ENSURING THAT SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY BETTER THE LIVES OF ALL AMERICANS

America’s scientific creativity and entrepreneurial culture position us to translate breakthroughs into technologies that enrich every American’s life.

That enrichment should include the creation of manufacturing jobs, not just the development of consumer products. By rebuilding the link between science and hands-on craft, federal leadership can ensure that the economic returns of discovery, including the jobs, supplier networks, and process knowledge encoded in the hands of workers, accrue to Americans in every region of the country and every sector of the economy, sustaining our technological leadership for generations to come.

• Integrate Hands-On Training: Technology is encoded not just in papers and patents, but in the tacit knowledge passed from mentor to mentee. Require universities and community colleges to embed practical technical training and externships into STEM curricula. Let hands-on experience and industry credentials count toward degrees. Reform accreditation, admissions, and tenure to reward real-world technical work alongside academic publication.

• Open Scientific Careers Beyond the Academic Ladder: Establish national fellowships for skilled craftspeople, practitioner-in-residence programs embedding machinists and technicians alongside Ph.D. researchers, and portable industry-recognized credentials in advanced manufacturing and lab techniques. Connect hobbyists and tinkerers in rural communities to formal research opportunities, and open up universities to technical training for local residents.

• Modernize Apprenticeships and Career Pathways: Extend registered apprenticeships into science and technology fields. Adopt pay-forperformance funding models, scale Workforce Pell Grants, and back community colleges as regional hubs of scientific and technical talent. Integrate these hubs with industry sites and federally funded innovation and manufacturing centers.

• Build Dense, Local Innovation Clusters Across the Nation: Technological leadership emerges from places where research and production sit close together. Expand regional innovation hubs, manufacturing institutes, and defense industrial base centers to anchor regional ecosystems. Drive coordinated efforts with local universities and national laboratories to build specializations and workforce pipelines. Pair these efforts with the reshoring of advanced manufacturing, and restore the feedback loops between researchers, engineers, and skilled technicians.