A follow-up study to a 1984 National Research Council "national plan" for mathematics reports that "almost no progress" was made in increasing support for senior academic mathematics researchers in the period between 1984 and 1990.
The total number of senior researchers receiving grants from the government and other sources increased only from 1,800 in 1984 to 1,900 in 1990. The 1990 figure is far short of the 2,600 the council recommended as necessary to put math research on a par with work in other disciplines and to recognize mathematics' value in underpinning other scientific research. Meanwhile, dropout rates among math students remained high, with about half withdrawing from mathematics courses each year after the ninth grade, and up through the Ph.D. level.
A growing number of mathematicians put much of the blame for those alarming trends on the mathematics community itself. They say academic mathematicians need to look beyond math ...
