The study examined the 12 most popular textbooks used to teach 6th through 9th graders in the United States. It found "a very large number of errors, many irrelevant photographs, complicated illustrations, experiments that could not possibly work, and diagrams and drawings that represented impossible situations." One experiment, for example, depicts a pin attached to a tuning fork to reveal the fork's oscillations. But the pin is shown in the wrong orientation and is supposed to be attached with candle wax, which wouldn't work. Another text confuses "force" and "acceleration" in describing the effect of gravity.

Superfast system called 'Carnivore' searches e-mails for messages from criminal suspects, thus raising legal issues, privacy concerns.

Marcus Thomas, chief of the FBI's Cyber Technology Section at Quantico, said Carnivore represents the bureau's effort to keep abreast of rapid changes in Internet communications while still meeting the rigid demands of federal wiretapping statutes. "This is just a very specialized sniffer," he said.

See also "Carnivore: Diagnostic tool"

If you are prepared to study it closely, you should be able to find the bright spots in an otherwise cloudy job market for physicists and astronomers. First the clouds: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), which has been accurately reporting and forecasting employment trends for many years, predicts only a 2.2% growth in the total number of physics jobs (for all degree levels) between 1998 and 2008.

And $30,000 is just plain LOW. This is even worse than the cases I revealed last week, in which I showed that a couple of CEOs who had testified on Capitol Hill about their claimed "desperate" need for H-1Bs had been actually hiring H-1Bs as System Administrators and Programmers at salaries of $35,000.

This essay will end on an optimistic note, but first, the bad news. Let me be blunt. The profession of teaching physics at the college level in America today has only two purposes. One is to produce physicists, and the other is to act as a gatekeeper, keeping the unworthy out of certain other professions such as medicine and engineering. We will always need physicists, but not very many of them. And, indeed, the number of physics majors in colleges all across the country today is said to be at its lowest point since Sputnik, more than forty years ago. Our other role, as gatekeeper, is the dark side of our profession, and it is, frankly, unworthy of us. The simple fact is, if teaching physics were a business, we would be filing for bankruptcy.

As in years past, roughly half of the new physics bachelors said they intend to enter graduate school immediately, with 31% planning to study physics or a related field and an additional 19% choosing to pursue other disciplines, most commonly engineering. The AIP survey found that of those going on to graduate school, most were optimistic about their job prospects, with 86% intending to earn a PhD and 61% hoping to secure a career as a college or university professor.

Adding to the paradox is that many of those receiving the most advanced scientific training at U.S. schools -- those pursuing Ph.D.s -- are having trouble finding work at all. One study recently found that the percentage of science and engineering Ph.D.s who do not hold a full-time position in their field skyrocketed from about 1 in 10 in 1973 to about four times that by the mid-1990s.

``There is something really bizarrely wrong with our system when math and physics Ph.D.s are talking about a Ph.D. glut and there's a shortage of high-tech employees,'' says economist Paul M. Romer.

See also Career misguidance (San Jose Mercury News, 25 June 2000) "Ronald Brownstein's ``Steer science grads into the real world'' (Opinion, June 20) does not go far enough in addressing the discrepancy between science education and its applications."

Motorola Inc., Oracle Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc. were the leading users of the H-1B visa program for foreign high-tech workers from last October to February, according to a tally from the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Motorola had 618 H-1B visa petitions approved during the five-month period, followed by Oracle (455) and Cisco (398). Other major vendors on the list included Intel Corp. (367), Microsoft Corp. (362) and Sun Microsystems Inc. (182).

IT user companies are also on the H-1B visa list, including Merrill Lynch & Co. (87), Nationwide Insurance Cos. (85) and The Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (75). The list covered a period of time when companies were in the final stages of fixing the year 2000 date rollover problem and needed foreign programmers for the labor-intensive task.

Many of you will remember womenConnect.com CEO Susan deFife, poster woman for the industry lobbyists. The lobbyists put her on the ABC World News Tonight story just last week (June 6), for example, highlighting the H-1B she hired. She highlighted the same H-1B in her testimony to the Senate in October 1999, saying:

Last year, we spent months recruiting for a systems administrator who has the critical role of ensuring our content is presented correctly and on time to our audience. We were fortunate to eventually find Noemi Nieto-Mendieta, a young woman from Mexico who was finishing coursework at a local university. (Noemi is with me today.) (http://www.senate.gov/~judiciary/102199sd.htm)

Now, I thought it would be interesting to know just how much Ms. deFife is paying this "rare worker" she sponsored for an H-1B visa, so I took a look at Rob Sanchez's online database of H-1B applications, which he obtained under FOIA from the Dept. of Labor. (This is the first time I used the database. I must say it is an amazingly powerful tool.)

