editorially speaking Vannevar Bush: Fifty Years Later I t is ironic that the 50th anniversary year of Vannevar Bush's Report to President Truman entitled "Science the Endless Frontier", which put into motion the eminently successful current system of education of scientists in this country occurs a t a time when serious questions are being asked about the usefulness of t h a t verv Bush " svstem. " viewed his proposal to establish a national research foundation (later to be called the National Science Foundation) as a "social compact." Judgment of scientific merit would be delegated to expert peers in return for scientific progress, which would ultimately benefit the nation in terms of scientific needs-militarv security, economic productivity, and enhanced quality of life. ~ u s wanted h the funding of basic research intertwined with training, and preferred to use univcrsit~esfbr thii purpose rarh&thnn industrial or national labs. Rush viewcd college and univcrsit\ scien. tists a s teachers and inuestigators.~ebelieved universitybased research would uniquely encourage and engage the next generation of scientists a s no other institutional arrangement could. Bush did not trust industry's commitment to basic research, an instinct that proved prophetic. The academic reserve of scientists (PhD's in training and postdoctoral students) that existed before World War 11, and upon which the United States could draw for its needs, which were primarily associated with defense efforts, was probably one of the defining factors in Bush's suggested strategy. Currently, that reserve of talent has gotten so large that it is the obvious throttle in the pipeline slowing the continued development of the university research enterprise. Since 1977, the rate a t which we have trained new scientists exceeds an average of 4% annually Since 1987, the "science work force9'-PhD's--has grown a t three times the rate of the general labor supply. Temporary positions for postdoctoral scientists have grown even faster (over 5% per year since 1989). To compound the problem, the 1990 Immigration Reform Act resulted in a tripling of job-lmicd vlsas, wirh scimtists representing ncnrlg onethird of the total. In 1079, tu.0 of evwy thrcc posrdoctoral scientists were IJS-born: in 1992, the ratlo \\as about on+: to one. Over that period, the cohort of postdoctoral scientists grew from 18,000 to 33,000. Adding to the coincidence of events that have compounded one another is the admission of 20,000 Chinese scientists in a ten-year period, the sudden and unexpected availability of Russian scientists, the elimination of many industrial laboratories as a result of downsizing, changes in the mandatory retirement age for faculty, and the disappearance of the Cold War, which all but eliminated the need for scientists for national security purposes. Is it any wonder that postdoctoral scientists have been called the m i a a n t workers of today's high-tech society? What once was reservoir of enthusiastic talent is ~~
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becoming a dumping ground for credentialed and capable scientists exiled from the main stream of their discidines. From a broader point of view, the problems facing U.S. science are those of our societv: a n imnosine deficit that is . shrinking discretionary funding; the end of the Cold War, which has refocused spending for national security; and a robust science work force that can no longer expand. The business world's response to these societal problems is, basically, downsizing, which often means the elimination of large segments of the work force, usually a t the middlemanagement level. The initial academic response to these same problems is either to insist on more resources being made available, usually through federal agencies, in a n attempt to maintain the status quo, or to-engage in some form of "academic birth control." The former stratew is unrealistic because it just perpetuates the problem; &re will never be enough research professorships in the academic world for every aspiring PhD produced in a discipline. The latter strategy will invariably decrease the flow of truly new knowledee in a disci~line.a Drocess that will eventually affect theviability ofbur t&&ology base. Some argue for a third view, namely, expanding the career options for PhD's by altering the details of the training process. If there was a flaw in the Bush plan, it was to be found in the implicit premise that a n ever-growing supply of scientists would stimulate new demand for scientific expertise, not just in government and universities, but in industry and the ~rofessionalvenues. Bush probably never expected that; because of federal funding, university scientists would in 50 vears ~ r o d n c enot iust the national reserve of scientists he sought to develop, but a growing number of young PhD's, many of whom wanted nothing more--and nothine less-than to be university scientists themselves. Bush probably never guessed a t the efficiency of the Drocess for the education of scientists he set into motion. The absence of a plan to complement supply with demand is one source ofthe inherent s t r u c t u r ~ l ~ r o b l ein m American science todav. Young PhD's do not receive a sufficiently versatile trai;ing to ido anything other than academic scientific research. Science as a way of knowing is clearly a sound foundation for a variety of careers. Numerous opportunities exist that can use the skills of the scientist while rewardingcreativity, autonomy, problem-solving, industriousness, and the yearning for knowledge-all the characteristics associated with well-trained scientists. The challenge for academe is to refine or adapt Vannevar Bush's original "social contract" into a new one, more appropriate for the 21st .. . century. JJL
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Volume 72 Number 12 December 1995
1057
