stitute of Technology say that their industrial support has held fairly constant up to now, but they anticipate that it will increase. What happens to faculty when funds grow tighter has an enormous effect on the long-term quality of a chemistry or chemical engineering department. And it is a matter that is handled in a great variety of ways by the schools contacted. At some schools, such as Georgia Tech, salaries are not rising as fast as the cost of living, but the chemical engineering department is able to expand its faculty positions. At other schools, such as Minnesota, just the opposite is true—salaries continue to rise while faculty cuts are taking place. MIT is expanding its faculty and raising salaries, and several schools, among them UCLA and SUNY-Buffalo, have a separate budget for faculty salaries that is not affected by tightening of operation budgets or loss of outside funding.
If there are any general trends with regard to faculty, one of them is probably that most salaries are not increasing as rapidly as department chairmen would like to see. In fact, Dr. Joseph T. Vanderslice of the University of Maryland's chemistry department says that he would be seriously concerned about Maryland's ability to keep its best professors, considering the low salaries the school is obliged to pay them, if it were not that all other schools are in the same boat and there is no place else that his professors can go and be paid the salaries they deserve. Only two of the departments contacted told of recent faculty cutbacks in chemistry. An equal number spoke of recent universitywide faculty cutbacks that did not affect their departments. Fully half of the schools are hiring faculty, at least temporarily or to fill vacancies. Many schools, including Southern California, Georgia Tech,
Number of chemical engineering (left) and chemistry (above) majors has remained relatively constant, but that of nonmajors in chemistry has soared
Bucknell, and MIT, currently are expanding their faculties or have done so within the past year. Research funding for new faculty, though considerably harder to get than it was a few years ago, is still generally available, according to these department chairmen. The picture for the future that most of these chairmen present is one of cautious optimism. Graduate schools are smaller, perhaps permanently so. Federal funds for graduate support or for major equipment purchases are not likely to return. The current pressure of large freshman enrollments is probably temporary, but when it is gone the problem of replacing worn out and obsolete equipment will be most acute, the department chairmen say. But the fund cuts have already been sustained and things will undoubtedly be better in the future for many schools. There is some hope for increased industrial support for chemistry programs, and for the most part, faculties have remained intact.
How college faculties have fared in the recent tight budget period varies from school to school
Reforms urged in graduate education Major changes in U.S. graduate education must be made, new elements must be added, and the "horizons of concern" must be expanded "if graduate schools are to meet fully the emerging needs of society in the last quarter of the 20th century," says a national panel of leading educators. After more than 18 months of study, including a mail survey of graduate schools, the Panel on Alternate Approaches to Graduate Education has issued a 20,000-word report containing 26 specific—and in some cases controversyprovoking—recommendations, plus suggestions for implementation and projections about the future of graduate schools in the U.S. (C&EN, Dec. 3, page 18). The 15-member panel was appointed in the fall of 1971 by two organizations reflecting a broad range of graduate school opinion: the Council of Graduate Schools in the United States and the Graduate Record Examinations Board. The council's 314 members include universities awarding 98% of U.S. doctoral degrees; the board sets policies affecting the entrance requirements of most graduate institutions through its writing of entrance examinations. Chairman of the panel was Dr. J. Boyd Page, president of the council. Panel members were drawn from a wide variety of backgrounds and disciplines, including several with scientific backgrounds: Dr. Page (formerly a soil chemist); Dr. Daniel Alpert, director of the Center for Advanced Study, University of Illinois (physics); Dr. Robert F. Kruh, dean of the graduate school at Kansas State University (chemistry); Dr. W. Edward Lear, dean of the school of engineering, University of Alabama (electrical engineering); and Dr. Rochus E. Vogt, professor of physics at California Institute of Technology. Chief author of the report was another panel member, Dr. Benjamin DeMott, professor of English at Amherst College. Staff support was provided by the Educational Testing Service (ETS), Princeton, N.J., under the direction of I. Bruce Hamilton. Copies of the report, titled "Scholarship for Society," are available for $2.00 from ETS. A major objective of the panel's recommendations is "to open more channels between universities and the world outside the universities, including industry," Dr. Kruh of Kansas State notes. Among the panel's recommendations: • Graduate students should be required to spend time working outside the university in their fields. • More experts who may not possess usual academic credentials should be added to graduate school faculties. • Research and publication should Dec. 24, 1973 C&EN
35
