Their decisions should be viewed with concern, since additional specialized education may not necessarily serve to make them more marketable in the future. The overall economic situation may worsen by the time they enter the job market, and the demand for science graduates, already waning, may grow even weaker.
As a graduate of Caltech, I share the pain of the capable young men and women who find their futures clouded by today's uncertainty in science and engineering careers. This uncertainty springs mainly from two factors. One has to do with the declining need for highly specialized researchers; the other with the curricular narrowness at Caltech and similar science- and engineering-oriented institutions.
From the end of World War II until relatively recently, the Department of Defense, the national laboratories, and the defense and space industries consistently absorbed, directly or indirectly, more than half of the scientists and engineers produced by the ...
