The Invisible University: Postdoctoral Education in the United States. Report of a Study Conducted Under the Auspices of the National Research Council. [Richard B. Curtis, Study Director] (1969) / Chapter Skim
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AN HISTORICAL VIEW
AN HISTORICAL VIEW
Pages 7-38
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From page 7... ...
At its best, postdoctoral education represents an ancient prescription for excellence. Beginnings of Doctoral and Postdoctoral Research in the United States The men who developed the American university as a teaching and research institution a century ago intended it to be a place where learning would continue through a man's lifetime.
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He answered, in part: "The encouragement of research; the promotion of young men; and the advancement of individual scholars, who by their excellence will advance the sciences they pursue, and the society where they dwell."2 President Oilman offered twenty fellowships annually to attract and support young men starting research careers. The first fellows chosen in 1876 included four who already had their PhD's.3 The others were candidates for the doctorate but all had the same long-range objective.
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From page 9... ...
At the 1901 meeting of the recently constituted Association of American Universities, Dean Harry P Judson of Chicago commented on the support that fellowships had given to doctoral study and lamented that "the number of research fellowships offered to those who have made the doctorate is as yet inconsiderable." He urged the endowment of "a considerable number of research fellowships...
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is not easy, because it often involves the gift of prophecy on the part of the searcher. Nevertheless, it seems to us that all those in each of our larger institutions for learning who are really interested in research of the highest kind, either individually or grouped together as a voluntary committee, should keep their eyes open for persons possessing in high degree the happy combination of qualities desired and should urge upon presidents and governing boards the importance of supporting these persons so as to make it possible for them to yield their best fruit in discovery.12 Research in the Medical Schools Medical research was handicapped by the poor training received by many MD's.
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"Training for the higher clinical careers," wrote the distinguished Johns Hopkins pathologist, William H.Welch, in 1907, "requires a long apprenticeship after graduation from medical school and after the ordinary hospital internship, and is best secured by prolonged service in a hospital as resident physician or surgeon under conditions which secure more thorough practical experience and better opportunities for scientific study and investigation than those which now exist under the customary arrangement of the medical staff of our hospitals."19 Residencies of this description were available at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and at some other university hospitals but they were few in total number. Many ^Internships and Residencies in New York City, 1934-37, Their Place in Medical Education, The Commonwealth Fund, 1938, p.
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From page 12... ...
Only a scattering were interested in work in the basic medical sciences.22 By 1934 a total of 1,098 students had spent an average of four years on fellowship appointments at Rochester. Most had held fellowships that were service appointments in the clinic, at least in part; only 123 had held strictly research appointments.
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It was suggested that the Society could require an advanced degree for membership, but this idea was not taken up. One objection, it is interesting to note, was that if the medical schools responded by starting advanced degree programs there would be as many standards for the degree as there were schools.
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Its first list included only 35 hospitals, one of them a hospital in Paris. Many of the hospitals on the list were closely associated with medical schools, but others were not.
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Information it received from preclinical department heads at 68 medical schools convinced the committee that there was indeed "a great paucity of satisfactory assistants in the preclinical departments," that "insufficient immediate and prospective financial support" was largely responsible, and that the shortage of assistants was "seriously hampering the development of the preclinical sciences, and, through them, of medicine as a whole." The committee offered a suggestion that had been made to it in a number of places, that preclinical departments should have at their disposal "a number of attractive assistantships and research fellowships so that a man who wished to obtain additional training in one of the fundamental medical sciences, either for the purpose of better preparing himself for practice or for a post in a clinical department, would find no financial obstacle in his way." The committee speculated that "some of the men availing themselves of such appointments might become sufficiently interested to give up their first intentions and become full-time members of a department of a preclinical science."31 ., Vol.
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Vincent, on the merits of a national program of postdoctoral research fellowships led to a grant by the Foundation of $500,000 to be used by the Council over five years in support of research fellowships in physics and chemistry. The grant was announced in March 1919; the first 13 fellows were selected before the end of the year.
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All three programs were continued when the initial grants were spent, and they received repeated extensions thereafter. Until the advent of large-scale federal programs for postdoctoral education in the 1950's, the Rockefeller Foundation, through the National Research Council, provided the single most effective means for the development of young American scientists as creative investigators.
