Booms, busts, and the world of ideas: Enrollment pressures and the challenge of specialization

Osiris

Volumn 27, Issue 1, 2012, Pages 276-302

  Kaiser, David ^a  

^a MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84874697818     PISSN: 03697827     EISSN: 19338287     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/667831     Document Type: Article

References (169)

1. See, e.g., articles by Robert Kohler and others in the "Focus" section "The Generalist Vision in the History of Science," Isis 96 (2005): 224-51, and references therein.
2. See also Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, Objectivity (New York, 2007), 35-6, 47-50.
3. Price, Little Science, Big Science (New York, 1963), chap. 1.
4. See also Price, Science since Babylon (New Haven, Conn., 1961).
5. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, 1962).
6. On the early modern bubbles, see esp.
7. Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1988), chap. 5.
8. Anne Goldgar, Tulipmania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age (Chicago, 2007).
9. Richard S. Westfall, Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton (New York, 1980), 861.
10. Thomas Levenson, Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist (Boston, 2009), 244-5.
11. Moretti, Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for a Literary History (New York, 2005), 14; emphasis in the original. My thanks to Michael Gordin for bringing Moretti's book to my attention.
12. See esp. Kohler, "The Ph.D. Machine: Building on the Collegiate Base," Isis 81 (1990): 638-62.
13. Steven Shapin, "The Image of the Man of Science," in The Cambridge History of Science, vol. 4, Eighteenth-Century Science, ed. Roy Porter (New York, 2003), 159-83.
14. Shapin, The Scientific Life: A Moral History of a Late Modern Vocation (Chicago, 2008).
15. On credentialing, see also Frank Newman, "The Era of Expertise: The Growth, the Spread, and Ultimately the Decline of the National Commitment to the Concept of the Highly Trained Expert, 1945 to 1970" (PhD diss., Stanford Univ., 1981).
16. The statistics on degrees per age cohort were calculated from data in the following sources: on US bachelor's degrees.
17. Douglas L. Adkins, The Great American Degree Machine: An Economic Analysis of the Human Resource Output of Higher Education (Berkeley, Calif., 1975), 190-4, with additional data supplied by Roman Czujko, director of the American Institute of Physics (AIP)
18. Statistical Research Center, personal communication to the author, 19 January 2005; on US PhDs, National Research Council, Century of Doctorates (cit. fig. 2 caption), 7.
19. US population cohorts, Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat, World Population Prospects: The 2004 Revision, available at http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/WPP2004/WPP2004_Volume3.htm (accessed 30 January 2012).
20. World Urbanization Prospects: The 2003 Revision, available at http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/wup2003/WUP2003Report.pdf (accessed 30 January 2012).
21. On changes in the US labor force between 1950 and 1963, see Impact of Federal Research and Development Policies on Scientific and Technical Manpower: Hearings Before the Subcomm. on Employment and Manpower of the S. Comm. on Labor and Public Welfare, 89th Cong. 142 (1965) (testimony of Bowen C. Dees, associate dean of planning, National Science Foundation).
22. Based on data in the series of National Science Foundation reports titled American Science Manpower (Washington, D.C., 1959-71).
23. On the National Register, see the form letter from Henry A. Barton (director, AIP), 16 November 1950, a copy of which is in LIS, box 1, folder "Amer. Inst. of Physics (AIP), General".
24. "Scientific Manpower Studies," in The Third Annual Report of the National Science Foundation (1953), 26-33, available at http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/1953/annualreports/start.htm (accessed 18 January 2012).
25. David Kaiser, "Cold War Requisitions, Scientific Manpower, and the Production of American Physicists after World War II," Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 33 (2002): 131-59, on 134-6, 157-9.
26. See also Spencer Weart, "The Physics Business in America, 1919-1940: A Statistical Reconnaissance," in The Sciences in American Context: New Perspectives, ed. Nathan Reingold (Washington, D.C., 1979), 295-358.
27. On the baby boom, see Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage, rev. ed. (New York, 1993), 11-21, 164.
28. Burton R. Clark, Places of Inquiry: Research and Advanced Education in Modern Universities (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1995).
29. Yves Gingras, Physics and the Rise of Scientific Research in Canada, trans. Peter Keating (Montreal, 1991).
30. See also Clark, ed., The Research Foundations of Graduate Education: Germany, Britain, France, United States, Japan (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1993), pt. 2.
31. Jean Babcock et al., "American Influence on British Higher Education: Science, Technology, and the Problem of University Expansion, 1945-1963," Minerva 41 (2003): 327-46.