The database is at http://www.zazona.com/ShameH1B/ Click on "H-1B Visa Database," then enter Virginia for the state and womenConnect.com for the company name---and voila!, there is the entry for deFife's H-1B.

(The database does not give names, but this entry is the only one for womenConnect.com. The year of hire is given as 1998, matching what deFife testified, the job title matches, the company name and place match. Rob assures me that the database is complete for Virginia.)

So here it is: deFife hired this system administrator for only $35,000! Remember, she said that this woman was a new graduate, and at that time (NACE survey, 3 months after the hire) new IT graduates were being paid on average $45,000 for a Bachelor's degree!

The subject line reads ``offshore development.''

Yet for some people at Dun & Bradstreet's high-tech division, the gist of the e-mail memo is unambiguously local: Prepare for layoffs.

Executive Vice President Elahe Hessamfar sent the memo to her Global Technology Organization (GTO) employees in late March describing an outsourcing plan still in the works.

The aim, the memo says, is to reduce the computer programming department's cost by eliminating an undetermined number of current positions and shifting workers' duties to two consulting firms that hire foreign-born visa holders. Dun & Bradstreet is a global provider of business and financial services based in Murray Hill. The cuts would come as Congress considers increasing the number of H-1B work visas, which go to foreign-born workers in specialty fields. The count stands at 115,000 per year, but would rise to 200,000 for the next three years under the leading bill.

``Replacing American workers is so institutionalized now that it can be discussed in company memos,'' Rob Sanz, a member of a national network opposed to H-1B increases, said.

In the absence of such protections, older computer programmers, as well as minorities hoping to break into the profession, could lose out, critics at the hearing said. "At the same time that US high-tech employers allege a shortage of available skilled workers, this country has amassed a surprising surplus of programmers over the age of 40 who are no longer practicing their craft," said Frank Brehm, the Northwest regional coordinator of the Programmers Guild, which opposes lifting the cap.

Foreigners have complaints about the H-1B program, too. If they make their employers unhappy, they are subject to immediate deportation.

Under the terms of an H-1B visa, foreign workers are not allowed to leave their employers for six years. That status encourages employers to pay them less - or to hire them in place of more expensive US workers who are free to quit, critics say.

``The kind of thing that I hear two or three times a week is, `They sent me a job description and I knew I could do the job. I went in for the interview, and as soon as they saw my gray hair I saw their jaw drop and I knew I wasn't going to get that job,' '' said Bill Payson, president and chief executive officer of the Senior Staff Job Information Exchange in San Jose, who works with older technology workers trying to find jobs.

Evidence suggests H-1B visa holders suffer as a consequence. Even though 70 percent of them are in well-paid computer-related and engineering fields, a 1996 report by the Labor Department's inspector general found that 19 percent of H-1B workers are paid less than the salary they were promised.

Legislation to increase the number of H-1B visas should provide protection from exploitation.

This also would help native workers and improve economic efficiency.

What could be done? Permit H-1B workers to change jobs freely after they are admitted to the country. Authorize the Labor Department to conduct random investigations of their employment conditions. Finally, require the immigration service to process applications for permanent, employment-based immigration more quickly, which would reduce the need for H-1B visas in the first place.

The University of California (UC) system has agreed to a union contract covering some 8000 teaching assistants (TAs), capping a 16-year fight by graduate students for a labor agreement with their employer. The contract, between UC and the United Auto Workers (UAW), includes an immediate 1.5% pay raise and creates a mechanism for overtime pay as well as limits on the workweek. However, it exempts academic matters from the collective bargaining process, removing a major sticking point among faculty during the yearlong negotiations that ended last week. The pact must still be ratified by each of the system's eight general campuses.

Senate Republicans have pressured high-technology companies to raise money for advertisements supporting Michigan Sen. Spencer Abraham, one of the most vulnerable Republican incumbents this fall and the chief sponsor of a measure that is a top priority for the companies.

