Rising Above "The Gathering Storm"

This promises to be a fascinating, if not provocative, reading reading with the issue of science education and the perceived shortage of qualified scientists and engineers in the US.

If you're familiar with the report from the US National Academies titled "Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future", you would have read the gloomy outlook for America's competitiveness in science and engineering. In most cases, this was a very influential report and has produced several legislative actions to halt this decline.

Now, however, comes a report from another organization that challenges this perception. A report titled "Into the Eye of the Storm: Assessing the Evidence on Science and Engineering Education, Quality, and Workforce Demand" by the Urban Institute, a policy-research organization, points out several inconsistencies of the first "Gathering Storm" report.

You may read more about this conflict (and read the reports yourself) at this Science Career webpage. It would be interesting to see if the National Academies write a response to this new development.

Zz.