0.11 The carter and reagan years: 1977-89  (Page 6/10)

Keyworth’s claim that the Reagan administration and Congress were generous to science was echoed by the external community, as evidenced by a July 3, 1987, Science article entitled, “Science Budgets Fare Well in House Action.” “News and Comment,” Science 237 (July 3, 1987), 21. This trend for basic research persisted until politically unacceptable federal deficits forced the administration and Congress to reexamine their priorities, beginning with the president’s proposed fiscal year 1988 budget. Irwin Goodwin, “Physicists Dismayed by NSF’s Many Cuts in Congress’s Hard-Times 1988 Budget," Physics Today (March 1988), 41-44.

Support for the social sciences in Reagan’s first budge request, however, was drastically reduced, and NSF’s science education budget almost entirely eliminated. In response, the National Science Board, as NSF’s policy-making and governing body, invoked a rarely used provision of the National Science Foundation Act of 1950 by convening a special commission to examine the broad science education issue. This commission lent support to subsequent congressional restoration of science education through creation of NSF’s Directorate for Education and Human Resources. All 435 members of the House of Representatives, after all, had schoolteachers in their districts, many of whom had profited from programs the Reagan administration was proposing to cut. Congress voted to restore funding for science education to NSF, and the administration had no choice but to comply. From then on, science education would be an integral component of U.S. science policy.

Engineering research centers

The relatively modest university-industry cooperative research programs initiated by NSF in 1978 proved to be so well received that in 1984, the agency initiated its Engineering Research Centers program, which provided substantial support to a small number of universities or university consortia to undertake large, long-term research programs in cooperation with industry. In 1986, NSF expanded the centers concept again, creating a parallel Science and Technology Centers program.

The academic community was initially unhappy with these programs, contending that NSF ought to confine its support to small groups of academic investigators for whom the costs of the new programs would seriously reduce available funding. But NSF Director Erich Bloch argued persuasively that science had changed drastically since Science—the Endless Frontier was released in 1945. Many contemporary science and engineering problems, he argued, could be addressed only by large, interdisciplinary groups with guaranteed long-term support. Further, it could no longer be assumed that industry would automatically pick up and develop the results of university basic research. Industry needed direct involvement with large, complex, university-based research programs that would, in turn, sensitize university researchers and students to industry’s needs. He also urged professional science and engineering societies to set their priorities for large-scale programs rather than having NSF and other science-related agencies set them by default. Irwin Goodwin, “Erich Bloch: on Changing Times and Angry Scientists at NSF,” Physics Today (August 1988), 47-52.