The Secret of American Science Capacity: Mass Higher Education and STEM Ph.D. Production

• In Event: 41.084 - Roundtable Session 16
  In Roundtable Session: 41.084-22 - Looking Back to Move Forward: Publishing, Production, and Pedagogy

Abstract

U.S. based scientists dominated exponential growth in new scientific knowledge over the 20th Century; and a key factor behind this is the large supply of Ph.D.’s trained in American universities. Past scholarship focuses on financial resources, in contrast here we examine the impact of rising undergraduate education and access to higher education as a cause of STEM Ph.D. production. In our study, the conintegration analysis and a longitudinal dataset spanning from 1920 to 2012 were used to test our assumptions. Our preliminary result show that the growth of higher education enrollments was significant after controlling for possible confounding variables such as changes in national GDP per capita, thus confirming the association between mass higher education and STEM capacity building.

Authors

• Frank Fernandez, The Pennsylvania State University

• David P. Baker, The Pennsylvania State University

• YUAN CHIH FU, The Pennsylvania State University

• ISMAEL GUILLERMO MUNOZ, The Pennsylvania State University - University Park

• Karly Ford, The Pennsylvania State University