Personnel Shortage in Your Future?

Abstract

During the 1970s, the U.S. government abruptly reduced its support for graduate students -- but not before we faced an oversupply of Ph.D.s. The evidence for that glut was to be found in lagging salaries and new doctorates who faced unprecedented competition for teaching and research jobs. Since then, university teaching employment has only increased modestly, but the general expansion of the research and development enterprise has meant that the days of surplus labor are long gone. In fact, while shortages may exist from time to time in specialized areas of expertise that grow rapidly, many influential voices are now warning that the U.S. is likely to face general shortages of scientists and engineers by the mid-1990s. In this article, I will review some of the recent projections of labor market conditions for doctorate scientists and engineers, take a critical look at the warnings of impending shortages, and discuss what I think may be appropriate responses to the prospect of increased competition for scientists and engineers. First, let's agree that in its common usage is a relative concept. If I say I see an increasing shortage of Ph.D scientists and engineers, it means that I think they will be harder to find than they are now or were in the recent past. The problem with trying to measure shortage in some absolute sense is that hiring standards, and to some extent even personnel budgets, adapt to supply/demand conditions. One of the leading physics departments in the U.S. has reported that it is unable to fill a plasma physics position. This job would be attractive to many of the nation's plasma physicists, but it remained unfilled for several years because the department wanted only one of the very best and wasn't offering a package attractive enough. On the other hand, a survey of university engineering deans finds that the number of unfilled vacancies for faculty members is less than 10 percent of the total size of the engineering faculty. Such a vacancy rate is most useful as a relative concept -- if it goes down this means that the shortage is getting smaller. However, when we try to interpret job vacancy data in absolute terms we have problems. Aren't some number of job vacancies normal in an economy where specialists have to be recruited in a national market? It is tempting to try to measure shortage in an absolute sense, to sum up the number of scientists by employers and to compare this with the total who have the basic credentials. But as soon as you try to do this you can see how impractical it is. Which jobs require a doctorate? Is the number required affected when market conditions push wages up faster than inflation? Economists are fairly hostile to projections of shortages because they know that even in teaching and in R&D the demand for labor depends in part on the wage level. Studies indicate the supply of doctorates is also affected by the wage level, albeit with a lag. In a market economy, a tendency toward shortage can be expected to bring rising wages and job opportunities, and this in turn should bring more students into the field. The new scientists may not be as great as we would like (genius is always scarce) but competent workers become easier to find. Scenarios for Shortage Nevertheless, concern about a future shortage of scientists and engineers is appropriate. Several responsible sources have recently published projections that indicate that a shortage is the most plausible scenario 5 to 10 years from now: * The National Science Foundation projects that a shortage will occur unless there is a substantial increase in the number of graduate students supported (1). * The Association of American Universities predicts that a sharply increased demand will outstrip Ph.D. production before the turn of the century. It urges that the number of fellowships and traineeships be doubled to increase the number of Ph. …