MAA Science & Professional Issues

Summer 2002

Research & Development and Related Funding (Full Details)

The FY 2003 budget cycle kicked off on February 4, 2002, with President Bush's presentation to Congress of the administration's funding proposals. Below, with links to subsites of this site and to other sites, we present three perspectives.

OSTP: The 2003 budget requests record levels for federal R & D ($111.8 billion, an 8 percent increase.

AAAS: Bush Proposes Large Increases for DOD, NIH R & D; Mix of Cuts and Increases for Other R & D Programs with an overall increase of 8.3 percent over FY 2002.

CNSF: The Coalition for National Science Funding For the FY 2003 NSF budget, CNSF recommends an increase of $718 million (or 15 percent) for the FY 2003 above the FY 2002 level of $4.79 billion, bringing the agency's budget to $5.508 billion.

• A bill that would increase the NSF budget by 15% in FY2003 was approved by a House subcommittee and sent to the full House Science Committee.
• The FY 2003 budget is now under consideration in Congress. In February, President Bush released his proposed budget for fiscal year (FY) 2003. For details of R&D in the proposed budget, see AAAS Report XXVII: R&D FY 2003 (full text on-line), or the 14-page summary of the report. To stay up-to-date on R&D in the FY 2003 budget, see the FY 2003 R&D page.
• Congress is now considering a budget resolution, the congressional response to the President's budget. The budget resolution sets broad targets for federal spending and revenues in FY 2003. The deadline for the House and the Senate to reach agreement on one is April 15, but the deadline was not met; the Republican-controlled House has approved one, but the Democratic-controlled Senate's proposed version has not made it to the Senate floor; the two versions are different enough that it is increasingly likely that there will be no final FY 2003 budget resolution at all.
• The FY 2003 appropriations process has not yet begun. Because of the deadlock on the budget resolution, appropriations will not begin until late May at the earliest. Until then, the Appropriations Committees will continue holding budget hearings, in which agencies and other groups are invited to testify on their FY 2003 budget requests. The House and Senate will likely adopt a discretionary spending total of $768 billion for appropriations, nearly the same as the President's requested level; this would provide $9 billion more than the request for domestic programs because of some technical changes.

For additional information: http://www.aaas.org/spp/dspp/rd/fy03.htm

Higher Education, Employment & Workforce (Full Details)

NSF Beat is a column by Sharon Cutler Ross giving a May/June update on NSF funding and new programs.

The CBMS2000 report on undergraduate programs in the mathematical sciences is now available at http://www.ams.org/cbms/. The report presents longitudinal data on mathematical sciences enrollments, majors, curriculum, and faculty. In addition, the CBMS2000 report studies the spread of calculus reform, distance learning, dual enrollments, the mathematical education of pre-service K-8 teachers, and the educational background of faculty teaching undergraduate statistics. Mathematics departments in two- and four-year colleges and universities will receive copies of the report, and individuals may purchase hard copies from the American Mathematical Society, or may down-load the report from the web site above.

ENROLLMENTS: Upper division undergraduate enrollments and bachelors degrees awarded have declined. These phenomena continue the pattern of decline over more than a decade. Lower division mathematics enrollment have increased.

ACADEMIC EMPLOYMENT in mathematics has also declined along with decline in upper division enrollments and degrees, in terms of tenure and tenure-track positions. Employment of temporary, part-time, and full time non-tenure track employment in mathematics has increased.

DISPARITY in the scope and range of programs for majors in mathematics between bachelors-only and doctoral granting programs that has always existed, may be growing to the point where a two separate but unequal systems for undergraduate mathematics education may be developing.

[Source: Preliminary Report of CBMS2000 Survey, ]

Elementary and Secondary Education (Full Details)

The Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences has just completed a report titled the Mathematical Education of Teachers. This report is designed as a resource for mathematics faculty in colleges and universities involved in education of elementary and secondary teachers of mathematics.

A pending bill would replace the Department of Education's research arm with a separate academy for educational research, would create federal standards for federally sponsored educational research and would do away with the Eisenhower Regional Mathematics Consortia and Eisenhower Clearinghouses. Further details of the proposal are available from http://www.edweek.org/ew/newstory.cfm?slug=34oeri.h21

Policy Perspectives (Full Details)

"Having a science policy at all implies that we have a systematic way of ordering the opportunities so finite resources can be invested to best effect." -- John Marburger

John Marburger, Director, OSTP and Science Advisor to the President sets forth the policy position behind the priorities expressed in the budget document.

William Kirwan President of the Ohio State University, sets forth a perspective -- relating particularly to mathematics - on how the current social context impacts on the profession and sets forth an action agenda in response.

Copyright ©2002 The Mathematical Association of America

On behalf of the MAA Committee on Science Policy and The Committee on the Profession, the Content Editor of the MAA Science Policy page is Ken Millett of University of California, Santa Barbara while the Web Editor is Sarah J. Greenwald of Appalachian State University. Please send comments, suggestions, or corrections about this page to millett@math.ucsb.edu