US cannot rest on Nobel laurels

With the award of the Nobel for economics to Thomas Sargent and Christopher Sims recently, the US once again took the lion's share of the annual prizes. Its citizens gained seven awards (including the not-strictly-Nobel economics prize) and its grip on the Nobels shows little sign of weakening.

In the long run, it is bound to. Germany had an equally dominant share of Nobels before the Second World War but postwar emigration of many of its best scientists and the rise of federally-funded US research universities in the late 20th century put an end to it. The billions that Asian countries led by China are pouring into pure research will eventually even the score.

But the US is not trying hard enough to slow that trend and so preserve one of its best claims to American exceptionalism. It needs to do more not only to draw masters and PhD students to its universities but to keep them after they graduate. Otherwise, US taxpayers will be investing heavily in the erosion of one of their country's prime economic advantages.

The 323 US Nobel prizewinners in sciences and economics are the elite of the elite — and symbols of an extraordinarily successful initiative in the postwar era to make the US a magnet for research science. For decades, there was no better country to carry out research, to be rewarded and to make a home. The first two are being heavily challenged by Asian countries that not only have the cash to replicate funding of research through bodies such as the National Institutes for Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation, but whose economies are growing faster. The US has responded by diluting its third appeal: the ease with which holders of advanced science degrees can obtain visas and green cards — and ultimately become US citizens. Green card and visa quotas are stifling the opportunities for Chinese and Indian postgraduates to donate brainpower to their adopted country.

If you had to devise a perverse economic policy, it would be difficult to do much worse than this. First, invest heavily in research — the NIH alone ploughs $31 billion (Dh113.8 billion) annually into medical science — and build world-class universities with state-of-the-art facilities. Second, lure the brightest young scientists to the US to study at the cutting edge. Last, send them home with that knowledge.

Nobel prizes are intended to reward pure research but they provide a halo effect for universities and lead to practical innovation. Stanford university (whose faculty has won 26 Nobel prizes) is the intellectual epicentre of Silicon Valley, and its computer science PhD programme spawned Larry Page and the Russian-born Sergey Brin of Google, among many others.

That virtuous circle extends beyond technology. Government and university-backed research (the US government provides 60 per cent of academic research funding, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science) forms the talent base for research and development laboratories in the pharmaceuticals, manufacturing and defence industries.

Sluggish economy

The 126 US research universities exert a powerful pull on students from the rest of the world, especially in physics, engineering and materials science.

It is getting harder for them to stay in the US — especially those from India and China. There is not only an annual 140,000 limit on green cards but a quota of 7 per cent per country. The 210,000 backlog of Indian applicants in one green card category would take 70 years to clear if nothing is done, according to the National Foundation for American Policy.Such tight restrictions on highly skilled immigration in a country of 310 million people make little sense and, combined with the sluggish economy and hostility to immigration on the right, make many foreigners wary of even trying to settle. A Kauffman Foundation study found that only 6 per cent of Indian students and 10 per cent of Chinese students in the US intended to stay.

That is partly owing to a shift in the balance of economic opportunity. The days when the US or Europe offered all the best jobs are fading and Chinese students see potential at home — their country is investing heavily in applied research to catch up with the West. But the US is hurting its own cause.

With unemployment high, hostility to China rising, and fears about foreigners ‘taking American jobs' rife, immigration reform is a tough sell. The US may not realise the urgency because the damage is invisible — the lost opportunity of scientists and entrepreneurs who settle quietly elsewhere.

Its Nobel dominance will be challenged in the next two decades. One marker is a "spectacular growth" in research papers and citations in materials science in Asia noted by Thomson Reuters. Chinese scientists have produced 55,000 material science papers in the past five years, compared with 38,000 US papers.

America's quality still outweighs Asia's quantity — it dominates in the impact of research (and its lead in medicine is greater still) But its own history shows that rich, determined countries can disrupt the world order of academic excellence. It is unwise to rest on Nobel laurels.

— Financial Times