It's easy enough to fault the Bush administration and the Republican Congress for their inconsistency and slow-to-learn approaches to higher education and advanced scientific research as critical keys to America's 21st century prospects.

President Bush in his State of the Union address called for an American Competitiveness Initiative, priced at $5.9 billion the first year, to strengthen the nation's ability to compete internationally. The House, on a narrow 216-214 vote the next day, approved a group of domestic spending cuts including $12.7 billion -- the biggest cut ever -- in student loan programs.

One has to ask: With tuitions rising rapidly, making an education increasingly unaffordable for students at both public and private universities across the nation, what's the real hope for a scientifically advanced America? Almost half the country's college students depend on help from federal loans.

In stark contrast to the congressional move, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger recently took advantage of improved revenues to ask his Legislature to roll back a major scheduled hike in fees for California public university students. State Treasurer Phil Angelides, a potential Democratic opponent to Schwarzenegger next fall, is promising to cut tuition rates to 2003-04 levels and then freeze them for his term as governor.

In Washington, days after his televised address touting a competitiveness agenda, President Bush sent Congress a $2.7 trillion budget continuing his push to build up military and homeland security capacity, while holding down education and other domestic programs. The Pentagon would get a 5 percent increase to $439 billion -- not even including recent off-budget requests totaling $120 billion for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

By contrast, the president's $5.9 billion request for the first year of the competitiveness agenda is hardly overwhelming. Three-fourths of it goes to resurrect a research and development tax incentive for industry that expired last year. Reflecting recommendations of a blue-ribbon panel of the National Academy of Sciences, it includes $380 million to increase young Americans' capacity in math, science and technology. The president says there will be $50 billion more for directly funded research, $86 billion for research and development tax incentives over 10 years.

But is all this sufficient? Last year the United States graduated 70,000 engineers -- down 20 percent from 1985. China, by contrast, graduated 600,000, and India 350,000. As for direct federal investment in research in the physical sciences, as a percent of our gross national product, it has declined by half since 1970.

Still, it's not fair to blame the federal government for all of America's education lag. State governments appropriate the funds and set the rules for all but a small percentage of K-12 education. So who else should we hold responsible when we hear that American 12th graders place near the bottom of the 21 nations participating in the Third International Mathematics and Science Survey -- a study that described the U.S. K-12 math and science curriculum as ``a mile wide and an inch deep''?

Taking a look at the shocking statistics on young peoples' education progress compiled by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education makes it clear something is radically wrong. Start with 100 ninth graders. On average, across the country, only 68 of them actually graduate from high school. Only 40 enter college; notwithstanding all the remedial courses offered, only 27 are still enrolled their sophomore year. And a paltry 18 complete either an associate or bachelor's degree within six years.

And if you think that's alarming, watch what's coming over the next two decades. The baby boom generation -- the most highly educated in U.S. history -- will be retiring at a time when Hispanics and African-Americans, traditionally our least well-educated minorities, rise sharply as a share of our working-age population. ``Unless states do a better job of raising the educational levels of all racial/ethnic groups,'' warns the National Center, the average level of education of the U.S. work force will drop significantly, and with it average incomes and national wealth.

The timing is especially critical as a knowledge-based economy demands most workers have higher levels of education. And industries find it ever easier to hire workers overseas.

No one questions that there are (and need to be) better ways to spend our education dollars. The National Governors Association has been right to focus on a total rethinking of high-school-to-college transitions.

But what happened when the 2001-02 recession ravaged state budgets? States increased their college tuitions dramatically -- Massachusetts by 24 percent in a single year. Increases have moderated since, but tuitions rose another 7 percent, on average, for public colleges last year. The burden falls on all families supporting college students -- and (BEG ITAL)especially(END ITAL) on lower-income, often minority families.

In the meantime, state and federal outlays for our out-of-control medical system keep rising. More and more hundreds of billions get channeled to weaponry. In 20 or 30 years, will we really look back and think we made the right choices?

Neal Peirce's e-mail address is nrp@citistates.com