How to Become a Scientist — High School Years 95 



kind of college can make scientists out of people who do 

 not have the interest and capacity in the first place. Con- 

 versely, a well motivated, intelligent student can go on from 

 almost any college to get a Ph.D. In point of fact, there 

 seems to be no good way of measuring the effects of differ- 

 ent sorts of colleges on the students who go through them. 

 Nevertheless, on common-sense grounds it seems obvious 

 enough that a student who is interested in becoming a scien- 

 tist would do well to go to a place where a relatively high 

 proportion of the students have the same interests and 

 capacities, and the physical facilities and faculty are such 

 as to encourage scholarly work. 



To a great degree we do have equal opportunities in this 

 country, but it is undeniable that some young people are 

 in a much better position than others to make the most of 

 the opportunities that do exist. For many centuries in- 

 equality of position in society was encouraged or enforced 

 by a combination of tradition, government regulation, and 

 hard economic fact. Much of the progress of the last three 

 hundred years has been made in breaking down the legal 

 and economic barriers to equality. Sometimes this has 

 occurred as a result of bloody revolutions, as in France and 

 Russia. Sometimes it has occurred, as in the English-speak- 

 ing countries and especially in the United States, as a result 

 of gradual legal evolution. But in spite of undeniable im- 

 provements, inequalities still exist. 



Many liberals continue to attribute these inequalities to 

 defects in our legal structure and to inequities in the dis- 

 tribution of wealth. Such people seek the solution to the 

 problem of inequality through the political devices that 

 have worked so well in the past: through laws guaranteeing 

 equal rights, through greater provision of scholarship funds, 

 higher minimum wages, and so on. It seems probable that 

 we are reaching the limit of such solutions. Government 



