Wanted: Fresh, Homegrown Talent

By Ezra Bowen

At a time when American education more often disappoints than uplifts, at least one bright spot stands out: the U.S. graduate schools of engineering, science and math. "We have the best," brags Dean Ettore Infante of the University of Minnesota's Institute of Technology. One result is that students are flooding to the U.S. schools from all parts of the globe. Says Jean- Jacques Servan-Schreiber, chairman of the international committee for Carnegie-Mellon: "I think America is becoming a university of the world."

But the rising wave of foreigners is causing concern in academe. In no other field has the influx been so pronounced as in graduate engineering. An extraordinary 55.4% of last year's doctorates went to candidates from overseas (at Penn State the figure was 74%). "To a casual observer coming to our commencement," says Caltech Dean Arden Albee, "it looks like we're probably three-quarters Asian."

The offshore invasion -- mostly from Asia -- has brought with it no dilution of quality. University of Wisconsin Dean John Wiley notes that foreigners who apply for master's and Ph.D. programs "are the top 1% of the cream of the crop." But the pressure from these foreign candidates comes when bright young Americans seem less interested in higher technical education. Says Charles Vest, dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor: "That reflects the general tendency in U.S. society for doing things in the short run."

Because stipends for fellowships in Ph.D. programs are so low (averaging $10,000 to $12,000 a year), more and more hungry degree candidates are opting for private industry and the $30,000-plus starting pay. Foreigners who make the effort to come to the U.S. tend to stick it out for their doctorates. This will be reflected in the composition of future U.S. faculties. By 1992, Iowa State University President Gordon Eaton predicts, "somewhere between 75% and 93%" of engineering professors will be foreign born.

More than half the foreign students remain in the U.S., which thereby enjoys the fruits of an overseas brain drain. Still, many U.S. universities are closing the door. The University of Illinois' graduate engineering program, for example, has a 20% quota for foreign students. Responding to pressure from state legislators, Berkeley Engineering Dean Karl Pister admits, "We have tried, in a systematic way, to trim down the number of foreign students" -- to 37% from last year's 41%.

But quotas and bans on aliens are hardly a desirable solution. On Capitol Hill some progress has been made toward the more positive goal of encouraging gifted Americans. Measures are under way in Congress that would increase graduate-fellowship aid from $115 million to $150 million next year, provide $95 million for upgrading university research facilities by 1990, and raise federal support for math and science education in elementary schools from $80 million to $150 million.

Such assistance cannot come too soon. Not only are university faculties running out of homegrown talent, but recruiters for some of the country's leading technological firms say they are unable to find a single qualified American to hire.

With reporting by Robert Buderi/Boston and B. Russell Leavitt/Detroit