Many leaders in business, government and education warn that a shortage of scientists is jeopardizing the nation's world leadership in science and technology, along with its military supremacy and high standard of living. For a short-term fix, they propose loosening immigration restrictions to allow more high-skilled workers from overseas. Long term, they say the United States must greatly improve pre-college education, produce more college graduates with mathematics and science degrees and increase investment in research and development. Others argue the alarm is just a scare tactic by employers who want to import more high-tech workers and pay them low wages. Across the country, meanwhile, businesses are joining thousands of schools in innovative efforts to convince more children to study science and to teach them more effectively.

Tom Price is a Washington-based freelance journalist who writes regularly for CQ Researcher. Previously he was a correspondent in the Cox Newspapers Washington Bureau and chief politics writer for the Dayton Daily News and The Journal Herald. His most recent book, written with former congressman and ambassador Tony Hall, is Changing The Face of Hunger: One Man's Story of How Liberals, Conservatives, Democrats, Republicans, and People of Faith Are Joining Forces to Help the Hungry, the Poor, and the Oppressed. He is the author of two Washington guidebooks, Washington, D.C., for Dummies, and the Irreverent Guide to Washington, D.C. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Time, Rolling Stone and other periodicals. He earned a bachelor of science in journalism at Ohio University.