The recruitment crunch

Despite an increase in the demand for skilled workers, there is a lack of qualified science, engineering and technology graduatesFor the past few years, Germany''s export-oriented economy has undergone impressive growth as the demand for its engineering products has increased globally. However, although this development has driven down national unemployment, it has also resulted in a labour shortage that has German companies urgently looking for skilled workers and engineers: vacancies for engineers rose by nearly 30% in 2006. Last year, the German Ministry of Economy and Technology warned that the lack of workers could result in revenue losses of more than ¤20 billion per year (Bovensiepen, 2007).…rapidly developing nations, notably China and India, have been investing heavily in research and education to advance towards a knowledge-based economyGermany is not the only country faced with this problem. Across the European Union (EU), the lack of highly trained employees, coupled with the ongoing ‘brain drain'' of researchers to the USA, could stifle growth in high-tech industries (EC, 2007). Indeed, the EU estimates that the information sector alone could face a lack of up to 300,000 qualified staff by 2010 (EurActiv, 2007). The USA has been faring better, mainly owing to its ability to attract skilled workers from other nations and its demographic situation, but it has become highly dependent on immigrant labour; foreign students now earn about 30% of science doctorates and more than 50% of engineering doctorates in the USA (NSF, 2006). Moreover, rapidly developing nations, notably China and India, have been investing heavily in research and education to advance towards a knowledge-based economy.The result is an increased global demand and competition for workers in the science, engineering and technology sector. The only long-term solution to this problem—and to ensure growth in high-tech industries—is to increase the number of graduates in these areas and, more generally, to recruit more high-school and college students to science and engineering. However, any sustainable effort must address all stages of education, and tackle the cultural and public perceptions of science.With regard to the latter, engineering and the life sciences—particularly medicine—are faring better than physics or chemistry. Our natural interest in our health ensures that medical research remains popular and well funded, although this is sometimes done to the detriment of fundamental biological research, notably plant science or environmental research.Yet, even the life sciences have been suffering from a recruitment shortfall at the undergraduate level, particularly in the middle and lower ranks of student quality. “Often when people are complaining [about the decline in the standard of science graduates], they are referring to the rump in the middle,” commented Celia Knight, a plant biologist and Director of the undergraduate school at Leeds University in the UK. She argued that, although there are still plenty of outstanding students, factors such as grade inflation and rising student numbers are diluting the quality. “As we expand student numbers, we expect to expand the lower end,” she said. “It is clear there wasn''t a huge population of highly able students out there not going to university in the past.”The Norwegian-led ROSE (the Relevance Of Science Education) study, which measured the attitudes of school children to science in more than 20 countries, confirms this trend and highlights an additional gender gap in science recruitment (Sjøberg & Schreiner, 2007) that also appears at the top quality levels. “The most gifted students are not necessarily taking science—particularly girls,” said Sharmila Banerjee, National Coordinator for the Nuffield Science Bursary scheme in the UK.The quality problem, if the perennial comments of senior scientists are to be believed, is increasingly apparent as biology becomes more analytical and quantitative: the lack of basic mathematical and statistical knowledge among students becomes more obvious. But, as Jonathan Osborne, Professor of Science Education at King''s College, London, UK, insisted, this does not represent the whole story. A lack of knowledge in some fundamental areas might, he argued, be compensated for by the student''s broader grasp of the field. “Today''s youngsters may not, say, be taught about cosines in the same way [that] we were,” he said, “but they have different skills instead that we did not have [...] What people focus on too much is what people cannot do rather than what they can do.”But Osborne was far from suggesting that all is right with science education. He recently co-authored the report Science Education in Europe: Critical Reflections (Osborne & Dillon, 2008), which was published for the Nuffield Foundation (London, UK) in January 2008. In the report, Osborne and co-author Justin Dillon, President of the European Science Education Research Association (ESERA), advocated sweeping changes to the high-school science curricula across Europe. The report reflects the concerns of the Nuffield Foundation that science teaching is losing the battle for hearts and minds by placing too much emphasis on learning by rote. “The main changes needed are to make teachers of science realise that the main achievement of science is the explanatory theories that it offers of the material world and that a miscellany of facts is not the same thing,” Osborne said. “There is a need to provide a science education where the connections to students'' lives are more evident and where there is space to discuss the issues raised by science.”