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z o o DC •z. > 01 U UI DC _J U a O UI UI o DC Mathematics -- Physics Chemistry Zoology 10 1920 .36 YEAR OF PhD Source: Office of Scientific Personnel, Roster of NRC Fellows and Doctorate Records File .38.39 1967 PhD Is Receiving Postdoctoral Appointments
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Another 70 pursued their work at nonacademic research centers like the Carnegie Institution, the National Bureau of TABLE 1 Number of National Research (NRC) Fellows Holding Teaching Positions in 1950, by Field Field Number of Fellows Number in Teaching % in Teaching Mathematics 126 109 86.5 Astronomy 16 10 62.5 Physics 196 103 52.6 Chemistry 229 104 45.5 Geology and Geography 15 8 53.3 Zoology 164 111 67.7 Botany 112 70 62.5 Agriculture 41 25 61.0 Forestry 8 4 50.0 Anthropology Psychology 27 16 67 59.2 72.0 93 Natural Sciences Total 1,027 627 61.1 Medical Sciences Total 332 239 72.0 All 1,359 866 63.8 Source: Myron J
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It was estimated in 1938 that $51 million had been spent on research in American universities and colleges in 1935-36, with 14 institutions probably accounting for half the total. The 14 spending the most were the following40: Spending in excess of $2 million $1.5 to $2 million $0.5 to $1 million California Cornell MIT Chicago Minnesota New York University Columbia Wisconsin Ohio State University Harvard Yale University of Pennsylvania Illinois Michigan At the California Institute of Technology a relatively small sum ($250,000 to $300,000)
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Naturally, mature persons of this kind receive preference in the matter of admission."42 International Fellowships Besides providing support through the National Research Council for young American investigators, the Rockefeller Foundation and other Rockefellerendowed agencies provided fellowships for foreign scientists. The Rockefeller 41lThe Institute for Advanced Study, Bulletin No.
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From the beginning a large proportion of the recipients chose to use their fellowships in the United States and during the first six years alone 218 foreign fellows studied at United States institutions. Fellowships in the Humanities and Social Sciences Postdoctoral fellowships, so far available only to scientists, became available to scholars in all fields in 1925 with the establishment of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowships.
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Beardsley Ruml, director of the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Foundation, encouraged the formation of the Council and provided the support for a program of Social Science Research Council fellowships to match the National Research Fellowship program. The purpose of the fellowships was similar: Generous as American Universities have been in helping graduate students to obtain Doctor's degrees, they have not been generous or wise in treating their young instructors.
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From page 24... ...
Some of the anthropologists, for example, used their fellowships for work in sociology; many of the sociologists sought training in statistics.48 The American Council of Learned Societies, formed in 1919, promoted research in the humanities. When it awarded its first postdoctoral fellowships in 1930 (with Rockefeller Foundation support)
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Leland, secretary of the American Council of Learned Societies, told the Association of American Universities in 1935 that the Depression was probably a factor; a fellowship was not so appealing to a potential candidate as a regular university appointment. But this can be only part of the answer, for candidates in the other programs were subject to the same economic conditions.
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From page 26... ...
The committee suggested that there were three reasons for promoting postdoctoral education: the furthering of research, the improvement of teaching, and the development of occupational or professional proficiencies. However, these three purposes could not be completely separated; most of the national fellowship programs had as their primary purpose the furthering of research, but they were also concerned with the improvement of teaching and the acquiring of professional proficiencies.
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From page 27... ...
Among other provisions of the Act, the Surgeon General was authorized to provide facilities where qualified persons might receive training in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer, and to pay such trainees up to ten dollars a day. He was also authorized to establish "research fellowships in the Institute" and to pay the fellows such stipends as he thought necessary "to procure the assistance of the most brilliant and promising research fellows from the United Association of American Universities, Journal of Proceedings and Addresses, 39th Annual Conference, 1937, pp.
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Forty-three National Cancer Institute research fellows were appointed between 1938 and 1946. The fellowships were not restricted to physicians and several recipients were PhD's.
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The establishment by Congress of other institutes on the pattern of the National Cancer Institute, however, soon extended his authority to other fields. A National Institute of Mental Health was established in 1946,60 and a National Heart Institute and a National Institute of Dental Research followed in 1948.61 Then in 1950 an omnibus medical research act authorized the Surgeon General to set up an Institute of Neurological Diseases and Blindness and an Institute of Arthritis and Metabolic Diseases, to set up still other institutes whenever he determined such action "necessary," and to award training grants in any institute so established.62 In 1948 the National Institute of Health, the administrative division to which the separate research and training institutes reported, was officially renamed the National Institutes of Health.
