M.R.C. Greenwood, provost and SVP of academic affairs for the University of California System kicked off the Summit with some comments on US Elementary School Curriculum:

The biggest problem in moving ideas from the lab to the marketplace, said Greenwood, is a massive drought of brainpower looming in the United States’ near future. As the National Science Foundation’s recently released Science & Engineering (S&E) Indicators 2004 report revealed, the number of U.S. jobs requiring science and engineering skills is growing at nearly 5 percent annually, compared with a 1 percent growth rate for the rest of the U.S. labor market. Yet there are not nearly enough qualified U.S. scientists and engineers to meet the demand. In the past the nation has relied on skilled foreign-born workers, but many are choosing to work in other countries in response to increasingly strict U.S. visa requirements and burgeoning global demand for their skills.
With Asian countries now conferring more science and engineering bachelor’s degrees and Europe more such Ph.D.’s than the United States, “our biggest national security problem is the number of students interested in science and math,” said Greenwood.