On college campuses, a surge of interest in science

WASHINGTON - In what could be an encouraging sign of change in America's longstanding shortage of graduates prepared for high-tech careers, the hottest subject on college campuses across the nation right now seems to be renewable energy - a surge of interest driven largely by the specter of global warming.

Concern about climate change is apparently galvanizing more students to turn toward a subject involving science and engineering, educators suggest, in much the way that Moscow's launching of the Sputnik space satellite jolted baby boomers to turn their eyes to the stars.

College and university leaders say that in the last year, they have seen a surge of enthusiasm among undergraduates for studying energy sources that don't contribute to global pollution. What remains uncertain is whether enthusiasm for the science and technology of renewable energy sources will carry over into graduate school, swelling the ranks of Americans with advanced degrees in such subjects.

"We have a shortfall of people to do cutting-edge research and do the innovations we need," said Vijay Dhir, dean of the engineering school at UCLA. But, he added, "the potential is there."

The rising interest in renewable energy is so new that it's not clearly reflected in the latest enrollment figures, educators say. But leaders from a range of schools across the country - including Arizona State University, Indiana University, the University of Colorado, and UCLA - all say energy and sustainability are the hottest topic for their students.

President Obama is mounting a multibillion-dollar push to boost so-called clean energy in hopes of creating millions of U.S. jobs. The effort includes stepped-up support for graduate research in the area. At the White House last month, Obama told a group of academics and energy entrepreneurs that "innovators like you are creating the jobs that will foster our recovery, and creating the technologies that will power our long-term prosperity."

The United States has struggled in the last two decades, however, to produce enough home-grown scientists and engineers to meet the booming demand. And the foreign students who flock to American science and engineering schools by the thousands are increasingly going back to their homelands instead of pursuing careers in this country.

Enrollment in U.S. graduate engineering programs dropped more than 5 percent from 2003 to 2005, the last year for which statistics are available. At the same time, rapidly developing countries such as China and South Korea have ramped up the scale and quality of their graduate engineering programs.

Graduate science enrollment overall in the United States nearly doubled in the last two decades. But the programs are now more than half-filled with foreign students. The retention rate for international students - the portion who remained in the country two years after earning doctoral degrees - fell between 2003 and 2005, according to an analysis of federal data.

Aggravating the dearth of newly minted engineers, the rate at which American workers with science and engineering skills retire from the workforce is expected to triple in the next decade. If that trend continues, the National Science Board warned, "the rapid growth in R&D employment and spending that the United States has experienced since World War II may not be sustainable."

Business leaders are just as blunt. "The most critical challenge over the long term is people and brainpower," said Karen Harbert, who runs the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Institute for 21st Century Energy. Without a solution, she added, "we'll be less concerned about importing oil than talent."

Obama hopes massive spending will help. His signature stimulus package includes $20 billion to support the basic and applied science research - much by graduate students - that could yield cheaper solar cells, more efficient wind turbines, and longer-lasting batteries.

The increased interest among students may also reflect developments in the last few years that have raised the profile of global warming as an issue. And the nation's economic problems may also be contributing. Experts say undergraduates who once dreamed of outsized salaries in finance may now be more willing to spend five years living on modest graduate stipends, especially if they see prospects for growth.