An exchange of e-mails obtained by The Washington Post details how the companies scrambled to come up with money for television and radio advertising campaigns after encouragement from Abraham and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.)--at least in part because the companies feared that failing to do so would stall their legislation.

A look at a not-so-familiar side of life in California's high-tech corridor.

As many readers of APS News are aware, Dr. Wen Ho Lee-who until very recently was employed by the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL)-presently is being held without bail in a penitentiary near Santa Fe, charged with violations of the Atomic Energy and Espionage Acts. This article describes the circumstances of Dr. Lee's arrest, incarceration and detention hearings, in rather greater detail than has heretofore been revealed in the media.

After Lee admitted making the phone call, the FBI asked him to aid its investigation of Min, and he agreed. It would be a ``false flag'' operation, in which Lee would pretend to be an agent working for China. He would phone Min and attempt to win Min's cooperation in espionage.

It is our position that assessments and projections of supply and demand in engineering labor markets are often subject to significant errors and misinterpretations because of simplistic assumptions, flawed research methodologies or biased analyses. Such significant factors as the dynamic and global nature of the engineering enterprise, the purposes for which models of its interactions were created, the ability of engineers to sustain productive careers by renewing their skills as technology changes, and the impact of compensation levels on market imbalances are frequently overlooked in supply and demand studies.

More and more, Internet users worry that prying eyes will gain access to personal data

Congress won't be offering help, at least in the short term, to companies in need of high-tech workers or tax credits for training people in high-tech jobs. Legislators aren't expected to take any action on proposals to raise the H-1B visa cap until sometime next year and may not act before this fiscal year's cap is reached.

The "best opportunity" to move forward on this legislation will be for the industry to make "a stronger case" to have it included in next year's budget, Kalil said.

As you know, the IEEE-USA opposed last year's increase in the H1-B visa ceiling from its permanent level of 65,000 to a temporary level of 115,000 for several sound reasons. But one of the most telling is simply that, for all the talk about shortages of skilled workers and high demand for H1-B guestworker visas, in every year since the Immigration Act of 1990 nearly tripled the available number to 140,000, we have fallen far short of using all of these permanent employment-based visas. For example, in FY1998 (the most recent year for which official figures are available), the INS reported just 77,000 of the 140,000 were issued.

Mr. President, you are justly proud of your record as "pro-immigration - and pro-immigrant." Many observers note that most H1-B visa holders intend to remain in the United States as permanent immigrants, and it makes no sense that they are here on temporary, NON-immigrant visas.

Last November, at age 55, I too was displaced by a much younger H-1B foreigner without a green card. Getting laid off, as many unemployed know, is a great blow not only to one's finances and self-esteem, but getting laid off at age 55 can be downright traumatic because, as I am finding out, the chances of getting rehired are almost nil.

"There's been a tremendous amount of attention in recent months about the vast labor shortages faced by the technology industry, and rightfully so. The Information Technology Association of America has estimated that there are 346,000 unfilled IT jobs across the country," Sen. Robb said. "In Virginia alone, there are 30,000 of these jobs that remain vacant. This legislation is designed to address those shortages in both the short-term and long-term."

A majority of recent graduates in high-technology fields are opting to enter the job market, rather than pursue an advanced degree. Universities report that the pool of qualified applicants for master's and doctoral programs has declined so much that they have to actively recruit qualified candidates from overseas to fill the slots in their programs. As a result, 32% of all high tech master's degrees and 45% of high tech Ph.D.'s are awarded to foreign nationals.

"Now I understand – and support – limits on immigration, but when visa caps are forcing recent graduates of American master's and Ph.D. science programs to leave the country, we get into a situation where we're losing our seed corn," Sen. Robb said. "America's past economic growth would not have occurred had our university system not produced so many great minds, and our future economic growth depends on the same. We need more individuals with advanced degrees to teach the next generation of tech professionals and continue the cutting-edge research that has made our economy the strongest in the world."

High-tech companies have become so creative in finding ways to fill highly technical jobs despite a labor shortage that they may have undermined their case for allowing more foreign workers into the country.

This week in Santa Clara, a high-level federal committee will be asking questions about the shortage, which critics call semi-fraudulent, and the need for the visa program in the first place. Alan Merten, chairman of the panel, says he and his colleagues have open minds about these issues.

I hope so. Every instinct I possess tells me the shortage is at least partially contrived.

