Why did the social prestige of science and engineering decline in the US?

Two books I've recently read are The Age of American Unreason by Jacoby [1] and Unscientific America by Mooney & Kirschenbaum [2]. Both are worth reading, but Jacoby gives a deeper and more thoughtful analysis and spends considerable time on historical roots and trends.

This topic is tied heavily to politics, and I hesitate to get into that here. I will say this: science is about exploring, like math is about exploring. Viewing science and math as pragmatic skills reduces them to engineering and accounting. Now there's nothing wrong with engineers and accountants and we desperately need and value their skills. But we also need scientists and research mathematicians who explore mysteries for the sake of discovery. There are a lot of subtle implications of that which are completely lost on people who think of science and math as purely functional, vocational pursuits. The benefits of science and math that have been capitalized on by engineers are spin-offs of people with curiosity exploring for exploration's sake. When exploration for its own sake is devalued, the engineers of the world find once fertile ground growing barren.

1. http://www.amazon.com/Age-American-Unreason-Susan-Jacoby/dp/...

2. http://www.amazon.com/Unscientific-America-Scientific-Illite...

Read Anti-Intellectualism in America by Richard* Hofstadter; it's as true and relevant today, as it was back then.

The decline, if any, probably has to do with the fact that there wasn't a Cold War where scientists could participate directly against a tangible threat and common purpose:

“The Sputnik was more than a shock to American national vanity: it brought an immense amount of attention to bear on the consequences of anti-intellectualism in the school system and in American life at large. Suddenly the national distaste for intellect appeared to be not just a disgrace but a hazard to survival. After assuming for some years that its main concern with teachers was to examine them for disloyalty, the nation now began to worry about their low salaries. Scientists, who had been saying for years that the growing obsession with security was demoralizing to research, suddenly found receptive listeners. Cries of protest against the slackness of American education, hitherto raised only by a small number of educational critics, were now taken up by television, mass magazines, businessmen, scientists, politicians, admirals, and university presidents, and soon swelled into a national chorus of self-reproach. Of course, all this did not immediately cause the vigilante mind to disappear, nor did it disperse anti-intellectualism as a force in American life; even in the sphere most immediately affected, that of education, the ruling passion of the public seemed to be for producing more Sputniks, not for developing more intellect, and some of the new rhetoric about education almost suggested that gifted children were to be regarded as resources in the cold war. But the atmosphere did change notably. In 1952, only intellectuals seemed much disturbed by the specter of anti-intellectualism; by 1958, the idea that this might be an important and even a dangerous national failing was persuasive to must thinking people.”

I think the rise of the FIRE economy definitely has a role, I agree!

The percentage of smart people working in finance trended much higher then science and engineering. Fake disciplines like "Financial Engineering" thus became paramount. Institutions supported these changes.