The nation was distracted by other things when a quiet warning sounded: Support was diminishing for American academic research that had led to breakthroughs and innovation.
That familiar-sounding worry came not this year, but near the end of World War II, in by the wartime Office of Scientific Research and Development.
The response then: infusions of government cash that would propel the U.S. higher education system into international preeminence over the subsequent decades.
American colleges and universities rose to the ranks of the best in the world. They attracted top scholars who won a disproportionate number of . They helped drive the innovation economy. As trade deficits beset other industries, education became . At their peak enrollment, international students brought in .
Now, as a new academic year begins, American dominance in higher education globally is incontrovertibly in decline, according to data, international rankings and independent experts.
The slide has been accelerated by a year and a half of funding cuts, restrictions on international students and curbs on what can be said or taught. But it began before those political challenges, with , lackluster returns on ever-rising prices and public mistrust.
“It takes a while for all of these problems to trickle down, but they are beginning to trickle down,” said Eric Mlyn, a faculty fellow at the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University who studies academic freedom.
Top scholars are leaving. Fewer international students are coming. U.S. universities are slipping in international rankings. And American universities have failed to keep pace as other countries pour resources into their higher education systems.
Chinese institutions, for example, have increased their production of graduates with doctoral degrees much faster than American ones in the critical fields of science, technology, engineering and math. Rather than expanding, U.S. doctoral programs are now admitting fewer candidates or have stopped accepting new applicants altogether.
This has myriad impacts on all Americans. Falling behind in research imperils the nation’s economic competitiveness, for instance. And attracting fewer international learners — and the subsidies they represent to universities’ bottom lines — is available to domestic students, and could increase the cost.
So dire has the situation become that the American Ƶ of Arts and Sciences hosted a discussion about it in June. The title: “Is the U.S. Losing Its Edge as a Global Education Leader?”
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