Some Data on the Doctorate

Abstract

IT HAS been said that the greatest need in this country now is for highly trained experts. Graduateschool enrollments have decreased greatly as a result of the war. Presumably, after the war the graduatestudent group will greatly expand; and it will include persons of diverse training, experience, and maturity, preparing for a postwar world whose needs for men with advanced training may well be somewhat different from needs in the past. Some bringing together of data regarding graduate programs as they have been, with reference to possible adaptation for the future, thus seems appropriate at this time. In accordance with this opinion, certain elementary facts regarding work for the doctorate in this country are reported here, and more detailed information from one midwestern university whose graduate program appears to be representative is included. In total, important questions of educational policy appear to be raised, especially with reference to postwar graduate work. The first question to be considered is simply the age of obtaining the doctorate. Biographies of persons who had received their doctoral degrees within ten years of the publication date of the source volume were scrutinized in American Men of Science (1938), Leaders in Education (1941), and Directory of American Scholars (I943). This period-ten years-was set arbitrarily since the inclusion of persons getting their doctorates earlier would have excluded a disproportionate number of those who received the degree at older ages. For instance, few men who prior to 1910 received their doctorates at the age of forty or over were still living to be included in the I938 American Men of Science. Starred scientists (men voted by other men in their fields to be most outstanding) in the I938, and in the first, volume of American Men of Science (i906) were also covered, and the biographies of 200 German scientists from the golden period of German science, before I9I4, were gathered from Who's Who in Science-International. 1 The early ages for this last group are indeed noteworthy (see the last row in Table I). The ten-year limitation was impossible with the starred scientists since few men are starred within the ten years following their doctorates. Close scrutiny of the detailed data regarding the starred cases given in Table I suggested that a larger proportion of