no longer be the single criterion for evaluating graduate schools or their faculty members. • "Preferential treatment" in recruitment, admission, and financial aid should be given to groups hitherto discriminated against. • Each major discipline should periodically make a fundamental re-examination of its basic frames of reference, research priorities, aims, and social uses. • Graduate schools should prepare and reorient themselves to fulfill a pivotal role in societal planning. The panel urges that "in every discipline, and especially at the Ph.D. level, graduate training should include, for all candidates who do not already possess such experience, a deliberate and significant component of discipline-related work outside the university walls." This recommendation is aimed at several problems, perhaps more widespread among humanities and social science students but not absent from science students. "We don't want people to say, so to speak, 'Here's another highly trained idiot coming out of graduate school,'" Mr. Hamilton of ETS tells C&EN. "There are too many overtrained students—who after eight or 10 years of training are sometimes thrown on the market without any real background and preparation for the real world." Some are prepared only for a career in academic research, although job opportunities and social needs now focus on other directions, and they lack skills and experience in working with or supervising others. Dr. Page and Dr. Kruh emphasize that they do not advocate an absolute rule or single pattern. One student may spend a summer, a semester, or more working outside, whereas another may not need to at all. Dr. Kruh stresses that there is no intention to downgrade or harm academic research. "I think we need to insist that a very strong corps of chemical researchers, for example, work at the very frontier of science." However, he points out, many chemists who receive graduate degrees will be doing problem-solving work, rather than basic research. "We have been very stereotyped, forcing students all through the same narrow mold," he says. "In the 1960's chemistry could be very discipline-oriented. A student used to be able to get a Ph.D. and go out and continue doing what his professor was doing. There were many academic jobs available. "The situation is no longer so," Dr. Kruh continues. He and other panel members see a need to enhance students' preparation for problem-solving, "to increase the breadth of students' outlook and make them aware of the interactions between chemistry and other fields—to make them aware of what's going on in industry, government labs, and so on." 36
C&EN Dec. 24, 1973
A second' recommendation of the and that in 1967 only 9% of U.S. full panel that will increase the ties of the professors were women. graduate school to society is that more The panel terms this situation the experts with a record of successful result of a "fundamentally sexist and achievement in business, government, discriminatory society." It advocates or industry be given teaching appoint- recruitment efforts, distribution of fiments on graduate faculties, whether nancial aid, evaluation of all relevant or not they possess the usual academic background and qualifications of canqualifications. Such experts might re- didates for admission—not just conceive appointments outside the regular ventional academic criteria—and adacademic ladder and "could be of im- aptation of course sequences and other mense influence in redirecting academ- requirements to meet the needs of new ic energies toward the servicing of so- groups of students and "to correct earcial needs." Graduate departments lier biases in admission policy." should also develop ongoing, technical Dr. Page stresses that by "preferenconsultative panels of nonuniversity- tial treatment," the panel definitely based experts to help guide curricular does not mean, for example, excluding innovation and other activities. a white student so as to take a lessIn an age when "publish or perish" is qualified black student. But, he points still a prevalent rule, the panel advo- out, qualifications can be judged by cates developing alternative standards various criteria, and if there are two to volume of research and publication fully qualified students, the institution for evaluating graduate institutions must choose between them on some and for making decisions on faculty basis. There is no intention to waive tenure, promotion, and salary in- the rules, or set separate lower stancreases. For example, recognition dards, he says. Extra time to meet should also be given to excellent teach- standards, counseling, and remedial ing, development of improved instruc- courses could be offered, however. tion methods and curriculums, leaderA further recommendation of the ship on academic or public service panel is that each discipline periodicalcommittees, and development of inno- ly re-examine its basic frames of refervative interdisciplinary projects in re- ence. For example, possible new and search or teaching. The panel stresses neglected opportunities in basic rethat "noteworthy intellectual contribu- search, teaching methods, relations tions" can be made in many ways. with other disciplines, and social uses "There is so much trivial research of the discipline should be examined. A key role here is envisaged for proand trivial publication because people want to advance, to get up the aca- fessional associations, and Dr. Page demic ladder—and are playing the and Mr. Hamilton cite as a model for game the way it's been played," Dr. others what has been done in chemisKruh observes. "In academic games- try by a number of American Chemical manship, there's been too much ten- Society committees. "The one discidency for all academic institutions to pline where probably there has been use the same criteria. We need a diver- more self-study and examination of its sity of criteria" to fit the needs of dif- role than any other is chemistry," Mr. Hamilton says. "Many other disciferent institutions. Certainly one of the more controver- plines haven't done it and have grown sial recommendations of the panel is willy-nilly, with no self-analysis." that calling for "preferential treatThe panel believes that graduate ment" in graduate education for groups schools and graduate faculty members previously discriminated against. The should become leaders in long-range panel's report notes that fewer than societal planning in the current era of 3.5% of graduate enrollments in inte- social changes and rapid transformagrated institutions are black students, tions of institutions. As counselors to that in 1970 fewer than 14% of the doc- political and cultural leaders, graduate toral degrees awarded went to women, schools could play a pivotal role in shaping future policies. However, Dr. Page: work outside universities Page emphasizes, the panel is not advocating that the university itself become an agent of social change. Dr. Page points out that the panel's name was "Alternate Approaches to Graduate Education," not "Revolutionary Approaches." Almost everything the panel recommends is being tried by some institution. Through disseminating the report to graduate school deans and faculty members, the panel hopes to arouse wide discussion and gradual implementation of its recommendations. "It's something like throwing a pebble in the lake," Mr. Hamilton notes, "it takes a long time, over a period of years, to get each department and university to make decisions and changes
