ABSTRACT
For the past several years, the scientific press has blared with headlines of overproduction of Ph.D.s and a growing unemployment and underemployment of researchers. Universities in the United States awarded a record 27,230 Ph.D. degrees in science and engineering (S&E) in 1996—nearly a 3 percent increase from 1995—according to the National Science Foundation (NSF). By comparison, 19,894 S&E doctorates were awarded in 1987, a 27 percent change over the 10-year period. This expansion is far more than anyone ever projected and is in part due to a sharp increase in the number of students—both U.S. citizens and foreign students—who have been entering graduate school since the late 1980s. At the same time, because of a complex set of economic, demographic, and societal factors, the number of permanent research positions in academia, industry, and government has dwindled since the early 1980s.
