These scientific career switchers represent a small but significant proportion of scientists who are bailing out of career paths that lead to teaching or R&D. One National Science Foundation survey estimates that during 1985, about 8 percent of natural scientists, engineers, and computer specialists opted to leave their fields of training. About 40 percent of those changed occupations to a field outside science, engineering, or computer science.
An exodus of such dimensions troubles labor market planners, most of whom foresee shortages of scientists in the coming decade. Robert C. Dauffenbach, a labor economist at Oklahoma State University, says that "the nature of our national economic growth, coupled with the numbers of people entering the job market and the sorry state of science education at the secondary levels, plus the absence of women and minorities entering science, give us many reasons to be concerned." Making the problem more difficult to examine, ...
