The Real STEM Crisis
Contrary to the hysteria being whipped up by President Obama, Congressional leaders and the media, there is no shortage of competent Science, Technology, Engineer or math (STEM) graduates. There is, however, a crisis in funding of STEM research—a crisis that is causing record numbers of young scientists to lose funding and their jobs, while preventing many more from obtaining jobs in the first place.
Declining research funding at the University of California system, for example, has prompted several UCLA neuroscience researchers to move to the private University of Southern California (USC). Overall, budget cuts have not resulted in a large exodus or professors from the UC system (of the 306 faculty members receiving offers from other schools last year, UC was able to retain 72% of them, according to the Los Angeles Times). However, UC has failed to replace faculty as quickly as it used to. For example, in 2010-11, UC lost 428 faculty members to retirement, but due to budget cuts was only able to replace 189 of them.
A study by the National Science Foundation (NSF) found that state per-student funding for the 101 major public research universities dropped by an average of 20% between 2002 and