32. Based on data in Roger Bilboul, ed., Retrospective Index to Theses of Great Britain and Ireland, 1716-1950 (Santa Barbara, Calif., 1975).
33. Geoffrey M. Paterson and Joan E. Hardy, Index to Theses Accepted for Higher Degrees by the Universities of Great Britain and Ireland and the Council for National Academic Awards (London, 1951).
34. Gingras, Physics and the Rise (cit. n. 10), appendixes.
35. The Union List of Higher Degree Theses in Australian University Libraries (Hobart, 1961-91).
36. The numbers of US institutions granting physics PhDs were computed from data in the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Database, accessed via http://www.proquest.com.libproxy.mit.edu/en-US/products/dissertations/andavailablefromhttp://www.proquest.com.
37. See esp. Daniel Kevles, The Physicists: The History of a Scientific Community in Modern America, 3rd ed. (Cambridge, 1995), chap. 25.
38. Stuart W. Leslie, The Cold War and American Science: The Military-Industrial-Academic Complex at M.I.T. and Stanford (New York, 1993), chap. 9.
39. Roger Geiger, Research and Relevant Knowledge: American Research Universities since World War II (New York, 1993), chaps. 8-9.
40. Kelly Moore, Disrupting Science: Social Movements, American Scientists, and the Politics of the Military, 1945-1975 (Princeton, N.J., 2008), chaps. 5-6.
41. Calculated from data in National Science Foundation, Science and Engineering Degrees (cit. fig. 2 caption).
42. "Placement Register, Statistical Comparison, APS-AAPT Annual Joint Meeting, 1963 to 1969," n.d., ca. 1970, and "Summary: Placement Service Register, the American Physical Society Meeting, Washington, D.C.," 3 June 1971, both in AIP-EMD, box 13, folder "Placement Literature".
43. "Supply and Demand," October 1970, in AIP-EMD, box 13, folder "Placement Service Advisory Committee."
44. See also Kaiser, "Cold War Requisitions" (cit. n. 8), 151-2.
45. See esp. Kenneth J. Arrow and William M. Capron, "Dynamic Shortages and Price Rises: The Engineer-Scientist Case," Quarterly Journal of Economics 73 (1959): 292-308.
46. Richard B. Freeman, The Market for College-Trained Manpower: A Study in the Economics of Career Choice (Cambridge, 1971).
47. Glen G. Cain Freeman, and W. Lee Hansen, Labor Market Analysis of Engineers and Technical Workers (Baltimore, 1973).
48. Larry R. Leslie and Ronald L. Oaxaca, "Scientist and Engineer Supply and Demand," in Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research, vol. 9, ed. John Smart (New York, 1993), 154-211.
49. National Research Council, Forecasting Demand and Supply of Doctoral Scientists and Engineers: Report of a Workshop on Methodology (Washington, D.C., 2000), chap. 2.
50. National Research Council, Forecasting Demand and Supply (cit. n. 16), 1.
51. Shiller, Irrational Exuberance, 2nd ed. (Princeton, N.J., 2005), 17.
52. Ibid., chap. 4, quotation on 81.
53. MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets (Cambridge, 2006), chap. 7.
54. DeWitt, Soviet Professional Manpower: Its Education, Training, and Supply (Washington, D.C., 1955).
55. Korol, Soviet Education for Science and Technology (Cambridge, 1957).
56. DeWitt, Education and Professional Employment in the USSR (Washington, D.C., 1961). On the composition of the reports, see also
57. David Kaiser, "The Physics of Spin: Sputnik Politics and American Physicists in the 1950s," Soc. Res. 73 (2006): 1227-9.
58. For other examples of hype over "scientific manpower" and its effects on enrollments during the Cold War, see
59. Kaiser, "Cold War Requisitions" (cit. n. 8), 142-51.
60. Korol, Soviet Education (cit. n. 20), 407-8.
61. DeWitt, Soviet Professional Manpower, 8, 26-38, 259-61.
62. DeWitt, Education and Professional Employment, 39, 549-53.
63. Kaiser, "Physics of Spin," 1229-30 (All cit. n. 20).
64. Benjamin Fine, "Russia Is Overtaking U.S. in Training of Technicians," New York Times, November 7, 1954.
65. "Red Technical Graduates Are Double Those in U.S.," Washington Post, November 14, 1955.
66. The New York Times article responded to a preview of DeWitt's first book-length report: DeWitt, "Professional and Scientific Personnel in the U.S.S.R.," Science 120, no. 3105 (1954): 1-4.
67. On further repetition of the "two to three times" claim by public officials and journalists, see Kaiser, "Physics of Spin" (cit. n. 20), 1231-3.
