Chapter 4
Maintaining a Strong Chemistry-Based Industry in the United States Downloaded by UNIV OF ARIZONA on March 15, 2017 | http://pubs.acs.org Publication Date (Web): March 10, 2014 | doi: 10.1021/bk-2014-1157.ch004
Ronald Breslow* Department of Chemistry, Columbia University, 3000 Broadway, New York, New York 10027-2399, United States *E-mail:
[email protected] It is critical to the U.S. that we continue to be the home to advanced science and the technology-based industries that benefit from this science. In this talk I will describe three threats to our eminence in this area, particularly in chemistry and its applications. One is the need to attract more of our brightest students into the field, adding strength to America’s future. Another is the non-economic effects from take-overs of pharmaceutical companies. The side effects are the weakening of our aggregate scientific strength--in many of the take-overs the strongest and most experienced chemists in the firm being purchased lose their positions and the opportunity to contribute their expertise to our science-based future. This latter problem also discourages our brightest students from entering a profession with such an uncertain career path ahead. A third related problem is the outsourcing of chemistry jobs in industry away from the U.S. Possible remedies to these problems will be discussed.
© 2014 American Chemical Society Cheng et al.; Vision 2025: How To Succeed in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2014.
Whereas globalization is an important trend, an equally important action for us is to retain our strengths in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) within the United States. There are three problem areas that I would like to address in this chapter.
Downloaded by UNIV OF ARIZONA on March 15, 2017 | http://pubs.acs.org Publication Date (Web): March 10, 2014 | doi: 10.1021/bk-2014-1157.ch004
Greater Support for STEM Higher Education First of all, the general public does not understand the critical role that science, particularly chemistry, plays in our society. Chemistry is a creative science. We invent new molecules, and we apply these molecules to applications. Probably two-thirds of chemistry graduates work in industry. Many of them do applied research that has immediate or longer term impact on our daily lives. In this way, chemistry is different from astronomy (for example), where synthesis is not possible. We appreciate nature, and we find out why grass is green or why a certain co-enzyme has the shape that it has. We ask how else we can learn from nature, and how we can mimic nature and synthesize new things. Thus, we are nature explorers and nature extenders, and we extend our science into technology and innovation. In the U.S., chemistry research in academia is mostly performed by graduate students. A current problem is the difficulty of supporting them. At one time, it was easy for graduate student to get NSF and NIH fellowships for their own support. A few years back, I had 19 graduate students and 18 of them were supported by their own federal fellowships. However, times have changed. Now it is difficult to get enough funding to support the group sizes that were previously pretty large. I have seen young faculty members who have good ideas and work hard but who do not get tenure because of the difficulty of getting money to support their research programs. This is a real problem for academia. In the U.S. education up to high school is supported by the Department of Education. We need to recognize that education does not stop at high school. The Department of Education should provide support all the way through graduate school, because education at these higher levels has greater impact on U.S. industrial competitiveness. There is currently an excellent program at the Department of Education called “Grants and Aids in Areas of National Need” (GAANN) (1). Certainly STEM can be considered areas of national need and should be funded under this program. The problems is that right now its budget is limited -- only a tiny fraction of the budget of the Department of Education. I suggest that we increase its funding to cover the STEM graduate students’ stipends. Furthermore, the current GAANN program is run like a poverty program and graduate students have to be almost starving to qualify. This aspect of the program also needs to be rectified. I understand that in China graduate education is supported by the government’s education budget. This seems to be a wise policy. In the U.S., a big chunk of the research funds is used to pay for the graduate students’ stipends. If the U.S. Department of Education can pay the graduate students’ stipends, then the professors’ research funds can support postdocs, purchase equipment, and cover research expenses, with better outcomes. 34 Cheng et al.; Vision 2025: How To Succeed in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2014.
