A Vision: Global Competition in Education
At Annual PRI-meeting
December, 1997
Kalle Levon
Director of Herman F. Mark Polymer Research Institute
Chairman of the Department of Chemical Engineering
Chemistry and Materials Science
Polytechnic Institute of NYU
 

The world leaders met in Kyoto on the issues of global warming and debates concerning environmental chemistry. The focus was in the international regulation of emissions based on existing technology, alternative energy issues for better future as fuel cells, enzymatic hydrogen production, hydrogen storage, biomass, nuclear waste were not among the topics of interest.
People do not seem to believe in innovation in chemistry? People do not seem to have curiosity?

We, the people involved in chemical sciences, do not have a good image in today’s world: we have created the environmental damages, we are the evil with chemical warfare, and if nothing else, at least we are the nerds in all the movies. Chemists develop all the wonderful medicines, although often the medical doctors, who hardly can distinguish a ketone group from a carboxylic acid group, get the credit.

The origin of this distancing from chemistry lies in the basic education. People so often refer to chemistry as the most disliked subject. They hated the various names, groups, substituents, nomenclature. We have been teaching the same way for all these years, we have been teaching chemistry as all the students are chemistry majors, we have been teaching chemistry incorrectly forcing students to learn by remembering all the formulas by heart.
We are not creating curiosity, the basic nucleus for learning and the main measure of learning.

At the recent annual meeting of Council of Chemical Research in St. Louis, (CCR, an association for national department heads and industrial research leaders) it was often emphasized that we are facing a revolution in education and especially a revolution in the education of chemistry. Interestingly, according to recent international questionnaire conducted by Professor Julio Ottino with CCR, academic faculty saw hardly any reason for change, technical industrial people and academic leaders saw a moderate motivation and the CEO level requested for a major need for the change in education. Academic professors are further away from the present industrial needs and the from broad overall vision of the CEO’s.
During the last twenty years, the compounded average price of a car has increased about 5%, at the same the tuition in a private university close to 10%. The automobile customers have received added vehicle content including safety, emissions and higher level of standard equipment, what improvements were done in education?
 
Industry and Education

Industry’s interest in education naturally lies in the need for the maximization of human brainpower. But how does one evaluate the productivity of human brainpower: with a short-term financial analysis, or with a long-term creation of curiosity and knowledge.

Downsizing has been a widely-used tool to achieve more economical, automated production lines. The management companies who conduct these downsizing efforts and maximize the investment return are more desirable than administrators who have technological and broad knowledge. As they have to show the effectiveness immediately, their vision is based on short-term actions.

Curiosity, broadening the knowledge is not part in today’s industry.

Decentralization is another tool from these management companies, who want to take away the power from those who have the curiosity and the broad overall view due to their background and experience. Decentralization down to the business level assures that an investment in long-term research does not have the immediate return to the important investors, and kills the human enthusiasm for novelty.

Market-Driven Research for Quality Enhancement is a money-making process in today’s industry. As a consequence of the above, the market dominates the field and research and development is clearly market driven. Twenty years ago scientists created products and marketing departments were established to find a market for these exciting findings. Today, the marketing specialists have technical background and they forward information to the scientists about possibilities in market expansion with improved properties. Men’s underwear has never been so elastic as it is today and lipstick allows kissing all day due the stabilizing polymeric additives. The ideas originate from market changes, involve technology transfer concepts and leave no room for creation. The use of human characteristics: curiosity.
Market expansion is a similar global industrial trend: the goal is an immediate investment return and not visual for future research, which, done by others, may dominate the expanded market by the new products. Technology transfer is a major tool in this part along with the internationalization. We all have become like the Japanese in the 50’s: just copy others and sell.

And further globalization clearly is the future: the increased international market is based on the modern management of innovation: the processes in technological areas are complex, product cycles shorter and the sources more dispersed, thus alliances between the companies are needed. Technologies diffuse between boarders, international investment becomes necessary and external sources for expertise’s are searched. Production systems and technology developments become global especially for the commodity products.

Mission Driven Research in Government Offices shows that their trend is similar to that earlier explained for industry. Whether the research is related to defense, energy, health or space, the description is mission driven: commercially oriented, innovative research is partnership based with complex alliances. Final product is the only clear goal. The time from Vannevar Bush’s great achievements have passed, today the 18 billion R&D budget includes 9000 companies and has increased from 40 to 60% in the last twenty years.

