The Life Sciences Recent Progress and Application to Human Affairs The World of Biological Research Requirements for the Future (1970) / Chapter Skim
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Academic Departments
Academic Departments
Pages 279-305
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From page 279... ...
, and 694 chaired departments in colleges of medicine, approximately equally divided between clinical and preclinical departments. Decidedly smaller groups from schools of dentistry, pharmacy, public health, and veterinary medicine were treated together as "other health-professional." One third of all departments were in private universities; two thirds were in state universities, and only 26 departments were in municipal institutions.
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From page 281... ...
THE ACADEMIC ENDEAVOR IN THE LIFE SCIENCES 281 Cal .
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From page 282... ...
The unity of biology has compelled consolidation into single biology departments in the private universities, but, as yet, this trend is not nearly as pronounced in the public universities. Reports were obtained from 54 departments of biology in the arts and sciences faculties of private schools, and from 57 departments so titled in public universities.
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From page 283... ...
The Life Sciences Faculty In a general way, one fourth of the reported life sciences faculty functions in the arts and sciences schools, another fourth in the agriculture schools, and approximately half (52 percent) in the medical schools, of which the preclinical component represents 22 percent and the clinical component 30 percent.
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From page 284... ...
: In academic year 19681969, 579 preclinical and 1,112 clinical faculty positions were budgeted but unfilled. Of all unfilled positions reported to us, 16 percent were in the colleges of agriculture, 23 percent in the arts and sciences faculties, and 60 percent in the medical schools, distributed evenly between preclinical and clinical departments.
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From page 285... ...
The operation of the selective service system has not affected medical school enrollments, but it has begun to limit the contributions of the medical school preclinical departments to graduate education. The growth of graduate enrollments in those two years was about as rapid as anticipated, but was probably significantly affected by the draft in the Fall of 1969.
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From page 286... ...
Of all graduate students, 27 percent were in agricultural schools, 46 percent were in graduate schools of arts and sciences, and 25 percent were in medical schools. The 6 percent of graduate students in clinical departments was a surprise to the authors of this report, and one may suspect that, in some instances, medical students engaged in extracurricular research in clinical-science departments may have been recorded as graduate students.
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From page 287... ...
This pattern was only slightly different from that in zoology, in which 29 percent of students had federal support and 40 percent held teaching assistantships. The biology departments of private universities resemble the preclinical departments more than they do their own counterparts in public universities, in the sense that 50 percent of their students had federal support from some source.
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From page 288... ...
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From page 289... ...
They had been decidedly less successful in attracting postdoctoral fellows and federal research funds as well as graduate students. In a general way, it is probably safe to conclude that the mean quality of the faculty of the promiser departments as it might be judged by their peers is less impressive than the quality of the faculties of the performer departments and that this is the primary reason for the relatively smaller attraction to graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and federal researchsupporting agencies.
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From page 290... ...
Although the Vietnam war may cause a temporary deflection in this growth curve, the overall trend should continue until about 1980 if demographic projections are correct, unless the federal government deliberately fails to support such growth, a trend that is evident in the budget proposed for fiscal year 1971. Moreover, data from the Office of Education indicate that graduate enrollments in the life sciences have recently been increasing more rapidly than have those in the physical sciences, while the proportion of all graduate students enrolled in the natural sciences has decreased somewhat.
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From page 291... ...
STUDENT STIPENDS Department chairmen reporting graduate students with 11 to 12 months of financial support 69 percent of our file were queried concerning the extent to which the stipend levels set by the national competitive fellowships offered by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation have established a norm for graduate students' stipends. From their reports, we find that 40 percent of all such graduate students were receiving stipends of the magnitude stipulated by the federal agencies in their competitive fellowship programs, 13 percent received stipends that were lower in varying degree, and 47 percent received stipends that exceeded these national norms.
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From page 292... ...
Moreover, the National Institutes of Health experience demonstrates that it is possible for an external jury of peers to evaluate periodically the quality and appropriate scale of graduate education in a given department without generating undue rancor and in a far more sophisticated manner than can either the inadequately informed graduating senior or undergraduate adviser in some remote institution or the local graduate dean. One hurdle for this evolutionary development is the support of students who for purely personal, perhaps geographic, reasons choose to undertake study in graduate departments that fail to qualify for such training grants.
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From page 293... ...
Seventysix percent of all postdoctoral appointees received support from federal sources. As we have already noted, the role of the preclinical departments of medical schools, in postdoctoral as well as in graduate education, continues to expand.
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From page 295... ...
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From page 296... ...
This was compensated by the greater success of postdoctoral appointees in the clinical sciences, and to a lesser degree in the preclinical sciences, in finding other forms of fellowship support. However, the dominance of federal funds in supporting postdoctoral appointees rested not so much on the direct fellowship programs as on training grants and utilization of research funds, more than half of all postdoctoral appointees in all groups being so supported.
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From page 297... ...
Nationals __ 619 1 1 1 200 400 600 800 1,000 1,200 1,400 1,600 1,800 2,000 N u m be r of Postd octo ra I Fe l l ows FIGURE 3 5 Distribution of postdoctoral fellows by discipline and national origin. Source: Survey of Academic Life Science Departments, National Academy of Sciences Committee on Research in the Life Sciences.
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From page 298... ...
._ ._ In ._ .O Medical Preclinical Medical Clinical Agricu Itu re 183 1 1 1 ~1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1,000 1,100 1,2001,300 1,400 Number of Postdoctoral Fellows FIGURE 36 Distribution of postdoctoral fellows in public and private universities, by type of school and national origin. Source: Survey of Academic Life Science Departments, National Academy of Sciences Committee on Research in the Life Sciences.
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From page 299... ...
FOREIGN INTERNS AND RESIDENTS The situation is even more complicated with respect to M.D.'s seeking advanced clinical training or clinical research experience. There can be no doubt that those who take advanced training as fellows in the clinical departments of American medical schools or who take internship or residency training in American hospitals and then return to their native
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From page 300... ...
We also recognize that, with a profound shortage of physicians to provide for the growing medical needs of the United States, one might well be tempted to welcome into our society immigrant physicians, particularly those who have received advanced training in the United States, physicians from advanced nations, and physicians from developing nations with a surplus, if such there be. The bulk of the foreign postdoctoral physician group, however, comes from developing nations that suffer an acute lack of physicians for their own medical care programs.
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From page 301... ...
Laboratory Space The aggregate net usable laboratory space reported to us by department chairmen was 13,423,000 fit; 31 percent of the space was allocated to departments in colleges of arts and sciences, 25 percent to agriculture and forestry schools, and 41 percent to medical schools (26 percent to preclinical and 15 percent to clinical departments)
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From page 302... ...
The mean laboratory space available to individual members of the faculties of public universities, which is somewhat larger than that of their counterparts in private universities, is largely accounted for by the space available to their agricultural and preclinical scientists. Available figures concerning space per department or per individual scientist in given disciplines are not genuine reflections of the space utilization appropriate to these disciplines, but rather are the consequence of historical trends, opportunities for construction, and related factors.
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From page 303... ...
b Includes a department of oral biology. Source: Survey of Academic Life Science Departments, National Academy of Sciences Committee on Research in the Life Sciences The Tools of Biological Research SPECIALIZED RESEARCH FACILITIES The impressions gained in considering the facilities and instruments used by individual scientists are fortified by examination of those available to entire departments in the biological sciences (Table 321.
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From page 304... ...
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From page 305... ...
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