I say this because every time I write about the issue I hear from people who say they've either lost jobs to H-1B visa holders or who believe tech companies are engaging in rampant age discrimination against American engineers and technicians. I can't prove there's a fire raging in Silicon Valley hiring suites, but the smell of smoke is undeniable.

The federal panel -- the National Research Council's Committee on Workforce Issues in Information Technology -- is meeting Wednesday through Friday at the Biltmore Hotel in Santa Clara, one of several sets of public hearings during the project. For more information, check out the committee's Web site (www.itworkforce.org)

In describing Silicon Valley's recent economic success, many scholars point to the mobility of its workers -- the idea that high-tech professionals move from job to job, and that commitment is less to a company and more to the advancement of technology. Yet this constant flux takes a toll on many workers.

Postdoctoral associations are sprouting throughout North America, giving voice to a population that most universities have ignored

Eliene Augenbraun had heard the stories. Since coming to Johns Hopkins Medical Center in 1992 as a postdoctoral fellow in cell biology, she'd heard about postdocs too scared of their hard-driving advisers to take a vacation or even a day off, of foreign postdocs paid $8000 a year because they feared that asking for a raise might cause a vindictive professor to decide to withdraw the sponsorship needed to retain their work visa. She'd heard about--and even knew firsthand--postdocs who had been assaulted after parking blocks away in a rough Baltimore neighborhood because they were denied university-subsidized parking at secure garages. But because they were dependent on their advisers to recommend them for the scarce faculty jobs they coveted, "people complained quietly and in hushed tones,"

Tony Mendez wanted to teach and do research at a major university. But only a few such positions were advertised when he finished his Ph.D. in nuclear physics at Florida State University in 1993, and the market hadn't improved much when he completed a postdoc at the University of North Carolina in 1996. After failing to make the short list anywhere, he set his sights on small liberal arts colleges. Wrong again. "A lot of people, like me, had the perception that they can try for the small colleges," says Mendez. "But these places were being flooded, too." Today, Mendez works for a company in Tennessee that builds cyclotrons. He misses the classroom, but with a family to support he's glad that the pay is better in industry.

The low pay for postdocs has been a boon to U.S. research universities. But why are their salaries so low? And is it fair?  

Postdocs' expertise and commitment are crucial to the research enterprise, as most senior scientists freely admit. So economic theory suggests that market forces--supply and demand--should set their pay levels. But the reality, at least in the United States, is that the decision is more likely to be made by a government bureaucrat based on how much an agency is willing to spend on these unsung heroes. That remuneration, adjusted only infrequently, then becomes a standard for the rest of the community--by turns a ceiling for universities trying to pinch pennies, a benchmark for those schools who want to be in the academic mainstream, and a springboard for agencies and organizations hoping to attract an elite clientele by offering considerably more. Pay scales also vary by disciplines and by support mechanism--whether the postdoc receives a competitive fellowship, an institution-based traineeship, or is funded on an investigator's grant. But whatever the number, the odds are good that it will be a lot lower than what graduates in fields outside science--especially those with a business or law degree--earn.

Universities are lobbying to get money directly from Congress, rather than from federal foundations and institutes, in a process that critics say often sacrifices good science for politics. By getting provisions -- called earmarks -- inserted into spending bills, universities and their lobbyists have obtained more than $7 billion since 1980. Earmarked legislation in this year's federal budget was a record $797 million.

``It's the same phenomenon that used to result in sewers and bridges,'' said Bob Park, a physics professor at the University of Maryland and director of the Washington office of the American Physical Society, an organization of more than 40,000 physicists. ``Academic science has now replaced the sewers as the place where the money goes.''

The technology industry leads the world in a variety of areas -- among others, market value, velocity of change and willingness to take risks. Here's another outstanding quality: hypocrisy.

The tech crowd, which rails against government -- except when it needs a favor -- just can't stay away from the federal feedbag. Two recent examples come to mind: visas for foreign workers and year 2000 legislation.

After fiercely and successfully lobbying only last year to double the cap on temporary H-1B visas for foreign workers, and then all but swearing off further such requests, the industry wants to lift the cap much, much higher.

The Republican presidential hopeful, in California on a 12-day campaign swing, joins a slew of other lawmakers in what one industry lobbyist dubbed a ``frenzy'' to respond to the high-tech industry's call for relaxing immigration rules to offset worker shortages.