​Open in a separate window© Image Source/CorbisKnight noted that the current science curriculum is also losing touch with the requirements of universities. As she pointed out, universities used to set the A-level exams—the final qualifications of the UK secondary school system taken at age 18—but now have minimal influence over them. This has led, she feels, towards too much medicine and human biology in the syllabus, often at the expense of other fields such as plant biology. Yet, despite its partial omission from the science curriculum, plant biology itself is becoming increasingly relevant to society, particularly in the light of recent global food shortages and the drive towards solar energy conversion by using genetically engineered plants or artificial photosynthesis.Osborne agreed that universities should not regain their old monopoly on setting exams, but emphasized that the current syllabus serves nobody, least of all those who plan to pursue a career in science. This, he pointed out, is why many universities in the UK and elsewhere are now considering setting their own entrance exams. “The reason is that the people who set the A-level exams are failing to write exams which discriminate and test understanding, rather than the ability to regurgitate information or follow algorithmic procedures,” he said. “In its worst incarnation, somebody once described this as ‘bulimic science education''—that is, you are fed a lot of indigestible facts which have no nutritional value and you instantly regurgitate.”To address this trend, Newcastle University in the UK is pursuing an approach that introduces university-style education into the school curriculum and allows some students to bypass the A-level school exams altogether. A school local to the university, Monkseaton High School, initiated the scheme to provide an alternative route to university in the belief that some good students are deterred by traditional exams, which emphasize analytical skills and fact retention. Instead, students at Monkseaton can now take a science module at the Open University (OU; Milton Keynes, UK)—a distance-learning institution that allows degrees to be taken part time and mostly remotely. Newcastle University has agreed to accept undergraduate students from Monkseaton who have taken the OU module.“We do not see this route as an easy route, nor is it a statement that A-levels are not appropriate as preparation for university,” explained Heather Finlayson, Head of the School of Biology at Newcastle University. “The pilot was developed to try to encourage greater participation in science beyond GCSE level [the exams taken at age 16 at the end of compulsory secondary education in the UK]. We believe that the students entering by the OU route will have a broader but less deep knowledge in some subject areas, but their independent study skills, developed while studying the OU modules, will enable them to study effectively and rapidly to make up any lack of specific subject knowledge.”Some educators, however, are sceptical of how much difference systemic changes can make to the overall appeal of science. “We have had so many curriculum innovations, implemented in a top-down manner, that did not bring what was expected,” said Jan Van Driel, a professor at the Leiden University Graduate School of Teaching in the Netherlands. “I would argue that, in general, science should be taught in a way that makes sense—that is comprehensible and relevant—to the specific target group, and this is primarily the responsibility of science teachers. What we need is highly qualified and motivated science teachers, rather than another curriculum reform movement.”…tests are poor predictors of which students will be academic failures, because a significant number of students will become solid achievers despite poor scores on entrance exams…Van Driel was also sceptical of any trend that distances teachers from students, as could happen with a more university-like approach. “In our country, unfortunately, a belief seems to exist that students should work on their own, or in small groups, using computers, or doing practical work. In this context, the role of the teacher has been undervalued,” he said. But, having school students involved in practical work, which could still be administered by universities, would be likely to stimulate their interest, he added. “For talented students in secondary education, in our country, we have had very positive experiences with extra-curricular activities, where students participate in university courses and are given opportunities to engage in research activities.”Van Driel argued that science education should not wait until secondary school when children might have veered towards other subjects or developed negative views of science. “In our country, science teaching at the primary level has been undeservedly ignored. This is mainly due, as in many countries, to teachers not being qualified and motivated to teach science,” he commented. “Recently, we have begun to invest in this issue, on the one hand in projects aimed at stimulating young