Why there is a job shortage

JUN 01, 1970

Careful evaluation of trends in science‐manpower needs can indicate the best directions for research support and help us avoid future gaps between supply and demand.

DOI: 10.1063/1.3022159

Wayne R. Gruner

FOR SOME YEARS the training of PhD scientists has been advertised as a major goal of public science policy. We all believed that the demand for these scientists was inexhaustible, and increases in federal support for scientific research have often been advocated on the grounds that the research activity was needed to train graduate students, whether or not the anticipated scientific results were urgently needed for any other reason. The largest component of federal obligations for university science, in fact, goes to pay the salaries of research scientists and of their students, so that allocation of manpower may be the most important question in federal science policy. (We, of course, can only provide incentives; people allocate themselves as they wish.)

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References

1. V. R. Fuchs, The First Service Economy, Columbia U.P., New York (1968).
2. A. N. Cartter, Proc. Social Stat. Sec., Am. Stat. Assoc., 70 (1965).
3. National Register of Scientific and Technological Personnel.
4. A. Strassenburg, PHYSICS TODAY 23, no. 4, 23 (1970).
5. Work Complex Study, AIP Publication no. R‐224.

More about the authors

Wayne R. Gruner, National Science Foundation.