The W artime Deficit 



Among the voung men and women qualified to take up scientific work, 

 since 1940 there have been few students o\'er 18, except some in medicine 

 and engineering in Armv and Navy programs and a few 4-F's, who ha\'e 

 followed an integrated scientific course of studies. Neither our allies nor, 

 so far as we know, our enemies have done anything so radical as thus to 

 suspend almost completelv their educational activities in scientific pursuits 

 during the war period. 



Two great principles have guided us in this country as we have turned 

 our full efforts to war. First, the sound democratic principle that there 

 should be no favored classes or special pri\'ilege in a time of peril, that all 

 should be readv to sacrifice equallv; second, the tenet that every man should 

 serve in the capacity in which his talents and experience can best be applied 

 for the prosecution of the war effort. In general we have held these principles 

 well in balance. 



In my opinion, however, we ha\'e drawn too heavily for nonscientific pur- 

 poses upon the great natural resource which resides in our trained young 

 scientists and engineers. For the general good of the countrv too manv such 

 men have gone into uniform, and their talents have not always been fully 

 utilized. With the exception of those men engaged in war research, all 

 physically fit students at graduate level ha\'e been taken into the armed 

 forces. Those readv for college training in the sciences have not been per- 

 mitted to enter upon that training. 



There is thus an accumulating deficit of trained research personnel which 

 will continue for many years. The deficit of science and technology students 

 who, but for the war, would have recei\'ed bachelor's degrees is about 150,000. 

 The deficit of those holding advanced degrees — that is, voung scholars trained 

 to the point where thev are capable of carrving on original work — has been 

 estimated as amounting to about 17,000 bv 1955 in chemistrv, engineering, 

 geologv, mathematics, phvsics, psvchologv, and the biological sciences. 



With vioitntir2g demands for scientists both for teaching and for research, 

 we will enter the postwar period with a serious deficit in our trained 

 scientific personnel. 



Improve the Quality 



Confronted with these deficits, we are compelled to look to the use of our 

 basic human resources and formulate a program which will assure their 

 conservation and effectixe development. The committee advising me on 

 scientific personnel has stated the following principle which should guide 

 our planning: 



"If we were all-knowing and all-wise we might, but we think probably not, write you 

 a plan whereby there might be selected for training, which they otherwise would not 

 get, those who, 20 vears hence, would be scientific leaders, and we might not bother 

 about any lesser manifestations of scientific ability. But in the present state of knowledge 

 a plan cannot be made which will select, and assist, only those young men and women 

 who will gi\'e the top future leadership to science. To get top leadership there must be 

 a relatively large base of high ability selected for development and then successive skim- 

 mings of the cream of ability at successive times and at higher levels. No one can select 



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