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Precedents and Predictions

Mathematics experienced a similar but less severe job crunch in the early 1970's. Fall unemployment of new Ph.D.'s climbed from 7.5% in 1970-71 to a peak rate of 13.7% in 1974-75 (see Figure 1), then gradually decreased to a stable level of roughly 5% in 1977-78 [AMS Survey].

A study of a similar unemployment peak for physicists in the early 1970's [Freeman, 1989] suggests that the crisis of the 1970's was resolved largely due to market forces. The low salaries and difficulty in finding jobs in physics that resulted from the oversupply of Ph.D.'s proved a strong disincentive for students to enroll in physics Ph.D. programs. A similar decline in mathematics graduate enrollments is suggested by the decline in Ph.D. production in the first half of the 1970's as shown in Figure 2. Sharp reductions in federal funding for graduate students in 1968 further contributed to declining graduate enrollment. As a result, Ph.D.-program enrollment plummeted during the 1970's, falling by 19% in Group I schools and 31% in Group II schools. [AMS Survey, 1976]

There are a number of important differences between the situation today and that of the 1970's. Mathematics departments have been reluctant to pare back graduate enrollments over the past decade, and have made up for declining numbers of American graduate students by enrolling foreign students. Of the Ph.D.'s granted by U.S. universities in 1993-94, 56% were earned by non-U.S. citizens. In contrast, only 28% of the Ph.D.'s granted in 1973-74 were to non-U.S. citizens. If foreign student enrollments are less responsive to economic conditions in the U.S. than are U.S. student enrollments, the market forces that helped to ease the crisis in the 1970's will provide significantly less relief. First-year full-time graduate student enrollments were relatively stable from 1988 to 1992, which suggests little alleviation of present conditions until at least 1997-98 barring an increase in the Ph.D. program attrition rate. The beginnings of a decline in enrollments may be underway, however, as the number of first-year doctoral students in the fall of 1993 decreased by 7% from the fall 1992 level [AMS Survey].

Large cutbacks in federal support for graduate students in 1968 were a second force which contributed to the decline in graduate enrollments during the early 1970's, and eventually brought relief to the job market. As a result of these cutbacks, universities absorbed much of the cost of funding graduate students (at the price of tuition hikes and increased numbers of huge lecture course offerings). The result is that mathematics graduate enrollment levels today are far less influenced by federal funding than they were in the 1970's. [Herman, 1993]

A third force that helped bring an end to the job market crisis in the 1970's was the end of the recession in 1975-76. Although the current economic recovery has been underway for two years, the unemployment rate for new Ph.D.'s has continued to climb. The decline in available academic jobs experienced over the last 5 years appears to be a permanent decline rather than a temporary effect of hard economic times. Substantially increased federal funding to universities does not appear to be forthcoming due to the austerity imposed by the current federal budget deficit. Although university enrollments are projected to increase slowly after 1996, continued financial pressures on universities probably mean that the necessary increase in teaching capacity will be generated by increasing teaching loads of existing faculty and by hiring more part-time faculty [Hecht, 1994]. Even if employment returns to more acceptable levels, the problem of underemployment is likely to persist.

As a result of the end of the Cold War and the globalization of the economy, there have been cutbacks outside of academia as well. Federal research labs are unlikely to resume their levels of hiring of the late 1980's with the spectre of the Soviet empire fading, and corporations have been paring back research and development budgets as they attempt to downsize.

The AMS Task Force on Employment's 1992 report projects a demand of roughly 790 Ph.D.'s per year in the U.S. market through 2008. These estimates optimistically assume faculty retirement by age 65, full replacement of retirees, and stable corporate hiring [AMS Employment, 1992]. Current graduate enrollment figures suggest that Ph.D. production will remain in the neighborhood of 1100 Ph.D.'s per year for the next 3 to 4 years. If the percentage of new Ph.D.'s that seek jobs abroad remains relatively steady at 15%, then the jobless rate for new Ph.D.'s will most likely continue to remain in the neighborhood of 13%. Since unemployed and underemployed Ph.D.'s from past years continue to apply for jobs, the 13% figure may well be a low estimate.


next up previous
Next: Political Changes Up: Current Trends in Previous: Causes of the

Geoff Davis
Sat Feb 18 12:57:19 EST 1995