11 Key Takeaways From “The State of U.S. Science & Engineering 2024” Report
The "State of U.S. Science and Engineering" gives us a snapshot of America's position in the global science and engineering landscape. It digs into the latest Science and Engineering Indicators 2024 to highlight America's strengths and areas for growth across three key areas: talent, discovery, and innovation. Essentially, it shows how our STEM talent fuels groundbreaking discoveries, which are then transformed into real-world innovations, keeping the U.S. at the forefront of global competitiveness in science, technology, and innovation.
Here are the key takeaways from the report:
National assessments show a sharp decline in elementary and secondary student mathematics performance since the COVID-19 pandemic. From 2019 to 2022, average mathematics scores of fourth and eighth grade students dropped to levels last measured approximately 20 years ago.
Enrollment of international science and engineering (S&E) graduate students at U.S. institutions has rapidly increased from approximately 200,000 in 2020, a pandemic-era low point, to nearly 310,000 in 2022. International students on temporary visas accounted for about a third of S&E master’s and doctoral degree recipients at U.S. institutions in 2021.
The U.S. science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce comprised 36.8 million people in diverse occupations that require STEM knowledge and expertise in 2021, accounting for 24% of the total U.S. workforce. Just over half of STEM workers did not have bachelor’s degrees or higher. Foreign-born individuals made up 19% of all STEM workers and 43% of doctorate-level scientists and engineers.
Women account for lower shares of degree recipients in engineering and computer and information sciences than men. Women are underrepresented in the STEM workforce, and they accounted for 35% of all STEM workers in 2021. Hispanic or Latino, Black or African American, and American Indian or Alaska Native individuals are underrepresented among S&E degree recipients at the bachelor’s degree level and above and also among STEM workers with at least a bachelor’s degree.
The United States is the largest performer of research and development (R&D), with $806 billion in gross domestic expenditures on R&D in 2021. Other top R&D-performing countries include China ($668 billion), Japan ($177 billion), Germany ($154 billion), and South Korea ($120 billion). The United States is also among the world’s most R&D-intensive economies, with R&D expenditures equaling 3.5% of its gross domestic product in 2021.
The absolute amount of federally funded R&D increased from 2011 to 2021; however, due to significant growth in R&D funded by businesses, the share of total U.S. R&D funded by the federal government decreased from 30% in 2011 to 19% in 2021. The business sector now funds 36% of basic research, close to the 40% share of basic research funded by the federal government.
The federal government is the largest supporter of academic R&D, funding 52% of all R&D performed by higher education institutions and supporting 15% of full-time S&E graduate students in 2021.
S&E articles published in open-access journals increased over 50-fold in the past two decades, from 19,000 articles published in 2003 to 992,000 articles in 2022.
Indicators of global science, technology, and innovation (STI) capabilities, such as S&E research publications, patenting, and knowledge- and technology-intensive (KTI) industry output, are concentrated in the United States, East and Southeast Asia, and Europe. Over the past decade, China has significantly increased its share of global STI capabilities.
China is the top overall producer of S&E publications and international patents and has the greatest KTI manufacturing output. The United States, which has a greater share of its publications among the most highly cited S&E research, is the world leader in KTI services. These two countries are the largest contributors to a global network of artificial intelligence (AI) research publishing.
Like K–12 education outcomes, innovation capabilities and the STEM labor force are not uniform across the United States. U.S. patenting activity is concentrated along the coasts and in parts of the Great Lakes region, Texas, and the Rocky Mountains, a distribution similar to that of STEM employment and KTI industry production.
https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb20243/
Steven Deitz and Christina Freyman, March 13, 2024
National Science Foundation, National Science Board, National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics
The report concludes that the U.S. maintains its edge in science, technology, and innovation (STI) thanks to its robust investment in STEM talent and groundbreaking research. Despite temporary setbacks in education and research from the COVID-19 pandemic, the drive for research and innovation hasn't slowed down globally. However, there's a noticeable shift towards East and Southeast Asia, especially China, in terms of S&E resources and outputs.
The U.S. remains a research juggernaut, particularly in basic research, and its competitive edge is significantly bolstered by the talents of foreign-born scientists and engineers. The U.S.'s strengths lie in its world-renowned universities, influential research, and leadership in knowledge and technology-intensive services.
It’s our imagination that fuels these leaps forward in science and engineering, transforming the abstract into the tangible and pushing the boundaries of what we believe to be possible.
