How will fewer Ph.D. students affect university research?P U B L I S H E R ' S C O R N E R
By EDUARDO R. MACAGNO
IN OVER 25 years of teaching science to undergraduates, I have found that most who go into
a Ph.D. program have acquired a deep love for scholarship; few do it to get a plum job in a top
university. To pursue the Ph.D. is often an idealistic decision; the pleasure of creating
something new, whether in the laboratory or the library, tempers the potential negatives of
committing five or more years to an uncertain endeavor, with little assurance of a permanent
job at the end. In the current climate of uncertainty about jobs and research funding,
however, fewer are willing to take the chance.
Numerous recent articles have cited a gloomy job outlook for young scientists. Although
Ph.D. scientists as a group still enjoy relatively low unemployment, in some disciplines it has
risen to above 10 percent. Moreover, a high level of "underemployment" is said to
exist, described as undesirable work outside one's field, or as a state of suspended animation in
a postdoctoral position while one hopes for an academic job to materialize. In this
environment, many have criticized Ph.D. programs for focusing almost exclusively on
generating candidates for scarce faculty jobs rather than more broadly trained individuals
better equipped for the job market outside academe. Should we train as many graduate
students, considering forecasts that many will be jobless?
Training fewer Ph.D.s THIS "BIRTH
CONTROL" solution is complicated: it is not easy to predict future needs for highly
trained personnel or to coordinate the admissions targets of universities. Apparently moribund
areas may quickly become hot on the basis of new findings. Certainly the overly optimistic
projections of the need for science faculty in the 1990s created a false sense of opportunity,
while the demise of the Superconducting Super Collider, the end of the Cold War, the end of
mandatory faculty retirement, and the downsizing of government and industrial research labs
have contributed to an actual loss of jobs. In any case, some reductions in Ph.D. candidates
may be under way. Domestic undergraduates have not ignored the poor academic science job
market: They have largely stopped entering doctoral studies in some areas. If not for the
compensatory increase in the influx of foreign students, some university labs would be devoid
of graduate students altogether. In the past year, however, even the foreign-student tide has
begun to ebb, so Ph.D. production will inevitably decrease. Some fields are also taking their
professional societies' advice and reducing graduate research positions. How will faculty
conduct their projects with fewer graduate research assistants (GRAs)? Replacement of GRAs
by postdocs and research scientists might maintain the level of research for which funding is
available as well as create jobs for Ph.D.s. For this to be a viable proposal, however, faculty,
university administrators, and funding agencies must stop regarding long-term postdoctoral
and research associate positions as underemployment. We must enhance the attractiveness
and status of these jobs by improving salaries, benefits, and stability, as well as providing the
opportunity to apply for independent grants. Moreover, faculty bias against holders of
long-term research positions as candidates for junior faculty openings must disappear. These
changes are critical if we wish to continue to attract outstanding undergraduates to research
careers.
Broadening doctoral education A
PROPOSED ALTERNATIVE to excessive birth control is to refocus Ph.D. training. Much has
been written about the pluses and minuses of altering Ph.D. training to widen the range of job
opportunities. This idea includes some inherent contradictions. Proposals include requiring
courses in a different area and requiring internships in industrial or government labs.
However, pressure to reduce the time to degree (and hence costs, monetary and human) has
been enormous. Increasing breadth without sacrificing depth of training will necessarily
increase time to degree-and require resources. To decrease pressure on students to avoid any
broadening experiences that take them out of the principal investigator's lab, some have
proposed moving graduate student support from individual faculty research grants to
individual fellowships or training grants. This mechanism could provide needed resources,
provided federal agencies do not unduly reduce or eliminate tuition from these
student-oriented awards.
Improved training in teaching is essential. Serious teaching and lecturing experience can both
enhance students' interpersonal skills and widen their employment opportunities. Such
training, however, will require the creation and staffing of teaching resource centers. It will
also be necessary to reverse the trend toward reducing the teaching requirements of Ph.D.
degrees in the natural sciences, caused by the pressure to reduce time to degree and the
emphasis on research at the expense of teaching as the principal source of faculty
recognition.
A change that would also reduce the number of Ph.D.s is to increase the level of training
associated with master's degrees, particularly by including a serious but limited research
component. This would enhance the status of these new M.A.s to the degree appropriate for
non-academic employment, while keeping the Ph.D. as the appropriate preparation for faculty
at research universities. This proposal has certain clear advantages; for example, time to degree
would be shorter. Moreover, the new M.A.s could be designed to substitute training
experience outside academe for some of the depth requirements of the Ph.D. The job
situation for new Ph.D.s has been less than rosy before. I recall the awful job market of 1968,
when I finished my Ph.D. in the Columbia physics department. Few of my fellow graduates
whose careers I am aware of stayed in physics. Most either switched fields to stay in academe
or left for greener pastures. Two of us became neurobiologists, one went into medicine, others
into urban planning or computer design; several started consulting companies or went to Wall
Street; some took temporary academic positions, then left academe. Some of us ended up in
long postdocs in order to retread, but I don't remember anyone ever saying we were
underemployed, although we certainly complained about the academic job market. The
Vietnam war soured some of us on the possibility of government or defense work. But some
did get good academic jobs, and we recognized that the system was selecting, in a Darwinian
way, those best fitted for these jobs through their good ideas, intelligence, or sheer
perseverance.
Nevertheless, for many of us who switched careers, doctoral training in physics was a great
preparation for other endeavors-something to keep in mind as we contemplate changes in the
way we train the researchers of the future. Doctoral education, after all, is still the best
education we have.
Training fewer Ph.D.s and
changing some curricular goals are the two most common suggestions. These changes could
profoundly affect the way we carry out scientific research in U.S. universities.
EDUARDO R. MACAGNO, Ph.D.,
is professor of biological sciences and dean of the Graduate School of Arts
and Sciences.
