By John P. Bailey

Strengthening US competitiveness has emerged as a rare
bipartisan objective. The House passed the America COMPETES Act (COMPETES) last Friday, which now
heads to conference to be reconciled with its bipartisan Senate counterpart:
the US Innovation and Competition Act (USICA).

Several factors explain why competitiveness is gaining
momentum as other agendas stall, notably Build Back Better. First, there is
growing bipartisan consensus around the need to strengthen US technological and
research and development (R&D) capabilities against a perceived growing
threat from China. Disruptions created by COVID-19 and national security
concerns have also laid bare the fragility of our supply chains, leading
policymakers to push for less reliance on overseas capabilities — particularly
around critical technologies. Second, innovation is rightfully seen as an
engine not only of economic growth but also for addressing past, present, and
future problems.

Both bills come with massive price tags: $250 billion for
USICA and $350 billion for COMPETES. There are promising elements within the
bills, including $52 billion to boost semiconductor manufacturing. This issue
received additional urgency after a recent Department of Commerce survey of semiconductor suppliers
and businesses suggested many had a mere five-day emergency supply. Other
promising reforms include exemptions from green-card numerical limits for STEM
doctoral candidates and a startup visa program for immigrant entrepreneurs.

Still, two areas warrant further action as part of a final
package. First, neither bill addresses a critical supply challenge facing US
companies — the human capital supply chain. Today’s talent pipeline is unable
to provide the skilled workers that companies need to innovate or laboratories
required to conduct cutting-edge research.

In 2019, only 24 percent of high school seniors were proficient in
mathematics. According to Education Week, 40 percent of high school students cannot
consistently explain the structure of atoms or design and critique scientific
experiments. Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson recently lamented that barely half of all
public high schools offer computer science courses. Higher education has
also become a leaky pipeline. Although 65 percent of all jobs in the economy require postsecondary
education and training beyond high school, only 30 percent of students complete
a two-year program within three years, and nearly 40
percent of students fail to complete a four-year degree program.

And, according to a recent study, foreign students account for 74 percent of full-time
graduate students in electrical engineering, 72 percent in computer and
information sciences, and 54 percent in chemical engineering. The number of
master’s degrees awarded in science and engineering fields more than doubled
from 2000 to 2019, driven by students on temporary visas.

Through a competitiveness lens, the quality of math and
science education in our elementary and secondary schools is both a national
security and economic concern. We are not preparing enough students to fill the
high-skilled jobs of tomorrow; as a result, we’re becoming more reliant on
foreign talent.

Current policy does too little to strengthen this pipeline,
and both bills’ STEM programs do not address the challenge sufficiently. A
final bill should consider expanding computer science programming among high
schools, making it easier to hire better-qualified math and science teachers.
We also need financial incentives that encourage more students to enter STEM
fields and reward colleges that confer students STEM degrees. 

A second area worth addressing relates to R&D. Both
bills would increase R&D funding through the National Science Foundation,
but USICA coordinates the work through a new Directorate of Technology and
Innovation. This office would support research projects across a list of disciplines that could be strengthened by
including education and workforce development to help provide the innovations
needed to improve our human capital systems. According to a Pew survey, half of
adults cite subject difficulty as the main reason they don’t pursue STEM degrees. But the real
issue is that we’ve made teaching and learning STEM too difficult. We need
better research aimed at making it easier to teach and learn these crucial subjects.
This would also fill a gap in the current ecosystem, since most research
conducted by the Departments of Education and Labor is focused on evaluating
existing programs, not developing breakthrough innovations.

The final bill should also create a $500 million initiative
located within the Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences to
launch transformative research projects. This office could develop, test, and
evaluate new learning programs, technologies, and assessments to uncover what
works in specific contexts and accelerate transformational advances in
education — particularly those that accelerate learning and address achievement,
opportunity, and equity gaps. This work is important not only in its
contribution to strengthening our competitiveness but also in helping to
address pandemic-driven learning loss.

It’s encouraging to see robust debate around strengthening
US competitiveness. Boosting semiconductor manufacturing and supporting more
R&D funding are laudable goals. But their achievements will be constrained
unless we invest in strengthening the human capital that lies at the heart of
innovation.

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