Science and Engineering Scholarships and Fellowships Blog

A great research paper is available from the Brookings Institution - Investing in the Best and Brightest: Increased Fellowship Support for American Scientists and Engineers by Richard B. Freeman. He provides interesting data and makes some policy recommendations:

Stipulate that the United States wants to increase the flow of citizens choosing scientific and engineering careers. An appropriate policy to do this is to increase the number and value of fellowships for graduate work. I propose that the NSF triple the number of graduate research fellowships (GRFs) for science and engineering work and increase the value of those awards relative to earnings elsewhere in the economy.

The paper is well worth reading in my opinion for those interested in this topic (which is pretty much anyone reading this blog I would think). This chart was included, it shows the number of female awardees by gross field over time (over 50% of awards are to women now):

Related: On the Road to an Entrepreneurial Economy - Curious Cat blog reaction - Rising Above the Gathering Storm (National Academies report) - National Council of Teachers of Mathematics talk