Name: __________________________
Block: _________________
Directions: Label the following in this essay:
1. Introduction
2. Background information
3. Thesis (Assertion)
4. Body
5. Evidence for assertion
6. Opposing argument
7. Recommendation
8. Topic Sentences
9. Conclusion
Who Will Hire Our Scientists?
By: William C. Stevens
I used to preach that the world was an oyster for anyone achieving a science degree. The Department
of Labor had been forecasting a dramatic shortage of scientists, and immigration policies were designed to
recruit as many scientists as possible from foreign countries. But these forecasts turned out to be wrong, and
today we have a country that doesn’t want many scientists.
I recently attended a meeting in Grand Rapids of the Analytical Laboratory Managers Association,
and I took part in a roundtable discussion called “The Talent Pool.” One member from the Philadelphia area
said there were over 1,500 applicants for each entry-level chemist position. Another from a smaller city said
there were “only” 150 applicants per position there.
My friends at the meeting from a major petrochemical company were depressed from watching the
decline of research and development (R & D) effort they spent 25 years building. “It used to be you couldn’t
get a spot in a 150-space parking lot if you got to work after 8 a.m.,” one said. “Now there are never more
than 25 or 30 cars in the lot.” Pharmaceutical firms are scaling back R & D, too, closing American
laboratories while continuing work in European labs. For computer scientists, the assurance that they would
always have work ended when the computer programming work started to be shipped to countries such as
India.
I subscribed to the Young Scientists Network on the Internet back in the early ‘90’s when there were
only a few hundred members. I saw that number swell to over 3,000 practically overnight. This is a group
dedicated to fighting “the myth” of a scientists shortage and was started by unemployed physics Ph.D.’s.
There is almost no hope at all of a Ph.D. physicist working in his or her chosen field these days, and this is
growing increasingly true for other science Ph.D.’s as well. This was not been helped by the government’s
egregious [terrible] immigration policy to import foreign scientists and mathematicians.
Is this all because our education system is producing inferior scientists? I don’t think so. I think it’s
simply the economies of corporate greed. If scientists elsewhere work cheaper, then elsewhere is where the
science will be done. I will admit that I have noticed a steady decline in the science and math training of
incoming college students and, subsequently, beginning graduate students, but the science departments of our
good universities are among the best in the world … for now.
It is clear to me that we scientists need to tell the public that what we do is important—but not always
easy to justify in concrete terms. My own field began as an idle physicist’s curiosity a little over 50 years
ago. It was never imagined that nuclear magnetic resonance (my field) would spawn powerful techniques for
determining molecular structure in the laboratory or diagnosing illness and injury in the hospital MRI unit.
I was born a couple of years before Sputnik, and I’ve always known an American society that gives at
least casual approval to the advancement of science. Now that the Cold War is over, it seems that we no
longer have a sense of urgency that scientific excellence is necessary to the nation’s safety, it’s economic
security, and the public good. These are the big questions I wish to raise: Can we, as a nation, afford to be
less and less involved in the practice of science? Can we afford to have other countries do our scientific
thinking for us?
Stevens, William C. “Who Will Hire Our Scientists?” Writers Inc: A Student Handbook for Writing and Learning. eds.
Patrick Sebranek, Dave Kemper, and Verne Meyer. Wilmington: Write Source, 2001. 196-197. Print.