President Richard C. Levin recently told a U.S. Senate conference thatthe nation's economic well-being depends heavily on basic scientificresearch conducted by American universities.
A specialist in the economics of technological change, President Levintold the Senate Democratic Policy Committee that the system of publiclysupported research produces the knowledge from which spring the newindustries that give the United States its economic advantage.
"We must sustain this system, or we will lose the most vital segmentsof American industry, the segments that give us growth and new jobcreation," the President said.
President Levin told the Senate panel that he once taught a seminarat Yale in which students were required to study the internationalcompetitiveness of various manufacturing industries in the United Statesfor a 25-year period ending in 1985.
"It was a very revealing exercise, because the data indicated that thealleged decline in U.S. global competitiveness was, in fact, largelyconcentrated in just a handful of industrial sectors," the President said. "Inessence, we had suffered an enormous absolute and relative decline inperformance of two industries that were the nation's largest employers in the 1960s: automobiles and steel." In most other sectors of the economy, the President's students foundthat the United States was competitive, and, in the case of technologieslinked to recent advances in basic science, such as pharmaceuticals,America was leading the world by a large margin.
"The pattern is no different today," the President said. "America isthe world leader in industries where competitive success depends uponthe innovative commercial application of recently developed scientificknowledge."
America has dominated in new industries because of the federalgovernment's strong commitment after World War II to fund basicresearch conducted by universities, he noted.
"The United States was almost unique in its decision to locate basicresearch in the universities, where the most advanced research wasundertaken in conjunction with the education of the next generation ofscientists," the President said, noting that substantial public resources forresearch were allocated through a peer review process based on scientificmerit alone.
Curtail the historic investment in basic research now, President Levinargued, and in the future America will no longer be the birthplace ofcutting-edge industries.
"We will not feel the consequences five years from now, but we willfeel them profoundly after 20 or 30 years," the President said of reducingpublic research support. "We might not recognize the absence of a poliovaccine. We surely will recognize the absence of U.S. firms among theleaders in the application of new technology worldwide. We won't have thecompanies making the newest products."
That outcome, the President told the panel, would leave the UnitedStates struggling to compete in older industries with other nations.
"As technologies mature, labor costs, quality, and other factorsbecome more important in determining competitive success, and the U.S.tends to lose comparative advantage," he said.
President Levin joined other university presidents, leading scientistsand private industry leaders concerned about proposed reductions infederal support for science research in addressing the Senate conference,titled "Maintaining America's Leadership in the 21st Century: TheImportance of Science and Technology Research," in Washington, D.C.
Senators at the conference were also presented with a letter signedby 60 Nobel Prize winners, including faculty members Sidney Altman,Sterling Professor of Biology, and James Tobin, Sterling Professor Emeritusof Economics. The letter, also transmitted to President Bill Clinton andother members of Congress, urged them to maintain the government'sinvestment in basic science research.