68. Hutchisson, memorandum to American Institute of Physics Advisory Committee on Education, 4 December 1957, in AIP-EH 3:3.
69. Bethe, "Notes for a Talk on Science Education," n.d., ca. April 1958, in Hans A. Bethe Papers, box 5, folder 4, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. On Rabi's meeting with Eisenhower on October 15, 1957, see
70. Barbara Barksdale Clowse, Brainpower for the Cold War: The Sputnik Crisis and the National Defense Education Act of 1958 (Westport, Conn., 1981), 11.
71. Robert Divine, The Sputnik Challenge: Eisenhower's Response to the Soviet Satellite (New York, 1993), 12-3.
72. Zuoyue Wang, In Sputnik's Shadow: The President's Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (New Brunswick, N.J., 2008), 75-7.
73. Clowse, Brainpower for the Cold War (cit. n. 24), 91, 87.
74. On grants and fellowships funded by the act.
75. see ibid., 151-5, 162-7.
76. Divine, Sputnik Challenge (cit. n. 24), 164-6.
77. Geiger, Research and Relevant Knowledge (cit. n. 13), chap. 6.
78. The data on PhDs in physical sciences and engineering come from National Research Council, Century of Doctorates (cit. fig. 2 caption), 12.
79. Kaiser, "Physics of Spin" (cit. n. 20), 1237-9.
80. On employment patterns and changing personae, see
81. David Kaiser, "The Postwar Suburbanization of American Physics," Amer. Quart. 56 (2004): 851-88.
82. On epistemic effects of the bubble, see Kaiser, "Whose Mass Is It Anyway? Particle Cosmology and the Objects of Theory," Soc. Stud. Sci. 36 (2006): 533-64.
83. Kaiser, "Turning Physicists into Quantum Mechanics," Phys. World 20 (May 2007): 28-33.
84. Kaiser, How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival (New York, 2011).
85. Unsigned memorandum, "Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Department of Physics, August 1928," in Department of Physics records, 4:22, in UCB.
86. Martin Summerfield, entry of 10 March 1939, in Caltech "Bone Books," box 1, 3:60, in CIT.
87. Darrow, "Physics as a Science and an Art," Phys. Today 4 (November 1951): 6-11, on 6. On changing comprehensive exams, see also
88. P. C. Martin et al., "Proposed Changes in Oral Examination Procedures," 10 November 1959, in Department of Physics records, "Correspondence: 1958-60," box A-P, folder "1959-1960 agenda, dept. luncheon," Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Mass.
89. Charles Zemach to Burton Moyer, 29 July 1963, in Department of Physics records, 4:22, in UCB; correspondence and exams from 1948-9 in LIS box 9, folder "Misc. problems"; comprehensive exams from 1962 in Felix Bloch papers, 10:19, Stanford University Archives, Palo Alto, Calif.
90. W. C. Kelly, "Survey of Education in Physics in Universities of the United States," unpublished report, 1 December 1962, app. 19, available in AIP-EMD, box 9. Goudsmit, 1972 annual report, in PR-AR.
91. See also Price, Science since Babylon (cit. n. 2), chap. 5.
92. Diana Crane, Invisible Colleges: Diffusion of Knowledge in Scientific Communities (Chicago, 1972).
93. John Ziman, Knowing Everything about Nothing: Specialization and Change in Research Careers (New York, 1987).
94. Tony Becher, Academic Tribes and Territories: Intellectual Enquiry and the Cultures of Disciplines (Bristol, 1989).
95. Stella Keenan and Pauline Atherton, The Journal Literature of Physics: A Comprehensive Study Based on "Physics Abstracts," report no. AIP-DRP PA1 (New York, 1964).
96. Keenan S and F. G. Brickwedde, Journal Literature Covered by "Physics Abstracts" in 1965, report no. ID 68-1 (New York, 1968).
97. L. J. Anthony, H. East, and M. J. Slater, "The Growth of the Literature of Physics," Reports on Progress in Physics 32 (1969): 709-67.
98. In 1965, Physics Abstracts included complete coverage of 82 journals, of which 17 were published in the United States and 13 in the Soviet Union; the remaining 413 journals scanned by the Physics Abstracts staff contributed less than 23 percent of all the abstracts published that year.
99. See Keenan and Brickwedde, Journal Literature, 6, and app. 4, on 22.
100. Minutes of Advisory Committee on Publication Policy of the American Physical Society, 6 January 1956, in AIP-HAB 57:7.
