Business-Higher Education Forum Urges Swift Passage of COMPETES Reauthorization

Calls on House leaders to pass legislation that includes strengthened provisions to improve STEM education

Washington, DC (May 3, 2010) — The Business-Higher Education Forum (BHEF) today urged Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi and Republican Leader John Boehner to act in a bipartisan fashion to quickly take up and pass legislation to reauthorize the America COMPETES Act—a 2007 law enacted with BHEF’s support that produced several key programs to strengthen education in the areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

The House Committee on Science and Technology in late April approved the crucial legislation by a vote of 29 to 8.

“We greatly appreciate the strong leadership of House Science and Technology Committee Chairman Bart Gordon in moving this bill out of committee,” says BHEF Executive Director Brian K. Fitzgerald. “We now hope that the House leadership will see the necessity of bringing this legislation to the floor for debate as soon as possible, and that members will ultimately support a bill that includes bolstered provisions to improve STEM education.”

In a May 3 letter to the House leaders, Fitzgerald wrote: “With reauthorization, we have the opportunity to strengthen provisions designed to improve STEM education for all students throughout the entire education pipeline, including higher education. Specifically, we encourage bipartisan support for the provisions in the committee-approved bill to increase the numbers of students who earn STEM degrees and choose STEM careers, including those provisions that transform STEM undergraduate and graduate education, and encourage stronger collaborations between business/industry and higher education. These provisions will encourage a systemic approach that bolsters postsecondary STEM education as well as K-12 education.”

BHEF, through its Securing America’s Leadership in STEM Initiative, is working to increase the number of STEM college graduates by strengthening the math and science teaching workforce and pursuing promising strategies to strengthen the education pipeline that leads to STEM careers. BHEF has authored, “An American Imperative: Transforming the Recruitment, Retention, and Renewal of Our Nation’s Mathematics and Science Teaching Workforce,” which lays out a comprehensive plan for creating a robust, world-class teaching workforce.

In addition, BHEF provides in an open-source environment the first-ever simulation and modeling tool for the U.S. STEM education system, the BHEF U.S. STEM Education Model, developed by Raytheon Company, which enables researchers, policymakers, and educators to explore scenarios that can strengthen education and workforce outcomes.