children to engage in inquiry activities and science projects, and the other hand in projects aiming at professional development of primary teachers. I think that, potentially, this is a very important development when it comes to making science more popular and better understood in our society.”The US Government has also taken up the idea that science teaching needs to be improved. In July 2008, Congress approved the US$40 million Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Programme to prepare science and maths teachers for selected schools. “We are also implementing the new Section 10A of the America COMPETES Act, which provides a good stipend to support a mid-career STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths] professional while they get a Master''s in teaching and then provides a salary supplement,” said Myles Boylan, Lead Program Director for Course, Curriculum and Laboratory Improvement at the US National Science Foundation (NSF; Arlington, VA, USA). “It is expected that as these teachers move into high need schools, the quality of instruction in maths and science will improve and that more high school graduates will go to college and major in STEM.”The USA is also considering offering students alternatives to traditional university exams—similar to the Newcastle University model—as Boylan explained: “I think the traditional exams are pretty good predictors of which students will be high performing and likely to graduate. But I also believe that these tests are poor predictors of which students will be academic failures, because a significant number of students will become solid achievers despite poor scores on entrance exams,” he said, but insisted that this was not tantamount to ‘dumbing down'' the system. “Many students are still quite immature at age 17 when they take these tests and thus can make spectacular gains in learning as they finally ‘grow up'' […] I believe the right approach is to give students multiple chances to succeed.”This chimes with the findings of a 2007 report by the Urban Institute, a US non-profit group in Washington, DC, which collects data and provides advice on science policy and education questions. The report suggests that the USA should no longer compete on the basis of scores in science and maths tests, but instead on creativity within the context of a more broadly based education (Lowell & Salzman, 2007).The main challenge therefore goes beyond improving science education; there is also a serious need to counter the misleading perception that science is in opposition to conservation or sustainable developmentYet, Banerjee suggested that educational reforms alone might not be sufficient to improve recruitment to science. She referred to the ROSE study, which found that a student''s response to the statement “I like school science better than other subjects” was more likely to be negative the more developed their country (Sjøberg & Schreiner, 2007). Banerjee commented that this might just reflect the increased range of choices that students have in these countries, but it could also result from a negative perception of science, as portrayed in the media or by the environmental lobby. The main challenge therefore goes beyond improving science education; there is also a serious need to counter the misleading perception that science is in opposition to conservation or sustainable development.But, there is cause for some optimism in the UK, at least, where the Higher Education Funding Council for England announced in October 2008 that its £350 million six-year programme to increase the number of science students was now working. In the academic year 2007/2008, the number of entries to chemistry courses, a subject that had been in decline, was up by 5.3%; a clear sign that trends can be, and are being, reversed in some countries. Despite this success, however, much more still needs to be done to counter negative cultural perceptions and to attract more women.Moreover, much more needs to be done to ensure that there are sufficient lucrative and attractive jobs for science graduates. The Urban Institute''s 2007 report therefore suggests that leading countries like the USA need to rethink their approach to science education, as they produce large numbers of students with bachelor''s and master''s degrees but fail to keep them interested in these areas. As the study said: “One to two years after graduation, 20 percent of S&E [science and engineering] bachelors are in school but not in S&E studies, while another 45 percent are working but in non-S&E employment (total attrition of 65 percent). One to two years after graduation, 7 percent of S&E master''s graduates are enrolled in school but not in S&E studies, while another 31 percent are working but in non-S&E employment” (Lowell & Salzman, 2007).Indeed, the chance of finding an interesting and well-paid job after graduation seems to be a main factor in solving the problem of recruitment, notwithstanding attitudes or perceptions. The economic boom and the ensuing competition for qualified engineers among German companies in the past few years—although times are now less certain—markedly improved the attractiveness of engineering fields to undergraduates. This year, German universities reported that the number of students enrolling in engineering fields rose by up to 16% for the fall semester (Anon, 2008).     

