A report issued this week by the Biotechnology Industry Organization, the research institute Battelle, and the Biotechnology Institute, an organization that promotes biotechnology education, says the United States is failing to prepare students for pursuing biosciences in higher education. The report finds a wide disparity across measures of student achievement in overall science and biosciences, an uneven record across states in incorporating the biosciences in state science standards, supporting focused bioscience education programs and higher level bioscience courses, and ensuring science and bioscience teachers are well qualified. The report is based on a study of middle and high school bioscience education in the 50 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia.

Some key findings from the report show:
• On average, only 28% of the high school students taking the ACT, which is a national standardized test for college admission, reached a score indicating college readiness for biology and no state reached even 50%

• Only 52% of 12th graders are at or above a basic level of achievement in the sciences, and for 8th graders only 57% are at a basic level of achievement

• Average scores for 12th graders in the sciences declined from 1996 to 2005 and showed no improvement for 8th graders both overall and on the life science component

• A significant gap exists in science achievement for low-income, middle-school students, although the gap is slowly narrowing

The report stresses the need to improve bioscience education as the vast majority of bioscience jobs require some level of post-secondary education to ensure quality control and good manufacturing practices, conduct clinical research, design and engineer new products, or perform research and development. Some specific recommendations include:

• The incorporation of biotechnology in schools’ science standards with input from bioscience research scientists

• Improvement in student achievement in biology and the life sciences to ensure that high-school graduates are ready to pursue college-level bioscience courses

• Improvement of the collection and dissemination of data, tracking student participation and performance in the biosciences and the broader sciences, and encouraging participation in the National Assessment of Educational Progress science exam

• Taking a more systematic approach to teacher professional development, experiential learning, and career awareness.

Although the findings of the report in identifying the problems in bioscience education and recommendations for improvement are helpful, the report fails to address the larger issue, namely funding. Primary and secondary education in the United States is mostly supported by local property taxes, a model rooted in our origins as an agrarian economy, but one that has not truly kept pace with other revenue sources available from an industrialized and increasingly complex industrialized economy.

Participation by the life-science industry in establishing and working with schools and educational associations to improve bioscience standards and its philanthropic efforts to fund educational programs are noteworthy, but not adequate to truly improve bioscience- and science-based education. Although society benefits as a whole, industry is the true beneficiary of an educated and trained workforce, and it has to pay a larger price for that benefit. New sources of dedicated revenues through collaborative models between government and industry such as corporate or product taxes on pharmaceuticals for a dedicated national bioscience/science education fund are needed. Such a fiscal model is already used in other areas, such as a gasoline tax used to fund highway repair and construction, and is one that could be adopted for dedicated funding to bioscience and science education.

The US prescription drug market, the largest single national market in the world, was valued at $291 billion in 2008, according to data from IMS Health. Given the importance to industry and the nation as a whole, sharing the cost for bioscience education is an important first step in sustaining that global competitiveness.