Fixing the government-university partnership

The National Science Board (NSB) has published a report with more than a dozen recommendations for improving relations between government funding agencies and the country's scientific graduate schools. While the partnership is fundamentally sound and has been highly successful for the nation, "signs of stress and distress are clearly evident and need attention," according to NSB Chairman and Stanford University chemistry professor Richard N. Zare. The report, "The Federal Role in Science and Engineering Graduate and Postdoctoral Education," is somewhat short on descriptions of specific problems between government agencies and graduate schools. One general problem is the perceived failure of federal agencies to understand that research and education are a single process in graduate education, or an "ecosystem," as the NSB report puts it. One very sore spot involves federal accountability procedures that can, and often do, result in added, but unreimbursed, administrative costs to the university. Such practices, says NSB, are "inconsistent with the ...