Expansion of British universities in the early 1960’s encouraged the traditional flow of physics PhD’s into academic careers. Now that new university posts are rare, British industry will have to be urged to employ more PhD’s; perhaps we should add subjects such as management and economics to the course.
DURING THE LAST FEW YEARS there has been a remarkable growth in the numbers of graduate students reading for the PhD in physics at British universities. A time of financial stringency has now arrived, however, and, inevitably, many searching questions are being asked. For example: Are we training too many physicists up to the PhD standard? How does the quality of our PhD’s compare with that from the best graduate schools in the US?
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References
1. The Flow into Employment of Scientists, Engineers and Technologists, Cmnd. 3760, HM Stationery Office, London (1968).
2. Higher Education, Cmnd. 2154, HM Stationery Office, London (1963).
3. L. R. Harmon, Careers of PhD’s–Academic versus Nonacademic, US National Academy of Sciences Publication 1577, Washington, D.C. (1968).
With strong magnetic fields and intense lasers or pulsed electric currents, physicists can reconstruct the conditions inside astrophysical objects and create nuclear-fusion reactors.
A crude device for quantification shows how diverse aspects of distantly related organisms reflect the interplay of the same underlying physical factors.
