Falling Behind?: Boom, Bust, and the Global Race for Scientific Talent

Michael S. Teitelbaum

ISBN 10: 069115466X / ISBN 13: 9780691154664

Published by Princeton University Press, 2014

About this Item

New copy - Usually dispatched within 4 working days.

Seller Inventory # B9780691154664

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Falling Behind?: Boom, Bust, and the Global Race for Scientific Talent
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication Date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 069115466X
• ISBN 13: 9780691154664
• Binding: Hardback
• Condition: New
• Weight: 602 grams

About this title

Synopsis

How the fear of a shortage in American science talent fuels cycles in the technical labor market

Is the United States falling behind in the global race for scientific and engineering talent? Are U.S. employers facing shortages of the skilled workers that they need to compete in a globalized world? Such claims from some employers and educators have been widely embraced by mainstream media and political leaders, and have figured prominently in recent policy debates about education, federal expenditures, tax policy, and immigration. Falling Behind? offers careful examinations of the existing evidence and of its use by those involved in these debates.

These concerns are by no means a recent phenomenon. Examining historical precedent, Michael Teitelbaum highlights five episodes of alarm about "falling behind" that go back nearly seventy years to the end of World War II. In each of these episodes the political system responded by rapidly expanding the supply of scientists and engineers, but only a few years later political enthusiasm or economic demand waned. Booms turned to busts, leaving many of those who had been encouraged to pursue science and engineering careers facing disheartening career prospects. Their experiences deterred younger and equally talented students from following in their footsteps―thereby sowing the seeds of the next cycle of alarm, boom, and bust.

Falling Behind? examines these repeated cycles up to the present, shedding new light on the adequacy of the science and engineering workforce for the current and future needs of the United States.

About the Author

Michael S. Teitelbaum is a Wertheim Fellow in the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School and senior advisor to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in New York. Until 2011 he was vice president of the Sloan Foundation. His previous books include The Global Spread of Fertility Decline, A Question of Numbers, The Fear of Population Decline, and The British Fertility Decline.