1251 



Union, and a shifting national emphasis on domestic economic and 

 social concerns, to bring about an overall retrenchment in the Nation's 

 defense, aerospace, and foreign policy commitments. As a result, funds 

 for R. & D. were drastically reduced. Depression in the defense-aero- 

 space professional job market, economic inflation, and sharp econo- 

 mies in universities with the loss of Government-sponsored programs 

 resulted. As a consequence aerospace scientists and engineers became 

 underemployed or unemployed, and researchers in defense- aerospace 

 related fields at the universities found themselves to be marginal men 

 without a program or a job. Thousands of researchers, professors, sci- 

 entists, and engineers flooded a manpower market that was quickly 

 transformed from a seller's to a buyer's market. 



The second cause of the arrest. and reversal of brain drain among 

 scientists and engineers is the growing surplus of newly produced 

 American talent. In the past 25 years, the number of institutions 

 granting Ph.D.s, has doubled, enrollment quadrupled to more than 

 900,000, and the annual number of doctorates grown sevenfold to 

 more than 30,000.®^^ In the 11-year post-Sputnik period between 1959 

 and 1970 alone the annual growth of advanced degrees increased from 

 9,000 to 29,300.^2* This enormous growth of educated manpower coin- 

 cided with the Nation's enlarged commitment in defense, aerospace 

 and foreign policy. Now that retrenchment has set in, the Nation 

 is left with a sizeable surplus of trained manpower. Cutbacks in 

 R. & D. and defense have reduced both academic and nonacademic job 

 opportunities. In the words of The Economist^ "The possession of a 

 Ph. D. is no longer a sure passport to a good job." ®'^ 



What makes the job market particularly "bleak" for the professional 

 (to quote a term frequently used to describe conditions in the 1970's) 

 is the conviction that the oversupply of Ph. D.s, visible to some ob- 

 servers in the early 1970's, will become particularly marked late in the 

 decade. As Chancellor Allan M. Cartter of New York University 

 wrote : 



We have created a graduate education and research establishment in American 

 universities that is about 30 to 50 percent larger than we shall effectively use in 

 the 1970's and early 1980's and the growth process continues in many sectors. 

 The readjustment to the real demands of the next 15 years is boimd to be 

 painful.*" 



• •••••• 



In the coming decade, it seems likely that only about one doctorate in four 

 will find suitable academic employment, and in the 1980s it could be less than 

 one in ten.**' 



Thus, the United States has an overabundance of home-grown talent 

 that, according to projections, will persist through the next decade. 

 The effects of this development, intensified by some Federal retrench- 

 ment in defense, aerospace, and foreign policy, have produced funda- 



"s^ Fred M. Hechinger "Graduate Schools : Power of Choice to Students," The New 

 York Times, Mar. 18, 1973, p: E7. 



«3* "Pity the Ph. Ds," The Economist (Jan. 20, 1973), p. 25. 



"^ Ibid. 



«» Allan M. Cartter, "Scientific Manpower for 1970-85," Science 172 (Apr. 9, 1971), 

 p. 132. 



*^ Ibid., p. 136. 



