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Non-STEM career fields have undocumented STEM needs.

• In some career fields where STEM degrees are not mandatory for entry, functional authorities validated significant unmet STEM needs (i.e., logistics and space and missile). Even in areas where STEM populations are nearly sufficient at present, such as cyberspace and acquisition management, requirements for these personnel are not documented in the Air Force Officer Classification Directory (AFOCD) or in Office of Personnel Management (OPM) standards for civilians; consequently, the personnel system will not necessarily provide a sufficient inventory in the future.

Personnel with STEM specialties are often loaned out.

• Thirty-one percent of those holding STEM Air Force Specialty Codes are on loan to non-STEM functional areas serving as consultants.

The definitions of qualifications for functional area positions are imprecise.

• Functional areas value officers with STEM degrees. It is not necessarily the STEM-specific knowledge that is necessary to carry out the position's duties, but the accompanying skills that STEM graduates are believed to be more likely to possess such as logical, systematic, critical, and analytical thinking, and problem solving.

Little attention is paid to reviewing future needs and adjusting requirements to meet them.

• The academic degrees most likely to be in demand in career fields experiencing growth in the private sector are not emphasized in the corresponding Air Force career areas.

In evaluating the health of its science, technology, engineering, and mathematics workforce, the U.S. Air Force has focused on functional areas where STEM degrees are mandatory. To date there has been no rigorous review of the needs for STEM academic degrees in other functional areas.

Understating the needs for officers and civilians with STEM degrees can diminish the Air Force's ability to maintain the technical skills it heavily relies upon to support air, space, and cyberspace operations. Analysis must begin with a definition of STEM versus non-STEM degrees. RAND researchers established a set of broad academic disciplinary groups that should be considered in the set of STEM degrees, as well as disciplines at the most detailed levels of Air Force degree codes. This categorization has been approved as the Air Force definition of STEM.

Career field managers across the Air Force were interviewed and asked to identify the STEM academic degrees necessary now and in the future for particular missions in their functional areas. Senior functional authorities at the two- and three-star level reviewed and in some cases revised what their own career field managers identified as STEM needs and validated the overall direction and the numbers of these degree requirements.

Although this approach lacks a method to determine the magnitude of future STEM needs in the programs identified, it does point to specific areas that the Air Force should review for emerging STEM needs, especially in light of force management actions in key technology areas.

• Chapter One

  Introduction and Background

• Chapter Two

  Definitions, Data, and Methodology

• Chapter Three

  Results

• Chapter Four

  Career-Field STEM Consultants

• Chapter Five

  STEM Skills and Critical Thinking

• Chapter Six

  Future Needs

• Chapter Seven

  2002 Scientist and Engineer Summer Study

• Chapter Eight

  Conclusions and Recommendations

• Appendix A

  STEM/Non-STEM Categorization of ASCs and IPs

• Appendix B

  Summary Data by Functional Area

• Appendix C

  Career Field Interview Summaries