Facing the credit crunch. Politics sends mixed messages for science in the wake of the global financial crisis

The global response to the credit crunch has varied from belt tightening to spending sprees. Philip Hunter investigates how various countries react to the financial crisis in terms of supporting scientific research.The overall state of biomedical research in the wake of the global financial crisis remains unclear amid growing concern that competition for science funding is compromising the pursuit of research. Such concerns pre-date the credit crunch, but there is a feeling that an increasing amount of time and energy is being wasted in the ongoing scramble for grants, in the face of mounting pressure from funding agencies demanding value for money. Another problem is balancing funding between different fields; while the biomedical sciences have generally fared well, they are increasingly dependent on basic research in physics and chemistry that are in greater jeopardy. This has led to calls for rebalancing funding, in order to ensure the long-term viability of all fields in an increasingly multidisciplinary and collaborative research world.For countries that are cutting funding—such as Spain, Italy and the UK—the immediate priority is to preserve the fundamental research base and avoid a significant drain of expertise, either to rival countries or away from science altogether. This has highlighted the plight of postdoctoral researchers who have traditionally been the first to suffer from funding cuts, partly because they have little immediate impact on on a country''s scientific competitiveness. Postdocs have been the first to go whenever budgets have been cut, according to Richard Frankel, a physicist at California Polytechnic State University in Saint Luis Obispo, who investigates magnetotaxis in bacteria. “In the short term there will be little effect but the long-term effects can be devastating,” he said.…there is a feeling that an increasing amount of time and energy is being wasted in the ongoing scramble for grants, in the face of mounting pressure from funding agencies…According to Peter Stadler, head of a bioinformatics group at the University of Leipzig in Germany, such cuts tend to cause the long-term erosion of a country''s science skills base. “Short-term cuts in science funding translate totally into a brain drain, since they predominantly affect young researchers who are paid from the soft money that is drying up first,” said Stadler. “They either leave science, an irreversible step, or move abroad but do not come back later, because the medium-term effect of cuts is a reduction in career opportunities and fiercer competition giving those already in the system a big advantage.”Even when young researchers are not directly affected, the prevailing culture of short-term funding—which requires ongoing grant applications—can be disruptive, according to Xavier Salvatella, principal investigator in the Laboratory of Molecular Biophysics at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine in Barcelona, Spain. “I do not think the situation is dramatic but too much time is indeed spent writing proposals,” he commented. “Because success rates are decreasing, the time devoted to raise funds to run the lab necessarily needs to increase.”At the University of Adelaide in Australia, Andrew Somogyi, professor of pharmacology, thinks that the situation is serious: “[M]y postdocs would spend about half their time applying for grants.” Somogyi pointed out that the success rate has been declining in Australia, as it has in some other countries. “For ARC [Australian Research Council] the success rate is now close to 20%, which means many excellent projects don''t get funding because the assessment is now so fine cut,” he said.Similar developments have taken place in the USA at both the National Institutes of Health (NIH)—which provides US$16 billion funding per year and the American Cancer Society (ACS), the country''s largest private non-profit funder of cancer research, with a much smaller pot of US$120 million per year. The NIH funded 21% of research proposals submitted to it in 2009, compared with 32% a decade earlier, while the ACS approves only 15% of grant applications, down several percentage points over the past few years.While the NIH is prevented by federal law from allowing observers in to its grant review meetings, the ACS did allow a reporter from Nature to attend one of its sessions on the condition that the names of referees and the applications themselves were not revealed (Powell, 2010). The general finding was that while the review process works well when around 30% of proposals are successful, it tends to break down as the success rate drops, as more arbitrary decisions are made and the risk of strong pitches being rejected increases. This can also discourage the best people from being reviewers because the process becomes more tiring and time-consuming.Even when young researchers are not directly affected, the prevailing culture of short-term funding—which requires ongoing grant applications—can be disruptive…In some countries, funding shortfalls are also leading to the loss of permanent jobs, for example in the UK where finance minister George Osborne announced on October 20 that the science budget would be frozen at £4.6 billion, rather than cut as had been expected. Even so, combined with the cut in funding for universities that was announced on the same day, this raises the prospect of reductions in academic staff numbers, which could affect research projects. This follows several