Essential Reforms

The problem is simple: there is a large supply of Ph.D.'s and a small demand for their services. There are a number of steps which departments can take to increase the demand for mathematicians.

• Mathematics education should be broadened to reflect the needs of mathematicians bound for non-academic employment.

In their article, "Putting to Rest the Damaging Myths About Mathematics", Charles Mannix and Mathematics Association of America president Kenneth Ross write, "[W]e must acknowledge the accumulating evidence that the traditional programs leading to a bachelor's, master's, or doctoral degree in mathematics do not produce the highly marketable skills needed to enter the 'hot' growth fields in the peacetime economy.... While much work involving mathematics is done outside academe, industry traditionally hires people from other disciplines to do it. The sad irony is that sophisticated mathematical skills, but not traditional mathematicians, are often needed in today's new fields."

In a November 4, 1994 editorial in Science, Mary Lowe Good, of the Department of Commerce, and Neal Lane, director of the NSF, call for a broadening of graduate science education to "better reflect the many profound changes in the economy generally and in the labor market for professional scientists and engineers specifically." By better matching science education to the needs of non-academic employers, scientists can increase their employment options.

SIAM has begun a study of mathematics in industry to assess the educational needs of non-academic mathematicians, and SIAM's president, Avner Friedman, has published a pamphlet entitled, "How to Start an Industrial Mathematics Program in the University." This is not to say that all math graduate students should be trained for industry, but this should certainly be a viable option.

• Emphasis should be placed on providing mathematics education for non-mathematicians in order to broaden the market for the services provided by academic mathematicians.

Philip Griffiths, director of the Institute for Advanced Studies, suggests that universities should "fundamentally rethink their missions" and refocus their energies on teaching rather than research. Departments have a responsibility to provide education for all members of the university community and not just students who choose to specialize in a particular field. Since in many universities resources are allocated based in part on departments' share of enrollments, providing mathematics education for non-majors makes good sense economically as well as educationally.

Accordingly, careful, structured training in teaching needs to be incorporated into the standard mathematics Ph.D. curriculum, since the reality is that the majority of Ph.D.'s bound for academia will have teaching as their primary professional responsibility.

• Consider what may happen if we do nothing.

There has been much talk in the physics community, most notably at Cornell, of "birth control", cutting back graduate programs substantially and shifting the freed resources from graduate students to postdoctoral researchers. Bill Bowen, former president of Princeton, and Neil Rudenstein, president of Harvard, have called for departments producing 5 or fewer Ph.D.s per year to shut down their graduate programs.

Cutting enrollments is a drastic solution. However, in this era of constrained resources, it is difficult to envision indefinite Federal subsidizing of the current overproduction of Ph.D.'s. Budget cuts could amount to an external imposition of enrollment caps. The mathematics community must choose between addressing its problems and having solutions imposed upon it.

 

See what you and your department can do.

 

Last modified: Thu Oct 26 13:18:58 1995