101. Goudsmit, 1951-74 annual reports, in PR-AR.
102. R. P. Rohrer (president of Lancaster Press) to Henry Barton, 27 May 1949, in AIP-HAB 79:13.
103. Elmer Hutchisson, memorandum of 20 September 1957, and unsigned memorandum, "Study of the Physics Publishing Problem," 18 February 1958, both in AIP-EH 14:3.
104. R. E. Maizell, "Minutes of AIP Committee to Study Physics Publishing Problems," 18 April 1959, in AIP-EH 14:2.
105. The quotations are from Goudsmit to Leonard Schiff, 2 September 1966, in LIS box 4, folder "Physical Review." The data on numbers of submissions and pages published come from PR-AR. On staffing, see
106. E. L. Hill (editor of Physical Review) to Karl K. Darrow (secretary of the APS), 14 October 1950, in AIP-HAB 32:6.
107. Goudsmit, 1973 annual report, in PR-AR; APS Council meeting minutes of 27 November 1953 and 26 November 1954, in AIP-HAB 79:1.
108. See also Simon Pasternack (assistant editor, Physical Review) to Leonard Schiff, 22 January 1958 and 27 June 1963, in LIS box 4, folder "Physical Review."
109. Goudsmit, 1956 annual report, in PR-AR.
110. W. B. Mann to Goudsmit, 11 January 1955, in AIP-HAB 79:14.
111. Leonard B. Loeb (Berkeley) to Goudsmit, 19 April 1955, in Raymond Thayer Birge papers, box 19, folder "Loeb, Leonard Benedict," in UCB.
112. Goudsmit, 1955 annual report, in PR-AR.
113. Mann to Goudsmit, 11 January 1955 (cit. n. 39).
114. Thomas Lauritsen to Goudsmit, 27 December 1968, in Thomas Lauritsen papers, 12:14, in CIT. Goudsmit's recommendations were remarkably similar to those of sixteenth-century scholars Conrad Gesner and Girolamo Cardano; see
115. Ann Blair, "Reading Strategies for Coping with Information Overload ca. 1550-1700," J. Hist. Ideas 64 (2003): 11-28, on 25-7.
116. Blair, Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age (New Haven, Conn., 2010).
117. Goudsmit, 1962 annual report, in PR-AR.
118. Goudsmit, "Obscurantism," Physical Review Letters 13, no. 17 (1964): 519-20.
119. Barton to John T. Tate (editor, Physical Review), 20 June 1949, in AIP-HAB 79:13.
120. Mann to Goudsmit, 11 January 1955 (cit. n. 39).
121. Goudsmit, 1955 annual report, in PR-AR. In fact, the idea had been advanced in the early 1930s and resurfaced after the war.
122. See Ralph H. Phelps and John P. Herlin, "Alternatives to the Scientific Periodical: A Report and Bibliography," UNESCO Bulletin for Libraries 14 (March-April 1960): 61-75.
123. my thanks to Michael Gordin for bringing this reference to my attention. The 1949 suggestion eventually became the operating principle behind the first electronic physics preprint system during the early 1990s, now available at http://www.arXiv.org.
124. H. A. Barton, "Thoughts on the Physics Publication Problem," unpublished memorandum, 7 March 1956, in AIP-EH 14:1.
125. Goudsmit, "Editorial: The Future of Physics Publications; A Proposal," Physical Review Letters 10, no. 2 (1963): 41-2.
126. E. Hutchisson, "Report of the Joint APS-AIP Committee on Science Abstracts," n.d., ca. March 1951.
127. W. K. Brasher (secretary, British Institution of Electrical Engineers) to Hutchisson, 29 March 1951.
128. S. Whitehead (deputy chair, Committee on Management, British Institution of Electrical Engineers) to Hutchisson, 29 March 1951, all in AIP-EH 15:1.
129. See also the other correspondence in AIP-EH 15:1 and 15:3.
130. Dwight E. Gray, minutes on meeting of joint APS-AIP Abstracting Committee, 24 November 1958, in AIP-EH 15:3.
131. A. A. Strassenburg (director, AIP's Office of Education and Manpower) to Robert B. Leighton, 12 July 1967, in Robert B. Leighton papers, 1:12, in CIT.
132. See also Simon Pasternack to Leonard Schiff, 27 June 1963, in LIS box 4, folder "Physical Review."
133. Maizell, "Physics Abstracting Services," unpublished report, 15 February 1960, in AIP-EH 15:3.
134. Van Zandt Williams, Elmer Hutchisson, and Hugh C. Wolfe, "Consideration of a Physics Information System," Phys. Today 19 (January 1966): 45-52.