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established three types of NIH fellowships: predoctoral, postdoctoral, and TABLE 2 Number of NIH Postdoctoral and Special Fellowships, Fiscal Years 1946-1967 Fiscal Year NIH Postdoctoral Fellows NIH Special Fellows Total 1946 2 2 4 1947 27 7 34 1948 119 20 139 1949 255 57 312 1950 268 38 306 1951 291 27 318 1952 222 17 239 1953 335 22 357 1954 426 36 462 1955 389 38 427 1956 342 39 381 1957 471 99 570 1958 482 94 576 1959 627 104 731 1960 822 159 981 1961 1,050 228 1,278 1962 1,211 276 1,487 1963 1,223 389 1,612 1964 1,190 425 1,615 1965 1,188 505 1,693 1966 1,237 537 1,774 19673 1,088 522 1,610 aData for 1967 are partially estimated and exclude fellowships awarded by the National Institute of Mental Health. Beginning in FY 1967 NIMH was separated administratively from the other National Institutes of Health.
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From page 31... ...
The following, however, is the number of postdoctoral trainees supported since 1963:64 Fiscal Year NIH Postdoctoral Trainees 1963 5,366 1964 6,042 1965 6,534 1966 6,861 The number of trainees and of fellows cannot be compared directly because many trainees hold other awards for short periods, for example, for a summer. TABLE 3 Appropriations for NIH Training Grant Programs, Fiscal Years 1946-1967 Fiscal Year Training Appropriation Fiscal Year Training Appropriation 1946 $25,000 1957 $28,075,000 1947 $250,000 1958 $32,932,000 1948 $2,810,000 1959 $49,902,000 1949 $3,930,000 1960 $74,673,000 1950 $5,415,000 1961 $110,000,000 1951 $6,652,000 1962 $118,506,000 1952 $7,392,000 1963 $154,139,000 1953 $8,184,000 1964 $172,602,000 1954 $10,813,000 1965 $181,311,000 1955 $11,051,000 1966 $209,896,000 1956 $14,502,000 1967 $224,486,000 Source: NIH Almanac, 1967, p.
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Murtaugh, Director, Office of Program Planning, NIH, in Proceedings of the Conference on Postdoctoral Fellowships and Research Associateships-in the Sciences and Engineering, National Research Council, 1967. 66 Administrative Policies Governing Training Grants of the National Institutes of Health, mimeographed manual, May 1, 1962, p.
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From page 33... ...
It would support undergraduate scholarships and graduate fellowships, and also "fellowships for advanced training and fundamental research." He submitted a report by a committee under the chairmanship of Isaiah Bowman of Johns Hopkins that recommended a program of postdoctoral fellowships "as a direct aid to research." The Bowman committee felt that the program 67Robert E Ebert, Report to the President of Harvard University for 1965-66, p.
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From page 34... ...
Fellowships large enough to meet the salaries of advanced academic personnel for periods of intensive research work at their own institutions or at other universities would be an effective means of attacking these problems. The Palmer committee also urged the need for fellowships and recommended that postdoctoral fellowships in the medical sciences be tenable for periods up to six years.
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Deitrick and Robert C Berson, Medical Schools in the United States at MidCentury, Report of the Survey of Medical Education, 1953, p.
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From page 36... ...
Eighteen years later, 431 scholars had been appointed in 88 schools.73 The program still continues. A similar program of Grants for Scholars in Radiological Research was established by the James Picker Foundation in 1953, and in 1954 the American Cyanamid Company through its Lederle Laboratories Division established a program of Lederle Medical Faculty Awards.74 In 1956 NIH was prompted to establish its own program of five-year fellowships for investigators in the medical sciences.
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From page 37... ...
No account has been given of the postdoctoral fellowship programs of the Atomic Energy Commission and of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, of the Fulbright-Hays program, of the development of in-house postdoctoral research associateships at the National Institutes of Health and in other government research institutions, and of the programs of the many private foundations that, undaunted by the flow of federal money, have committed funds to support postdoctoral study. The postwar history of the Social Science Research Council fellowships, the re-establishment of a postdoctoral fellowship program for the humanities by the American Council of Learned Societies, and the recent entry into the field of the National Endowment for the Humanities are also an important part of the story.
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From page 38... ...
38 AN HISTORICAL VIEW search, the need to provide MD's with opportunities for research training, the balance of teaching and research, the influence of the sponsoring agencies, the responsibility of the universities. We are concerned in the following pages with a form of education that has developed over a long period, shaping itself in response to long-felt needs.
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