EDITORIAL
Supply and Demand of Analytical Ph.D.'s According to Peter Gwynne in an article in the Feb. 22, 1988, issue of The Scientist, "The number of Ph.D.'s in analytical chemistry awarded at U.S. universities has generally increased during the past decade. However, this supply has fallen short of the demand for analytical chemists by both industry and academia." Reasons given for this increased demand include advances in basic chemistry, new technology, and the broadening nature of present-day research, all of which require the specialized talents of the analytical chemist. Although the growth rate has increased significantly relative to that of all chemistry Ph.D.'s, it is still too slow to meet the rapidly rising industrial demand. Of equal concern is that this demand will draw many analytical chemists away from academia. Given the strong need for analytical Ph.D.'s, what can universities do to fulfill this demand? The obvious answer is to increase faculty positions in the discipline and to provide strong research support to sustain a viable program. Herein lies the problem. Over the past few decades, several major universities have discontinued graduate programs in ana-
lytical chemistry, so that presently only 12 schools in the United States produce more than half of all analytical Ph.D.'s. It is essential that chemistry faculty in these nonparticipating departments be made aware of the many exciting opportunities for reinstituting analytical graduate programs. Providing adequate funds for analytical research at this time is not a trivial problem. Federal agency funding still remains by far the major source, and even though the 1989 R&D budget proposal calls for a 13% increase to a total of $9.2 billion for academic R&D, the realities are that only a very small fraction will be funneled into individual research grants in analytical chemistry. To solve the problem of producing a sufficient number of analytical Ph.D.'s to fill the growing needs of industry, it is essential that industry and academia get together to mount a unified and aggressive campaign and that future funding reflect the importance of this need.
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ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY, VOL. 60, NO. 9, MAY 1, 1988 · 555 A