One might conclude from of the above that there is not anything fundamental anymore to investigate: But the earlier example, Global Warming, is a good one to analyze. Earth’s climate is too vast and complex for an accurate analysis, but an obvious fact still is that the chemistry of atmosphere is changing. It all keeps having an increasing influence on our agriculture and possible other areas. One source for this is the use of fossil fuel and the past meeting only focused in the regulation of the past, the meeting did not touch alternative methods without byproducts: fuel cells, biomass/ethanol, hydrogen storage, enzymatic production of hydrogen and nuclear waste. But the present trend is not to respect fundamental science, not to invest in long-term future processes, while others, like Japan and European Community, are increasingly establishing interdisciplinary research programs for fundamental research.

Research-based universities, the American fame, have faced maximum competition: state universities are increasing their quality, high tuition in private universities will not be justified, especially as the salary differences are increasing and the middle/lower class will face lower and lower income levels. Thus we should focus on national education: continue our immigration-based success, but now based intramigration, utilization the human power from our own resources.

And the competition gets global. Industry has contacted professors, who may be our former students overseas and conducts research with them. They need the maximum return on their specialists need. This research is also cheaper, possible with modern electronic communication, and easier to control than the demanding American Professors.

Government follows: grants are given based on the specific expertise, and not on the geographic location. The budget has been based on the US demands without knowing that in Japan, tuition and scholarship are paid by the parents, and thus the Japanese professors can travel in first class to US-meetings on the expense of US government. Globalization is the word.

Lester Thurow predicts (The Future of Capitalism, Penguin Books) that American Industry will employ foreign workers, as students from former communist countries. These students are cheaper, have broad education and wide career expectations. And American students have started to go to Europe and other foreign countries as the tuition is lower and stipends are available (New York Times, November 1997).
How strong are we? From 1975 to 1995, in twenty years the number of academic patenting offices has increased from 25 to 200. The number of patents similarly from 177 to 1500, and the capital to 300$mill (although 70% in CA in 5 patents). In addition USA is still the leader in innovation covering 50% of the international patents.

Chemicals are the keystone in US manufacturing, and an essential building block for food, shelter, clothing, health, transportation. US production has grown in 20 years from 330 to 749 billion dollars (16% foreign) and to >$100 billion abroad. Foreign market is the revenue of future, commodity products are first global, as specialty chemicals still dominate in USA.
Federal Funding in Chemical Sciences is still $300 millions, which is internationally the largest amount, and as high quality does not respect volume we should not complain. A 5% decrease in individual funding would neither affect the high quality research.

The problems with the dominant American industry, the large Government Laboratories and the special SBIR programs should be able to support us if only we maintain the high quality. Obviously number of publications is not anymore the only measure of quality.

We have to keep doing our main responsibility: to serve the society: We have to train workforce with knowledge based skills in a way which satisfies our industry.
 
Change in Education

Education can not anymore be one-directional teaching without the outcome assessment but has to be based on learning with quantitative measures of individual learning. One teacher has taught a group of students in past, in future a group of teachers will teach one student because of the revolution in educational tools.
Educational market has grown exponentially if one follows the growth of population. 1952 there were 2.7 billion people, this year we hit the six billion mark. Similar steep increase has occurred in the speed of information exchange.
Electronic Education will influence the present methods and will also create more competition in education. Reports, term papers are being downloaded from the net, originality can not be confirmed, evaluation will be more and more based on oral communication skills.

But the revolution will occur with educational material. Highly visual digital medium will increase the Quality of the educational material, it can be accessed globally, the students will request it, the professors have to follow, improve their own material which will not anymore be professor’s property, but also in the control of educational leadership.

This educational form will just be a new type of a book. Tim Berner-Lee, the inventor of the web (when at CERN Physics Lab, Geneva), wanted along his idealism to make the web as a public resource. Course libraries will be available in educational alliances.

Professors will start to work together to optimize educational material, similarly as the coaches optimize their evaluation in sports, and with the share of the educational material share, eventually the lecture preparation time will decrease and the time for personal education will increase.
Electronic book is strongly visual and effectively highlighted, and this easy access will finally increase the possibilities to read before hand and prepare student for the actual learning process.

Hyperlinked education will connect easily to any material needed for optimal learning. Thus, for instance mathematics can be taught logically with chemistry as the problem appears in the chemistry education.
Teaching will proceed more effectively than writing on blackboard and the feed back for the learning process can be evaluated properly.
Online discussion groups and chat rooms will improve global team concept will offer opportunities for effective tutoring. Even the shy ones finally get personal education (internet finally offers even the Finns an opportunity to discuss with each other).
Before one teacher for a group of students, now a group of teachers for one student, and this education will form a stable basis for life-long learning. Professor Ifay Chang has created a I-CARE-program for conferencing and virtual class rooms and will be the basis for Poly-education in the future.

