New academic positions: the outlook in europe and north america

During the 1960's, Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States all experienced periods of rapid growth of research expenditures and of university enrollments followed by declines in growth rates. This sequence has generated the current severe shortages of new academic positions, with a resulting long-range threat to the vitality of academic science. Declines in the 18-year-old cohort in the United States, and especially in Canada, aggravate the problem. The United States is the only one of these countries that has not adopted a modest program to deal with the problems by creating fellowships or new positions.