A NALY TIC A L August 1970, Vol. 42, No. 9 ,111 II,.RI.,mON,,.,~,"",,~
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HERBERT A. LAITINEN
EDITORIAL HEADQUARTERS Waahmgton, D.C. 20036 1155 Sixteenth St., N.W. Phone: 202-737-3337 Teletype: WA 23 Managing Editor: John K. Crum Asrociate Editor: Virginia E. Stewart Editorial Assistant: Sylvia Crawford PRODUCTION STAFF Director of Design: Joseph J a c o b Production Manager: Bacil Guiley Associate Production Manager: Charlotte C. Sayre Art Dlrector: Norman W. Favin NEWYORKOFFICE 733 Third Avenue New York, N.Y. 10017 212-867-3161 Associate Editor: Josephine M. Petruzzi OFFICE, EASTON, PA. EDITORIAL PRODUCTION Assistant Editor: Elizabeth R. Rufe
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Is There Need for a Doctor of Arts Degree in Chemistry?
S
everal years ago, when it became evident that there would be an enormous expansion of our colleges and universities, the validity of the traditional P h D . program as training for the college teacher began to be seriously questioned. Particularly in the humanities, the doctoral dissertation is often regarded as background unnecessary for the teacher, although important for the scholar. The Committee on the Preparation of College Teachers of the Council of Graduate Schools of the United States has recommended graduate programs leading to a Doctor of Arts degree, with a lesser emphasis on research, and greater emphasis on breadth. Recently [ J . Chem. Educ., 4 7 , s (197011,Drs. Robert H. Linnell and Douglas S. Chapin have seriously questioned the role of the Ph.D. degree as background training for many chemists. "Our guess is that not more than one half of the current production of P h D . chemists are needed with narrow research specialized training of the type almost universally in vogue. Another group of Ph.D. chemists, perhaps one quarter of the total, are needed for undergraduate teaching positions which will not be heavily research oriented. This group of 4 W O O new Ph.D. chemists each year should have some in-depth research experience, but less emphasis should be placed on narrow specialization, and both the research and course work should be broader than the typical Ph.D. program now permits. A third type of Ph.D. chemist, needed for the remaining quarter of all the new Ph.D.'s awarded, should be developed around a core of chemistry courses and research with less specialization in any one area of chemistry and with flexibility to include such areas as business, economics, public administraton, and political science." There have been suggestions that a Doctor of Arts program in chemistry might include a somewhat broader background in course work than the Ph.D., and that a thesis study might involve improvements in teaching-e.g., through advanced laboratory methods development or computer-aided education. Some small colleges have expressed real interest in people with such backgrounds as prospective staff members whereas others have indicated that anything less than a Ph.D. would not be suitable. The real issue in the "multitrack" graduate proposal is whether the student can make his choice of track early enough to avoid prolonging his program but late enough to assure wisdom of judgment. It would be tempting for many students who feel frustrated by lack of early success in research to decide that they are not cut out to be research people, and therefore to elect the D.A. program. This choice would reduce their career options, perhaps by a factor of four. On the other hand, to instill more breadth into the Ph.D. program would not seriously compromise a research career. In effect, it would simply reverse a trend evident during the past decade toward increasing specialization and research emphasis, a trend that many of UB believe has been pushed to an extreme and to the detriment of career attitudes among many of our emerging Ph.D.'s.
Adwrtising Management CENTURY COMMUNICATIONS CORP. (for Branch 05a9,see page 81 A)
For submission of manuscripts, see page 4 A . ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY, VOL. 42, NO. 9, AUGUST 1970
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