Help Wanted: A Sea Change

This week's issue of C&EN is what my grandmother used to call a keeper. It contains 'Tacts & Figures for the Chemical Industry/' the most comprehensive compendium of statistics published by any magazine on the status of our industry.

While the overall health of the industry was good in 1995—and prospects are promising in 1996—the report's section on employment trends is disturbing. From 1985 to 1995, employ­ment at 22 large chemical companies tracked by C&EN dropped by nearly 50%. White-collar workers and managers—including chemists and chemical engineers—are a significant part of this downsizing.

Industry employs at least 60% of all chemists and about 50% of Ph.D. chemists. However, industry is hiring fewer Ph.D.s than in the past. And R&D directors tell me they are looking for a different kind of Ph.D. graduate. In the words of ACS President-elect Paul S. Anderson, who is vice president of chemical and physical sciences at DuPont Merck Pharmaceutical, they are seeking a Ph.D. who is "more responsive to the needs of an industry whose survival relies on innovation and timeliness." It's a Ph.D. who is not only the best and the brightest, but who can excel in a highly competitive global economy.

Thoughtful academics have been discussing how to produce a Ph.D. that meets these needs and prepares students for a wide variety of careers. Last November, for example, I covered a meeting of chemistry department heads convened by Columbia University chemistry profes­sor and ACS President Ronald Breslow. The dozen "best practices" arising from this meeting emphasized mastery of a specific area of chemistry as well as breadth, communication skills, and more exposure to industrial opportunities. Breslow plans to continue this dialogue at a presidential event in August at the ACS national meeting in Orlando, Ha.

Less than two weeks ago, I attended another such forum, a "Convocation on Science & En­gineering Doctoral Education," sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The session brought together 330 peo­ple—mostly professors, administrators, and graduate students—to share ideas.

I heard a lot of frustration expressed at this meeting. First, there's a huge and palpable dis­connect between the perceptions of professors and their graduate students. Most professors at­tending believe they have adapted their training programs to a changing world, and they are stung by criticism that they have not, in fact, significantly changed the way they train Ph.D.s. But Catharine E. Johnson, a doctoral candidate from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, says the criticism is valid. In a survey she conducted of all Hopkins graduate students at the school of medicine, she found enormous dissatisfaction with the career guidance they receive from their advisers. She also found that about 60% of these future Ph.D.s in the biomedical sciences are considering nonresearch careers.

Second, numerous speakers, including NAS President Bruce Alberts, insisted that academ­ics need to value and respect careers outside academe (see page 80). Yet graduate students say they hear mostly disdain from their advisers when they discuss alternative careers. Moreover, only a handful of people attending hailed from industry.

Last, and most important, the problems with graduate education are long-standing. For more than 20 years, we have been hearing that graduate education must be broadened. People seeking solutions even now believe it will take years to change the course of the academic leviathan that churns out Ph.D.s—all of this during a time when research universities are struggling to redefine and reform themselves (see page 32).

Those in the chemical industry know that time is running out. Some visionaries in the ac­ademic community may be doing a good job of training our future Ph.D.s, but much more needs to be done much faster. Help to make this sea change is needed from all constituencies of the chemical community—and especially from the academic community—if the U.S. is to retain its technological leadership of the scientific and industrial world.

Madeleine Jacobs Editor

Views expressed on this page are those of the author only and not necessarily those of ACS

JUNE 24,1996 C&EN 5

EDITOR'S PAGE