Education of instrumentation, characterization methods can be learned while being at home, as the simulation experiments will provide the access to the instrument. Digitized information in the computer controlled instrumentation is already available.
Virtual chemistry laboratories are simulated laboratory experiments which will be used during the lectures in stead of examples. Student will do pH titration in this simulated manner and will be exposed to a vast variety of parameter control in an effective period. This conceptual learning is unique for those who do not have access to experimental laboratories such as urban high school students and handicapped students.

Remote-Access Teleoperated Experiments will not be virtual but actual Robot-Assisted Experiments which can be internet-operated. The familiarity in the experimental setup and data-analysis will also maximize the quality aspect in real experiment, which now can be designed to focus on high quality result.
 
Goals at Poly: "GAPRI"

The Herman F. Mark Polymer Research has initiated the formation of a Global Alliance with various Universities all over the World. With this initiative we shall maximize the quality of the educational material, widen the course selection and provide Global Human Resources.
Industry has already started to compete with us in education, (IBM advertisement: real students-virtual classrooms), but we have to strengthen our position as we have the advantage, all of the above is just a tool: We are the true educators, and the highest quality only comes through personal communication and a hybrid format with electronic educational material.

And computational methods are introducing new concepts in chemistry: databases, data mining, search engines, bioinformatics. Computational chemistry will give the prediction for the new complex products which are difficult for a human mind to master, intelligent combinatorial chemistry with high-speed screening based on function and robotic manipulation are already here. Do we have to smell anymore in the future, today’s artificial noses are already now more selective than our nose.
Thus an effective organic chemistry web-book with hyperlinks (databases, information libraries, intelligent search engines, computerized reaction route selections) will be like a calculator.
And in the laboratory, computers will be voice activated, lab notebook will thus be “verbal”, no keyboards have to used in a wet lab due to the availability of sensing devices.

It is like the Athens flea market, a described by Michael Dertouzos, the Director of MIT Laboratory for Computer Science in his book “What Will Be”
I already earlier connected the education to research: in this network we shall have virtual poster sessions, student conferences, we can share at least digital information form experiments through internet and we can even control devices through internet and form global shared experiments.
We have had period of innovation driven research, we have had period of fundamental research, we are presently having the period of market driven research and we are now entering the new period: imagination driven research. We can increase the brain power through network communication, we shall come closer and closer to imagination driven research, in which we use computer databases, search engines, and artificial intelligence to maximize or materialize our dreams and thus build up complexity and dynamics.

Our research is based on the heritage which Professor Herman F. Mark created here at NYU-Poly and which Professors Eli Pearce and Herbert Morawetz have successfully continued. Polymer science started with the concept of Plastics, which Dustin Hoffman well knows. Today, plastic are everywhere: cosmetics, pulp&paper, pharmaceutics, food and sports industries. Polymer science as a pure science has established its position, mainly through the systematic control of diffusive properties which bring us closer to the non-equilibrium complex processes of nature.
We here at NYU-Poly are building our program first of all closer to industry by establishing our research opportunities for industry to do long-term research and avoid permanent hires. We shall work with industry in order to get closer and bring industry closer to our education.

We shall also bring a bridge between high technology and our social urban problems. Professor Abraham Ulman is leading our efforts by forming a core technology in polymer technology for infrastructure, in collaboration with our civil engineering department. Anticorrosion, Concrete adhesion, Recycled Plastics as examples, he connects these problems to his National Center on Engineered Surfaces.
And from the urban problems we also provide the connection to future and fundamental science, Professors Balsara and Myerson heading our program on Nucleation, very fundamental unsolved problem but related to concentration fluctuations and to far-away-from equilibrium almost chaotic processes.
Now coming closer to nature, we have started to bring polymers into biology. As most of the polymer scientists in this field are concentrating on inert, implant materials, we are looking for interactions with and within cell wall and other biological components. Gene therapy today is one of the key areas (beyond the present achievements in drug design and delivery), genes penetrate cell walls only with the assistance of cationic synthetic polymers. And we can bring our polymers which recognize biological molecules to provide novel functions such as coating cancer with plastics.

Although education is facing new problems, or at least unpredictable, success always follows if one proceeds in the far front with novelty, courage and quality. As Mark Messier said as the Rangers captain in 1994 when winning the Stanley-cup: we had to work beyond the zone, beyond the zone of any conscious understanding. That’s our goal, too: to be there in the front with quality.