years of increasing funding for UK science. Such uncertainty is damaging, according to Cornelius Gross, deputy head of the mouse biology unit, European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Monterotondo, Italy. “Large fluctuations in funding have been shown to cause damage beyond their direct magnitude as can be seen in the US where the Clinton boom was inevitably followed by a slowdown that led to rapid and extreme tightening of budgets,” he said.Some countries are aware of these dangers and have acted to protect budgets and, in some cases, even increase spending. A report by the OECD argued that countries and companies that boosted research and development spending during the ‘creative destruction'' of an economic downturn tended to gain ground on their competitors and emerge from the crisis in a relatively stronger position (OECD, 2009). This was part of the rationale of the US stimulus package, which was intended to provide an immediate lift to the economy and has been followed by a slight increase in funding. The NIH''s budget is set to increase by $1 billion, or 3% from 2010 to 2011, reaching just over $32 billion. This looks like a real-term increase, since inflation in the USA is now between 1 and 2%. However, there are fears that budgets will soon be cut; even now the small increase at the Federal level is being offset by cuts in state support, according to Mike Seibert, research fellow at the US Department of Energy''s National Renewable Energy Laboratory. “The stimulus funds are disappearing in the US, and the overall budget for science may be facing a correction at the national level as economic, budget, and national debt issues are addressed,” he said. “The states in most cases are suffering their own budget crises and will be cutting back on anything that is not nailed down.”…countries and companies that boosted research and development spending during the ‘creative destruction'' of an economic downturn tended to gain ground on their competitors…In Germany, the overall funding situation is also confused by a split between the Federal and 16 state governments, each of which has its own budget for science. In contrast to many other countries though, both federal and state governments have responded boldly to the credit crisis by increasing the total budget for the DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft)—Germany''s largest research funding agency—to €2.3 billion in 2011. Moreover, total funding for research and education from the BMBF (Federal Ministry for Education and Research) is expected to increase by another 7% from €10.9 billion in 2010 to €11.64 billion, although the overall federal budget is set to shrink by 3.8% under Germany''s austerity measures (Anon, 2010). There have also been increases in funding from non-government sources, such as the Fraunhofer Society, Europe''s largest application-oriented research organization, which has an annual budget of €1.6 billion.The German line has been strongly applauded by the European Union, which since 2007 has channelled its funding for cutting-edge research through the European Research Council (ERC). The ERC''s current budget of €7.5 billion, which runs until 2013, was set in 2007 and negotiations for the next period have not yet begun, but the ERC''s executive agency director Jack Metthey has indicated that it will be increased: “The Commission will firmly sustain in the negotiations the view that research and innovation, central to the Europe 2020 Strategy agreed by the Member States, should be a top budgetary priority.” Metthey also implied that governments cutting funding, as the UK had been planning to do, were making a false economy that would gain only in the short term. “Situations vary at the national level but the European Commission believes that governments should maintain and even increase research and innovation investments during difficult times, because these are pro-growth, anti-crisis investments,” he said.Many other countries have to cope with flat or declining science budgets; some are therefore exploring ways in which to do more with less. In Japan, for instance, money has been concentrated on larger projects and fewer scientists, with the effect of intensifying the grant application process. Since 2002, the total Japanese government budget for science and technology has remained flat at around ¥3,500 billion—or €27 billion at current exchange rates—with a 1% annual decline in university support but increased funding for projects considered to be of high value to the economy. This culminated in March 2010 with the launch of the ¥100 billion (€880 million) programme for World Leading Innovative Research and Development on Science and Technology.But such attempts to make funding more competitive or focus it on specific areas could have unintended side effects on innovation and risk taking. One side effect can be favouring scientists who may be less creative but good at attracting grants, according to Roger Butlin, evolutionary biologist at the University of Sheffield in the UK. “Some productive staff are being targeted because they do not bring in grants, so money is taking precedence over output,” said Butlin. “This is very dangerous if it results in loss of good theoreticians or data specialists, especially as the latter will be a critical group in the coming years.”