National Defense Education Act

National Defense Education Act

Long title	An Act to strengthen the national defense and to encourage and assist in the expansion and improvement of educational programs to meet critical national needs and for other purposes.
Nicknames	National Defense Education Act of 1958
Enacted by	the 85th United States Congress
Effective	September 2, 1958
Citations
Public law	85-864
Statutes at Large	72 Stat. 1580
Codification
Titles amended	20 U.S.C.: Education
U.S.C. sections created	20 U.S.C. ch. 17, subch. I §§ 401-403 20 U.S.C. ch. 17, subch. II §§ 421-429 20 U.S.C. ch. 17, subch. III §§ 441-445, 451-455 20 U.S.C. ch. 17, subch. IV §§ 461-465 20 U.S.C. ch. 17, subch. V §§ 481-485, 491 20 U.S.C. ch. 17, subch. VI §§ 511-513, 521 20 U.S.C. ch. 17, subch. VII §§ 541, 542, 551, 561-563 20 U.S.C. ch. 17, subch. VIII §§ 581-589 20 U.S.C. ch. 17, subch. IX §§ 591-592, 601-602
Legislative history
Introduced in the House as H.R. 13247 Passed the House on August 7, 1958 (266-108, in lieu of H.Res. 675) Passed the Senate on August 13, 1958 (62-26) Reported by the joint conference committee on August 22, 1958; agreed to by the Senate on August 22, 1958 (66-15) and by the House on August 23, 1958 (212-85) Signed into law by President Dwight Eisenhower on September 2, 1958

The National Defense Education Act (NDEA) was signed into law on September 2, 1958, providing funding to United States education institutions at all levels.

NDEA was among many science initiatives implemented by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1958 to increase the technological sophistication and power of the United States alongside, for instance, DARPA and NASA. It followed a growing national sense that U.S. scientists were falling behind scientists in the Soviet Union. The early Soviet success in the Space Race catalyzed a national sense of unease with Soviet technological advances, especially after the Soviet Union launched the first-ever satellite, Sputnik, the previous year.

The act authorized funding for four years, increasing funding per year: for example, funding increased on eight program titles from $183 million in 1959 to $222 million in 1960. In total, over a billion dollars was directed towards improving American science curricula. However, in the aftermath of McCarthyism, a mandate was inserted in the act that all beneficiaries must complete an affidavit disclaiming belief in the overthrow of the U.S. government. This requisite loyalty statement stirred concern and protest from the American Association of University Professors and over 153 institutions.

The NDEA was influenced by the Soviet launch of the satellite Sputnik on October 4, 1957. U.S. citizens feared that education in the USSR was superior to that in the United States, and Congress reacted by adding the act to bring U.S. schools up to speed.

The year 1957 also coincided with an acute shortage of mathematicians in the United States. The electronic computer created a demand for mathematicians as programmers and it also shortened the lead time between the development of a new mathematical theory and its practical application, thereby making their work more valuable. The United States could no longer rely on European refugees for all of its mathematicians, though they remained an important source, so it had to drastically increase the domestic supply. At the time, "mathematics" was interpreted as pure mathematics rather than applied mathematics. The problem in the 1950s and 1960s was that industry, including defense, was absorbing the mathematicians who should have been at high schools and universities training the next generation. At the university level, even more recently, there have been years when it was difficult to hire applied mathematicians and computer scientists because of the rate that industry was absorbing them.

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