Downloaded by UNIV OF ARIZONA on March 15, 2017 | http://pubs.acs.org Publication Date (Web): March 10, 2014 | doi: 10.1021/bk-2014-1157.ch004
Incentives for U.S. Students To Study STEM The second problem we have is that many of the best and the brightest students in the U.S. are not studying STEM. Instead, they prefer to enroll in law schools or medical schools. For the U.S. to be competitive in the world, and for U.S. chemical industry to be strong, we need to attract our best students to science in general, and chemistry in particular. Something that has been detrimental to chemistry is the consolidation in the chemically related industries, especially pharma. Big companies are buying up smaller companies. Now I understand the logic of acquisition. I used to own a small company and raised $70MM in private equity to sustain it. However, I had other interests and did not want to run the company, so I sold it to Merck. It was a win-win situation. Merck could not invent all the things they wanted and needed to acquire new technology. I was freed from the operational part of the business and was glad that Merck took it over. Everyone was happy. The problem happens when a big company buys a competitor. As we know, we live in a capitalist society and the essence of capitalism is competition. Acquisitions like that decrease competition and have a negative impact on innovation. They can also be detrimental to worker morale. I happen to know a good medium-sized company that was bought by a larger company. After the acquisition, the director of research lost his job because they did not need two directors of research. Even the second-level managers lost their jobs as well. Thus, they lost a lot of expertise and experience in this acquisition. The people fired had good management skills and product development knowledge, but they no longer have the opportunity to contribute their expertise to our science-based future. They can serve as consultants, but that is not the same thing. I was disturbed about this trend and even consulted with Glenn Hubbard, the head of Columbia University Business School. He explained to me that in general business acquisition is not bad per se: it increases corporate efficiency and expands corporate expertise. I concluded that consolidation is probably beneficial to the corporations, but detrimental to the nation’s scientific development. Certainly, it is wasteful in terms of scientific talent, and also discourages bright students from studying chemistry. How to reverse this trend? This will not be easy. We need political actions to decelerate consolidation. We need incentives to encourage more students to study chemistry. The availability of fellowships will help. If the Department of Education can provide funding for STEM graduate students, that will help.
Outsourcing We know that outsourcing is taking place, and many people have talked about it. Outsourcing does not necessarily have to be bad; it can be a two-way street. For example, the U.S. is happy to take some of the business from Swiss companies. However, Switzerland has not outsourced everything; they have kept some of the businesses and jobs at home, and they have good programs to train their own students. We should learn from the Swiss. 35 Cheng et al.; Vision 2025: How To Succeed in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2014.
Downloaded by UNIV OF ARIZONA on March 15, 2017 | http://pubs.acs.org Publication Date (Web): March 10, 2014 | doi: 10.1021/bk-2014-1157.ch004
Right now, many graduate U.S. chemistry programs have a lot of graduate students from Asia. This is fine, but many of these students want to go back home after they have been trained. Thus, if we depend on foreign students to do the research for us, we lose the talent when they return home. Ultimately we end up losing as regards to our relative scientific strength in the world. What we need is a decent graduate policy to encourage bright U.S. students to study STEM, such as graduate fellowships and an expanded GAANN program as described above. As companies notice the excellent pool of talent within the U.S., they will be less likely to outsource research overseas. Switzerland is a good example. The Swiss companies may be global in their operations, but they maintain a strong presence at home. They continue to support education at home and keep their workers employed. Thus, while globalization is real and we need to consider the impact of internationalization on our activities, we should not lose sight of our domestic needs, particularly our need to continue to be a leader in science and technical innovation.
Summary What are the assets that the U.S. has? Yes, we have natural resources. However, it is our STEM expertise that has really made the difference historically. Even now, we know that we are still strong in molecular biology. It started in the U.S. and we still have a scientific and technological lead. The problem is that the public does not understand how important STEM is to our society. We need to get in touch with the Congress; the message is that chemistry is important to this country but the funding mode is far from ideal. More specifically, we need to let the Congress know that more money should be allocated to the Department of Education in order to support STEM graduate students. I once discussed my ideas with the director of chemical sciences at NSF and he loved the ideas. I have written an editorial at C&EN on this topic as well (2). I think this would be a very useful and important initiative that would ultimately help to maintain a strong chemistry-based industry in the United States.
References 1. 2.
Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need. U.S. Department of Education. http://www2.ed.gov/programs/gaann/index.html. Breslow, R. Chem. Eng. News 2011, 89 (24), 3.
36 Cheng et al.; Vision 2025: How To Succeed in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2014.
