Educating a New Generation in Congress: A Challenging Need
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Educating a New Generation in Congress: A Challenging Need One of the trends in the U.S. Congress affecting the political and policy environment which has become apparent during the 104th Congress is the generational change in membership. While this trend has not been widely discussed in science circles, it should be of interest to the materials research community since it could have significant long-term implications for science and technology policy. The recent turnover in the membership of Congress is such that new members (having less than three years of service) now constitute more than 50% of the House of Representatives. On the House Science Committee, which consists of 50 members, 22 are first-term representatives and nine are sophomores, meaning 62% of the committee has served for three years or less. In general, new Science Committee members have little relevant education or
experience to position them at the outset to engage fully in the debate over science policy. While this is not new, what is new is that the large number of new members now constitute a majority voting block. As a personal observation, new members generally take one to three congressional terms to achieve sufficient familiarity to independently engage in science policy debates; obviously it takes time to educate oneself on such complex issues. While the U.S. Senate is lagging in this generational transition, in part because of its longer election cycle, this year's Senate has already seen 13 announced retirements, the highest number in over 100 years. Clearly the trend of a generational transition is occurring there also. Coupled with this growing generational transition are two additional factors which, when taken together, lead to serious implications. First, the Vannevar Bush
social contract which has defined the interaction between science and the rest of society for the past 50 years may no longer be valid. This contract has been based on the propositions that scientific progress is essential to the national welfare; science provides a reservoir of knowledge that can be applied to national needs; and scientific progress results from the free intellectual pursuit by scientists of subjects of their choice. These assumptions, while perhaps still necessary, are no longer sufficient to sustain societal support in the post-cold war era. A national debate has been called for to define a new sustainable paradigm addressing in what ways science and technology contribute to the national welfare and how the troika of government and its laboratories, industry, and research universities can best work together to address our societal goals. The second factor is a result of the fed-
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