Education for Research

Physics research may be represented as striving toward two objectives: to improve our understanding of the nature of matter and energy and to develop inputs to tomorrow’s technology and engineering. The first corresponds to basic research, the second to applied research. How do we train future researchers to carry out such work? In the United States, it is primarily through graduate education, specifically for the PhD; most professional physicists earn a master’s degree only incidentally—as a stepping stone toward the PhD, not as a terminal degree. In many other countries this is not the case. In Japan, for example, a large fraction of industrial researchers have only master’s degrees. By contrast, in Germany more PhDs are produced but a PhD does not qualify one for a university professorship.

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