The Future Market for Ph.D.'s

Even if agreement on "Solutions" is reached, the processes of adjustment will be difficult. More stringent admission standards, quotas, reduced financial support, incentives, or other means of controlling the number of doctorates will challenge established values, frustrate many students and many professors, exacerbate tensions among established and emerging institutions, aggravate the uneasy relationships between universities and government, complicate faculty-administration problems, and accentuate differences between older and younger faculty members. Some academicians will no doubt be inclined to the view that difficulties in the job market for young doctorates created by a laissez-faire approach are moderate compared with the difficulties that will be generated by efforts to adjust supply and demand. We are of the opinion that these problems must be faced, and that the longrange imbalance, inequities, and strains arising from ignoring the problem will far outweigh the stresses generated by efforts to cope with it.