category. University presidents and vice 

 presidents for research, however, did not give 

 the same priority to this problem. 



Typical statements made by respondents on 

 the opportunities for young Ph.D.'s in the 

 research system appear below. The university 

 statements are first, followed by responses 

 from Federal laboratories, Federally Funded 

 Research and Development Centers (FFRDC's) 

 and independent research institutes. 



M. O. Thurston, Chairman, Department of 

 Electrical Engineering, The Ohio State Univer- 

 sity, Columbus, focused on the problem. 



The current literature on higher education 

 indicates substantial concern about reduced 

 opportunities for younger people on university 

 science and engineering faculties. The dif- 

 ficulties are attributed to declining enrollments, 

 high fractions of tenured faculty, inflation, and 

 particularly the rapid increase in the size of 

 faculties ten to twenty years ago. Retirement 

 rates are now low, and often those who retire are 

 not replaced. The result is a non-uniform age 

 distribution that will have an increasingly serious 

 impact on the scope and quality of research in 

 universities. 



From a similar institutional perspective, John 

 T. Jefferies, Director, Institute for Astronomy, 

 University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, 

 provided additional detail. 



The first problem arises from the recent rapid 

 growth of many departments with many of the 

 newly-created positions necessarily being filled 

 with recent graduates. These people, in the 

 course of time, have acquired tenured positions, 

 thus tending to freeze the department into a mold 

 from which, especially in a time of declining 

 enrollments and decreased Federal support for 

 science, it will be almost impossible to break out. 

 The problem, of course, occurs in a context wider 

 than the academic community. Early retirement, 

 or encouragement for a career change, while no 

 solutions, are avenues which might lead to some 

 relief and the provision of opportunities for new 

 graduates with fresh ideas. Much of the problem, 

 of course, derives from the tenure system; I know 

 that many universities are addressing this and 



some fresh ideas on that controversial topic 

 might help to forestall the unhappy prospect of a 

 department growing old together through 30 or 

 more years of assured employment. 



Emphasizing the problems of young faculty in 

 science research and relating them to a 

 university-wide context, Robert H. Strotz, 

 President, Northwestern University, Evanston- 

 Chicago, 111., said: 



A major problem in university science research is 

 one that is common with other areas of the 

 university, but is probably of greater significance 

 in the physical and biological sciences and 

 engineering. This is the decreasing number of 

 faculty positions available for new Ph.D.'s. While 

 this is true in all areas in universities, the change 

 from the expansionist 1960's is most marked in 

 the sciences. The best of each year's crop of new 

 doctorates tended to come to the university, with 

 only a very few industrial laboratories being 

 considered by them as almost equivalent. With 

 the greatly decreased number of faculty positions 

 available over the next few decades, this may 

 cause a marked decrease in the number of very 

 bright students going into fundamental research 

 in science and technology. Certainly, thegrowing 

 average age of the faculty will have a marked 

 effect on the research and the teaching in these 

 fields. 



Typical of solutions proposed by respondents 

 to the problem of young faculty in the university 

 was that made by L. D. Quin, Chairman, 

 Department of Chemistry, Duke University, 

 Durham, N.C.: 



More openings for young people can be created if 

 senior personnel are removed from the payroll at 

 earlier ages. I do not mean early retirement by 

 this; I suggest instead that a new type of award be 

 made to a university department to recognize 

 distinguished accomplishments of a senior 

 member of the faculty, such award being of a 

 magnitude to allow the university to hire a new 

 assistant professor on the tenure track, several 

 years before the opening of the "slot". Such 

 awards would be rather like the present NIH 

 Career Development Awards; my proposed 

 "Career Accomplishment Awards" would simply 

 come at the end, not the beginning of a career, but 



VITALITY OF THE RESEARCH SYSTEM 



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