50 proposed medical-research pre- 

 doctoral fellowships shall be admin- 

 istered nor allocated separately but 

 simply that the recommended total 

 number of predoctoral fellowships 

 be increased to 300. 



The number 250 is arrived at by 

 considering, inter alia, that it would 

 be 10 percent of the prewar average 

 of science doctorates conferred, 165, 

 plus a number endeavoring to make 

 up some of the science doctoral deficit 

 incurred during the war years when 

 science students, practically, have 

 been and are nonexistent. Our think- 

 ing concerning the added 50 medical 

 research doctorates goes along the 

 same lines. 



These figures, we wish to empha- 

 size, are not provable but equally we 

 wish to emphasize they appear rea- 

 sonable to us. It has been in our 

 thinking throughout this report that 

 we do not want to inflate or debase 

 the currency of scientific training by 

 artificially stimulating its issuance 

 bevond the Nation's needs for such 

 training. 



Further, we desire to emphasize the 

 point that, until we see the look of 

 the postwar world, policies cannot be 

 determined with finality. And, until 

 policies can be determined, alterna- 

 tive plans, and sliding scales within 

 those plans, are the onlv plans that 

 make sense. We cannot, as we have 

 said, guarantee that our figure of 

 6,000 assisted science students in 

 each entering class and 250-300 as- 

 sisted candidates for science doctor- 

 ates a year are the correct figures for 

 the needed result. We conclude, 

 simply, that they are good figures 

 with which to begin, alwavs pro- 

 vided that they be not frozen and 

 mav be changed in the light of ex- 

 perience and as future demands for 

 scientists and need for Federal assist- 



ance in training them may be shown. 

 Elsewhere in this report it is rec- 

 ommended that the administrative 

 agency which may be charged with 

 making our proposals operative be 

 charged also with a continuing re- 

 search function in which studies of 

 opportunities for scientific and tech- 

 nological employment should have a 

 major place. 



When considering the question 

 whether or not the group of under- 

 graduates selected for training under 

 the plan herein recommended be too 

 large, it ought to be remembered that 

 the majority will not go on to research 

 careers but rather to various kinds of 

 engineering practice, plant manage- 

 ment activities and to many other 

 kinds of practical work connected 

 with industry and technological proc- 

 esses. For industries based on highly 

 advanced scientific techniques which 

 must be adapted constantly to new 

 scientific discoveries, training in sci- 

 ence is essential throughout the man- 

 agement, and while it cannot be said 

 that a man, because he is a good 

 scientist, is therefore a good manager 

 for such a business, still without sci- 

 entific training, he could hardly func- 

 tion at all. Moreover, for such a busi- 

 ness a scientific training is, qua the 

 business, probably as good a training 

 as any other. 



Furthermore, in reference to sci- 

 entific training at the undergraduate 

 level, we quote with approval a state- 

 ment by a distinguished committee of 

 English scholars, from social, human- 

 istic and science fields, published by 

 Nuffield College of the University of 

 Oxford: 



* * * We live in a world in which sci- 

 ence lies at the very roots of community, 

 and a mastery of scientific thinking grows 

 more and more indispensable for the suc- 

 cessful practice of the arts of life. The 

 culture of the modern age, if it is to have 



151 



