Recent and rapid policy shifts within the federally-funded research and higher education ecosystems have raised fundamental questions about our nation’s social contract for science, originally articulated in 1945 through Vannevar Bush’s groundbreaking Endless Frontier report. This changing landscape poses new challenges and opportunities throughout the broader science, engineering, technology, and mathematics (STEM) communities. Our ability to meet the moment will determine the long-term health of the nation’s STEM endeavor, as well as the critical innovations it produces for health, prosperity, and national security.
America’s rising generations—the youth and young adults best positioned to meet the country’s growing need for STEM professionals—are on the front lines of this transition. Attracting and supporting their training and development at a time when uncertainty is high and alternative pathways abound will require significant and sustained coordination across STEM sectors. Whether situated in formal and informal learning institutions, industry, government, or civil society, we must all come together to support, reform, and enhance our collective investment in the future leaders of STEM.
This report, developed as part of the Aspen Institute Science & Society Program’s 2025 roundtable series, synthesizes insights from practitioners in K–12 education, higher education, science research, professional associations, science communication, and civic science. The project builds on Science & Society’s long-standing informal science education work, including the award-winning Our Future Is Science (OFIS) youth initiative.
Over the course of multiple consultations, participants explored how to strengthen the nation’s STEM learning continuum, from early exposure to advanced careers. The convenings focused on generating strategies around four core objectives related to rising generations:
- Attracting a wide group of youth and young adults to STEM while deepening engagement among those demonstrating existing interest in STEM;
- Achieving learning goals that reflect shifting ideas about STEM education from K–12 through early career;
- Aligning research and technical training with the wide range of jobs and careers that scientists and those in allied fields ultimately pursue, including middle-skilled jobs, industry research, and foundational research paths; and
- Strengthening proven collaborations while drawing on untapped opportunities for partnership.
The STEM ecosystem in the U.S. is highly complex, with only loose connections at best across institutions. For example, K–12 education systems and youth-oriented informal STEM learning programs within the same community often have little to no direct contact with one another. Instead, individual science teachers are left to serve as connectors, working to the best of their abilities to help students find programs that support their growth. These specific linkages are critical but insufficient to fully realize the joint potential of formal and informal organizations in engaging youth in STEM.
Similarly, higher education institutions, from community colleges to research universities, are driven to help their graduates develop meaningful and marketable job skills. Yet, despite scattered success stories from regional cooperatives around the nation, the dominant experience is one of missed opportunities. Always, but particularly as AI accelerates shifts in workplace needs, there is demand for higher education to coordinate with industry leaders and adapt curricula in responsive ways.
Partnerships require time and resources, often hinging on dedicated individual and organizational “connectors” who help sustain partnerships and keep coalitions moving toward shared goals. Though educational institutions are being squeezed to do more with less, participants noted that the payoff from investing in connective tissue is wide-reaching, helping communities, schools, and industries co-design pathways that reflect both local priorities and national needs.
Across every roundtable, participants identified partnerships and collaborations as both the greatest opportunity and the most persistent challenge in STEM education and workforce development. At the same time, they noted the siloed nature of the STEM community, where opportunities to meet across sectors are all too rare and often too short-term to fully support rising generations in STEM.
Participants emphasized that no single institution or sector can meet the nation’s STEM goals or achieve systemic change on its own. Fully realizing the country’s potential for rising generations in STEM will require durable networks that bridge education, research, workforce, and community spheres. This report offers a roadmap, organized around three fundamental goals:
- Attracting and Engaging Youth and Young Adults Through Relevant STEM
- Supporting a Wide Mix of Job and Career Pathways in STEM
- Meeting the Shifting Needs for Skill Development in STEM
Taken together, the recommendations presented in this report call for a new type of “social contract” for STEM—one grounded in shared purpose and shared responsibility towards all who aspire to participate.
This work is supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.