A bill was presented to Congress Tuesday that would pay the interest on student loans for graduates who work in a math or science job, including teaching, for at least five years.
The Math and Science Incentive Act, which was presented in the House by U.S. Rep. Frank R. Wolf, R-Va., and in the Senate by Sen. John Warner, R-Va., was created in response to concerns that the United States is becoming increasingly less competitive in the global market of technology.
In a press conference, Wolf said there are several indictors that the United States is slipping in the fields of math, science, engineering and technology. Most noticeably, the United States is producing a decreasing percentage of the world's patents and published research, and American scientists are receiving a smaller proportion of Nobel prizes.
Engineering School Acting Dean James Aylor said other countries such as China and India are really pushing their young people to go into these fields of study, and consequently are producing hundreds of thousands of engineers a year, while the United States is only producing between 60,000 and 70,000 a year.
"The issue is trying to maintain the level of innovation that this country had been able to maintain over the years, and what we're concerned about is that we'll be upstaged by some of the international community," Aylor said.
Aylor also said the bill is just one aspect of a program that will be developed over the next few years to promote excellence and participation in math, science and engineering among middle school, high school and college students.
Aylor said he thinks the bill is a good start towards boosting interest in these fields.
"This isn't going to be something to change someone's mind totally, but if they have an interest in math and science, this is a way to give them an opportunity to push them over the edge, so to speak," Aylor said.
University Mathematics Department Chair Ira Herbst said the United States has been importing people from all over the world for the last few years to do these math- and science-oriented jobs. Herbst said this trend has developed because the United States does not gravitate towards the technical end of education while areas such as Eastern Europe do, so this decreasing progress in math and science is a sign of a cultural problem.
"Here, it's OK at a cocktail party to say 'Oh, I don't know anything about math -- I was terrible at it,' whereas you wouldn't say that about literature," Herbst said.
Aylor pointed out that the bill could specifically impact the University Engineering School by encouraging more applications so that the school can continue to attract the best and the brightest in the engineering field. He also said the bill could have a more widespread effect by simply educating the general population.
"The world is so dominated by technology right now that we need legislators that are technology savvy, and we need lawyers and doctors that understand technology," Aylor said. "So this push with providing more education in math and science is really also to provide a more technology-savvy population."
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