The Chemical World This Week
COLLEGE RECRUITING ON THE RISE AGAIN College recruiting in the first postrecession school year did not figure to break records. But by the end of this spring, companies' offers to new graduates had picked up strongly. Chemical companies were among those with notable increases in the number of offers from a year ago. Also, graduates with degrees in chemistry and chemical engineering got considerably higher salaries than their predecessors did a year ago. The fresh surge was especially beneficial to female graduates, whose relative increase in the number of offers was much higher than for male graduates. These are the major conclusions of the third and final report on college recruitment this year by the College Placement Council, Bethlehem, Pa. CPC says that its survey, now in its 16th year, is based on job offers, not acceptances, made to college students in selected curricula and graduate programs during the normal recruiting period, September to June. Data are submitted by 159 U.S. colleges and universities. Overall, the final survey for 1975-76 finds that the number of offers for bachelor's candidates was 11% greater than in 1974-75. Volume at the master's level was up 8%, and offers to doctoral candidates were up 14%. CPC notes that the improved pace this year for bachelor's candidates was still 15% below the level of 1973-74, considered one of the better recruiting sessions since the boom years of the 1960's. The volume of offers at the bachelor's level to engineering candidates increased only 3%. However, these candidates remain the most heavily recruited with more than half the total bachelor's volume of offers. Other bachelor's areas got big increases in the number of offers: 31% for the hard sciences, 21% for business, and 12% for the humanities and social sciences. Companies and other sources of these offers all showed increases except, interestingly enough, the government. Business firms made 26% more offers to bachelor's candidates. Increases from other sources were 13% for manufacturing and industrial employers and 20% from nonprofit and educational institutions (nonteaching positions). By contrast, of6
C&EN Aug. 23, 1976
B.S. chemists' salaries rise 7.5% in 1976
Note: Data are starting salaries for B.S. chemists and chemical engineers. Source: College Placement Council
fers from the federal government declined 47%, and offers from state and local governments were down 29%. For specific degrees and degree levels, dollar offers in chemistry rose 7.5% at the bachelor's level to $1028
per month and 10.4% at the master's level to an unspecified figure. CPC does not give information on offers to doctoral candidates in chemistry. Similarly, in chemical engineering, dollar offers to bachelor's degree candidates went up 6.9% this year to $1279 per month, the second highest figure for any discipline behind petroleum engineering. At the master's level, offers for chemical engineers were at the top, rising 7.4% to $1407 a month. Chemical engineers also got the top dollar offers at the doctoral level with a 9% increase to $1793. Women graduates at the bachelor's level in both chemistry and chemical engineering got higher salary offers than did men, according to CPC, which does not give specific figures. Overall, the number of offers to women rose 59% at the bachelor's level, compared to a 4% rise for men. At the master's level, offers to women rose 29% compared with 5% for men. CPC gives no data on doctoral offers to women. D
Progress made in way > split water Progress continues to be made along the research front dealing with ways to get hydrogen by splitting water, especially using solar energy as the driving force. The latest advance comes from Pennsylvania State University, where scientists have achieved the highest practical efficiency yet reported on what is essentially an electrolysis process using a special titanium dioxide electrode to convert solar energy to electric current. The Penn State approach is one of a number of ways being studied for producing hydrogen from water directly—as opposed, for example, to use of nuclear heat and thermochemical cycles. Among other processes in early stages of research are use of organic ruthenium complexes to catalyze water splitting and biophotolysis of water using a photosynthetic bacterium. At Penn State, physicists John F. Houlihan and David P. Madacsi, chemist Edward J. Walsh, and professor of solid state science Laxman N. Mulay are working with a system involving a titanium dioxide anode immersed in 1M sodium hydroxide
and a platinum cathode in 0.5M sulfuric acid, the two separated by a glass frit. They have so far achieved an overall energy conversion efficiency of 0.8% with the basic system and have managed to push this to 1.2% with electrical biasing. Houlihan stresses that the group is taking data for the system under conditions approximating those that likely would be used for a large-scale operation. The work has been conducted outdoors using the sun, rather than in the lab with xenon lamps. And the anode has been left outdoors in a flat pan, without daily changes of electrolyte (and incidentally collecting Japanese beetles). Other researchers, Houlihan notes, have reported efficiencies slightly greater than 1%, but the electrodes used required expensive and hardto-make single crystals. The Penn State group uses a polycrystalline titanium dioxide electrode material— made "in minutes," essentially just by heating sheets of titanium in a gas flame with "some intermediate steps." The group also is working on finding even more economical and efficient materials. D