“Scientists are usually very energetic when they can pursue their own ideas and less so when the research target is too narrowly prescribed”There have been attempts to provide funding for young scientists based entirely on merit, such as the ERC ‘Starting Grant'' for top young researchers, whose budget was increased by 25% to €661 million for 2011. Although they are welcome, such schemes could also backfire unless they are supported by measures to continue supporting the scientists after these early career grants expire, according to Gross. “There are moves to introduce significant funding for young investigators to encourage independence, so called anti-brain-drain grants,” he said. “These are dangerous if provided without later independent positions for these people and a national merit-based funding agency to support their future work.”Such schemes might work better if they are incorporated into longer-term funding programmes that provide some security as well as freedom to expand a project and explore promising side avenues. Butlin cited the Canadian ‘Discovery Grant'' scheme as an example worth adopting elsewhere; it supports ongoing programmes with long-term goals, giving researchers freedom to pursue new lines of investigation, provided that they fit within the overall objective of the project.To some extent the system of ‘open calls''—supported by some European funding agencies—has the same objective, although it might not provide long-term funding. The idea is to allow scientists to manoeuvre within a broad objective, rather than confining them to specific lines of research or ‘thematic calls'', which tend to be highly focused. “The majority of funding should be distributed through open calls, rather than thematic calls,” said Thomas Höfer from the Modeling Research Group at the German Cancer Research Center & BioQuant Center in Heidelberg. “Scientists are usually very energetic when they can pursue their own ideas and less so when the research target is too narrowly prescribed. In my experience as a reviewer at both the national and EU level, open calls are also better at funding high-quality research whereas too narrow thematic calls often result in less coherent proposals.”“Cutting science, and education, is the national equivalent of a farmer eating his ‘seed corn'', and will lead to developing nation status within a generation”Common threads seems to be emerging from the different themes and opinions about funding: budgets should be consistent over time and spread fairly among all disciplines, rather than focused on targeted objectives. They should also be spread across the working lifetime of a scientist rather than being shot in a scatter-gun approach at young researchers. Finally, policies should put a greater emphasis on long-term support for the best scientists and projects, chosen for their merit. Above all, funding policy should reflect the fundamental importance of science to economies, as Seibert concluded: “Cutting science, and education, is the national equivalent of a farmer eating his ‘seed corn'', and will lead to developing nation status within a generation.”     

Electromyographic comparison of a stability ball crunch with a traditional crunch

The purpose of this study was to compare abdominal muscle activity while performing a crunch on a stability ball with a traditional crunch. Forty-one healthy adults (23 men and 18 women) participated in the study. The subjects performed the crunch with the ball in 2 positions, 1 with the ball at the level of the inferior angles of the scapula (SB-high) and 1 with the ball at the level of the lower lumbar region of the back (SB-low). Surface electromyography was recorded from the upper and lower portions of the rectus abdominis and the external oblique during each repetition. Electromyography values were analyzed using repeated measures analyses of variance and pair-wise comparisons. Muscle activity for the upper and lower portions of the rectus abdominis and external oblique for a traditional crunch was significantly lower than for the crunch performed in the SB-low position but significantly greater than the SB-high position. Our data also showed that, on average, the abdominal muscle activity doubled when the stability ball was moved from the upper to the lower back position. These results support previous findings that a stability ball is not only effective for training the abdominal musculature, but, with the correct placement, it can also significantly increase muscle activity when compared with a traditional crunch. In addition, our results suggest that ball placement is critical for matching the appropriate overload to the condition level of the user.     

Electromyographic comparison of the ab-slide and crunch exercises

The purpose of this study was to compare the Ab-Slide with crunch abdominal exercises for electromyographic activity for selected muscles. Forty-five subjects who regularly performed abdominal exercises participated. Subjects completed 5 trials for each exercise, with repetition rate controlled by the tester. Electromyographic activity for the external oblique (EO), upper rectus abdominis (URA), and lower rectus abdominis (LRA) was collected. Raw data for each muscle were rectified and integrated over 100-millisecond time intervals. For each muscle, the average concentric and eccentric integrated amplitudes of the middle 3 trials were compared with a dependent t-test. During concentric movement, the EO and LRA had significantly higher integrated activation amplitudes for the crunch exercise. During the eccentric movement, the URA, LRA, and EO had significantly higher average integrated activation amplitudes for the Ab-Slide exercise. The Ab-Slide is a credible abdominal exercise variation, but the crunch should remain the standard abdominal exercise.