135. Franz L. Alt and Arthur Herschman, Plans for a National Physics Information System, report no. ID 68-6 (March 1968), in LIS box 1, folder "AIP Information Program"
136. see also the questionnaire dated 15 November 1968 from the AIP Information Division in the same folder and the correspondence in AIP-EH 15:3, 16:10.
137. R. E. Maizell, minutes from meeting of APS-AIP Committee on Science Abstracts, 27 April 1960, in AIP-EH 15:3.
138. unsigned report, "Investigation of Index Efficiency as Based on Tests with Graduate Physics Students," 19 January 1960, in AIP-EH 16:10.
139. See also Philip Morse, Library Effectiveness: A Systems Approach (Cambridge, 1968).
140. Erik P. Rau, "Managing the Machine in the Stacks: Operations Research, Bibliographic Control, and Library Computerization, 1950-2000," Library History 23 (June 2007): 151-68.
141. Segrè to Henry A. Barton, 14 February 1949, in AIP-HAB 28:5.
142. Goudsmit, 1952 annual report, in PR-AR.
143. Elmer Hutchisson to Barton, 14 February 1951, in AIP-EH 15:1. On the founding of the AIP and the issue of fragmentation, see
144. Spencer Weart, "The Solid Community," in Out of the Crystal Maze: Chapters from the History of Solid-State Physics, ed. Lillian Hoddeson et al. (New York, 1992), 617-69.
145. Goudsmit, 1952-4 annual reports, in PR-AR; John C. Slater to Clyde A. Hutchison Jr., 4 February 1953, and Slater, meeting minutes of APS Committee on Publication Policy, 15 April 1953, in AIP-HAB 57:7.
146. Karl K. Darrow, APS Council meeting minutes, 26 January 1955, in AIP-HAB 79:1.
147. Ramsey to APS Council members, 6 June 1956, in AIP-HAB 79:14; minutes of Advisory Committee on Publication Policy, APS (cit. n. 34).
148. See also Leonard Loeb to Raymond Birge, 27 October 1954, and Loeb to Goudsmit, 19 April 1955, in Raymond Thayer Birge papers, box 19, folder "Loeb, Leonard Benedict," in UCB.
149. Birge to Goudsmit, 5 April 1955 in Birge papers, box 40, folder "Letters written by Birge, January-April 1955," in UCB.
150. Mann to Goudsmit, 11 January 1955 (cit. n. 39).
151. Goudsmit, 1962-5 annual reports, in PR-AR.
152. 1966-79 annual reports (by Goudsmit and others), in PR-AR.
153. See also S. Pasternack and A. Herschman, "Editorial: A Proposal for Changing the Physical Review," Physical Review 137, no. 7AB (1965): AB1.
154. 1961-79 annual reports (by Goudsmit and others), in PR-AR.
155. See, e.g., Juan Lucena, Defending the Nation: U.S. Policymaking to Create Scientists and Engineers from Sputnik to the "War against Terrorism" (New York, 2005), chap. 4.
156. The declines in annual PhD conferrals across each category were calculated from data tabulated in the annual National Science Foundation reports titled "Science and Engineering Doctorate Awards," 1994-2006, available at http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/doctorates (accessed 10 January 2011).
157. David Berliner and Bruce Biddle, The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, and the Attack on America's Public Schools (New York, 1995), 95-102.
158. Daniel Greenberg, Science, Money, and Politics: Political Triumph and Ethical Erosion (Chicago, 2001), chaps. 8-9.
159. Eric Weinstein, "How and Why Government, Universities, and Industry Create Domestic Labor Shortages of Scientists and High-tech Workers" (unpublished working paper), available at http://www.nber.org/~peat/PapersFolder/Papers/SG/NSF.html (accessed 10 January 2011).
160. Lucena, Defending the Nation (cit. n. 55), 104-12, 133.
161. See esp. Berliner and Biddle, Manufactured Crisis; Greenberg, Science, Money, and Politics.
162. Weinstein, "How and Why Government" (All cit. n. 57).
163. Lucena, Defending the Nation (cit. n. 55), and references therein.
164. Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession (New York, 1988), 574 (on historians' job market), 577-92 (on specialization and fragmentation).
165. Darnton, "Intellectual and Cultural History" (1980), repr.
166. Darnton, The Kiss of Lamourette: Reflections in Cultural History (New York, 1991), 191-218, on 202.
167. Ibid., 205.
168. Newman, "The Post-modern Aura: The Age of Fiction in an Age of Inflation" (1984), as quoted in Jacoby, The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe, 2nd ed. (New York, 2000), 173.
169. The enrollment curve for English departments in the United States may be produced from data in the sources listed in the fig. 2 caption.