PSAC PANEL ON SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL MANPOWER Allen V. Astin, Director, National Bureau of Standards Homer D. Babbidge, Jr., President, University of Connecticut Carey Croneis, Chancellor, Rice University J. Herbert Hollomon, Assistant Secretary for Science and Technology, Department of Commerce Kenneth H. Klipstein, President, American Cyanamid Company George S. Schairer, Vice President (Research), The Boeing Company James A. Shannon, Director, National Institutes of Health William Shockley, Director, Shockley Transistor Unit, Clevite Corporation Frederick E. Terman, Vice President, Stanford University John W. Tukey, Professor of Mathematics, Princeton University Eric Walker, President, Pennsylvania State University Dael Wolfle, Executive Officer, American Association for the Advancement of Science Edwin R. Gilliland, Professor of Chemical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Chairman) Observers to the Panel James R. Killian, Jr., Chairman of the Corporation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Alan T. Waterman, Director, National Science Foundation Technical Assistant to the Panel Edward Wenk, Jr., Technical Assistant, Office of Science and Technology PRESIDENT'S SCIENCE ADVISORY COMMITTEE John Bardeen, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Physics, University Harvey Brooks, Dean, Division of Engineering and Applied Physics, Harvard Paul M. Doty, Professor of Chemistry, Harvard University Richard L. Garwin, Watson Research Laboratory, Columbia UniversityInternational Business Machines Edwin R. Gilliland, Professor of Chemical Engineering, Massachusetts Donald F. Hornig, Professor of Chemistry, Princeton University Frank Press, Director, Seismological Laboratory, California Institute of Edward M. Purcell, Professor of Physics, Harvard University John W. Tukey, Professor of Mathematics, Princeton University Jerrold R. Zacharias, Professor of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Jerome B. Wiesner, Special Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, The White House (Chairman) THE COUNCIL OF GRADUATE SCHOOLS IN THE UNITED STATES, Hon. WAYNE MORSE, U.S. Senate, Washington, D.C. DEAR SENATOR MORSE: I am sending you herewith 15 reprints of an article I recently published on the results of the first 3 years of title IV of the National Defense Education Act. You may wish to distribute them to the members of the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare. Sincerely yours, GUSTAVE O. ARLT, President. EXHIBIT X Reprinted for private circulation from the JOURNAL OF HIGHER EDUCATION, Vol. XXXIV, No. 5, May 1963 The First Ph.D.'s under Title IV Baccalaureate to Doctorate in Three Years By GUSTAVE Arlt IN SEPTEMBER, 1959, one thousand students who had been awarded three-year fellowships in new or expanded Ph.D. programs under Title IV of the National Defense Education Act began their graduate studies. In September, 1960, an additional 96 students who had already completed one year of graduate study were awarded two-year fellowships under the same auspices. By the spring of 1962, the original number of 1,096 fellowship holders had dwindled to 755 through the resignation of 341 of the grantees.1 In May of 1962 the United States Office of Education asked the 755 surviving fellows when they expected to complete all requirements and receive the Ph.D. degree. One hundred and two replied that they had every expectation of receiving their degrees in June, 1962. Now ideally, it can scarcely be regarded as an impressive performance when only 14 per cent of an entering class of graduate students complete their doctoral requirements in three consecutive years. By practical standards, however, it is not only highly impressive but virtually phenomenal. According to Berelson, whose statistics are about as reliable as any, the median elapsed time from the beginning of graduate work to the award of the degree is five years. Considering the additional fact that 75 per cent of these Title IV Fellows had received their bachelor's degrees in June, 1959, their record becomes even more surprising. For, again according to Berelson, the median elapsed time between the award of the bac It is not to be inferred that all these students withdrew from graduate study. Many of them resigned in order to transfer to departments in which Title IV Fellowships were not available, some even to accept other forms of financial aid. "Bernard Berelson, Graduate Education in the United States (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1960), p. 158. GUSTAVE ARLT is president of the Council of Graduate Schools in the United calaureate and the doctorate is seven years in the arts and ten years in education and engineering." In order to ascertain whether any factors, aside from substantial fellowship stipends, contributed to the rapid completion of the doctorate by a considerable number of students, a questionnaire was prepared and sent to them. It dealt in detail with their preparation for graduate study, the language requirements for the degree, program requirements, including the dissertation, summer activities, and present employment status. Additionally, the respondents were asked to give such further information regarding their progress as they believed to be pertinent. Most of them did this, and many of their comments are interesting and revealing. Of the 102 students to whom the questionnaire was sent, 96 responded. All of these had completed the formal requirements, including submission of their dissertations, at the time of their responses but, as might have been expected, some had been too sanguine about the date of the award. Two had received the Ph.D. degree in June, 1961; one in January, 1962; 60 in June; 14 in August; and 5 in December. The remaining 14 now expect their degrees in June, 1963, or earlier. This makes the record a little less impressive than it first appeared, but still well worth studying. THE institutions which awarded the degrees reflect the geographic distribution and the wide range in size and character intended by the National Defense Education Act. The list of schools of baccalaureate origin of the fellows shows no startling deviation from the common American pattern in which approximately one-third of the graduate students remain in the school in which they did their undergraduate work while two-thirds go elsewhere. Some of the respondents believe that they profited by remaining in a familiar environment; on the other hand, none of the students who changed schools believed that they had been handicapped by the change. The fields of study in which the 96 degrees were awarded roughly cover the spectrum of the the graduate school. It is evident from the numerical distribution that Title IV awards in the first year of the Act were made on the broad, across-the-board basis implied, if not explicit, in the original intent of the Act. The list even includes two fieldsthose of classics and theology-which were specifically eliminated in subsequent years. The similar numbers-51 in the natural sciences and 45 in the humanities and social sciences-show that, under comparable conditions, the doctorate in the latter can be completed as rapidly as in the former. This tends to confirm Berelson's conclusion that, while the total elapsed time between the baccalaureate and the doctorate is almost twice as long in the humanities as in the sciences, the actual period of full-time graduate study is practically the same. It should be added, however, that the three students who completed their work in the shortest |