It can offer an opportunity to earn a diploma for those who would otherwise have no way to obtain one. But our country can’t afford to fail on the challenge to resurrect and greatly expand our research capabilities. Whichever solution becomes the preferred one it will have to include a strengthened research university system. And just like in the days of Sputnik, when well-funded academic libraries were created to support these new legions of researchers, the next great project should pay heed to the importance of research libraries.

Our next Sputnik appears to be the need to reinvigorate our once unparalleled national research capacity, but at least one expert thinks our next Sputnik should be the green, clean energy movement. It may even be something else, but if we want to truly rebuild our economy and secure it for the next generation we’d better find our next Sputnik fast and begin the hard work of restoring our research infrastructure.

Steven Bell is Associate University Librarian, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA.  For more from Steven visit his blogs, Kept-Up Academic Librarian, ACRLog and Designing Better Libraries or visit his web site.

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