Under McCain's proposal, which he plans to announce today in a speech to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, the number of H-1B visas would increase to at least 175,000 annually for an unlimited time. Current law sets the limit at 115,000, but ratchets it down to 65,000 in 2002.

McCain, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, has made campaign finance reform a centerpiece of his campaign and criticized his colleagues for bending legislation to benefit big campaign contributors. Setting the stage for a Sacramento event next week, McCain said the California system is ``out of control.'' ``Look at what Gov. (Gray) Davis has raised in a very short period of time, still three years away from his re-election,'' said McCain. Including the Legislature, he added, ``Those guys are getting like Washington, D.C.''

Asked why he shouldn't be criticized for pandering by announcing a major high-tech initiative before his own planned Silicon Valley fundraiser, McCain said, ``As long as I'm raising it in $1,000 contribution levels, I don't think there is anything wrong with it.'' He added, ``There is a difference between a group of $1,000 contributions and a seven-figure donation.''

LESS than a year after Congress hoisted the number of foreign high-tech workers eligible to work in America, members of both parties want to do it again. The efforts are premature, however real the shortage of high-tech engineers and programmers may be.

Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, the principal sponsor of the Republican bill, would blow open the ceiling, awarding visas as profligately as his party would dispense tax cuts. His bill would permanently almost double, to 200,000, the number of visas for skilled workers, and exempt anyone with a graduate degree, earning at least $60,000, from the annual limit.

AFTER reading the essentials of Rep. Zoe Lofgren's BRAIN act (Page 1C, Aug. 5), one thinks Lofgren has been brainwashed by the high tech corporations....

I am a resident of Silicon Valley with the highest concentration of technology expertise in the world. However, I can claim that many of my friends and I, all U.S. citizens with advanced degrees, are often unemployed or underemployed. Many have created independent businesses because they were laid off by corporate America....

I am a resident of Silicon Valley with the highest concentration of technology expertise in the world. However, I can claim that many of my friends and I, all U.S. citizens with advanced degrees, are often unemployed or underemployed. Many have created independent businesses because they were laid off by corporate America....

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, trying to resolve the continuing shortage of visas for highly skilled foreign workers, has proposed a new, unlimited visa category specifically for the high-tech industry.

The proposal by Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, would nearly double the annual allotment of so-called H-1B visas to 200,000 for the next three years. The limit on visas had already been increased from 65,000 to 115,000, but the new level was reached on June 15 -- more than three months before the end of the current fiscal year.

The expansion of the program in 1998 increased the annual number of visas to 115,000 in 1999 and 2000, then to 107,500 in 2001 before reverting back to the 65,000 level in 2002.

Gramm's bill would increase the level to 200,000 visas yearly in 2000, 2001 and 2002, before dropping down to 65,000 in 2003.

Technology companies claiming to be understaffed are asking Congress for an increase in the number of H-1B visas allocated to foreign programmers.

But a new study by Los Angeles-based consulting group Commercial Programming Systems Inc. hints that the desire for more foreign workers may be motivated by something other than a need for qualified personnel.

"Generally speaking, foreign workers get paid much less," said Al Strong, president of Commercial Programming Systems.

The issue of the Universities role in Science Policy and human resource issues at the PhD level in the next century is specifically addressed about 9:50 into the 14 minute audio segment.

"If we're going to produce the mathematicians that we're going to need in the 21st century .... We need a review of the public and private support of universities and graduate schools.... "

A comprehensive, in-depth study on the IT workforce has just been published by the Computing Research Association. 

Two types of demand were identified. There is episodic demand, such as the U.S. is experiencing currently as it attempts to fix the Y2K problem and the spurt in Internet activities. There is also long term demand created by fundamental changes in technology and society.

What seemed like a routine visa request turned out to be another increasingly common attempt to skirt the law. Critics say such cases also help explain why a newly increased cap on the annual number of H-1B visas was reached in record time -- just six and a half months after Congress nearly doubled the yearly ceiling to 115,000 from 65,000.

Last month, the INS announced it would stop accepting applications for this fiscal year, shutting out employers who had hoped to bring in new employees. GOP Rep. Elton Gallegly of California, a member of the House immigration subcommittee, says the H-1B visa program should no longer be supported by the government "until we get a handle on identifying and aggressively mitigating the fraud and abuse."

Such efforts are politically sensitive, however. The program's corporate advocates, including high-technology companies in Silicon Valley, say the abuses are exaggerated. What's more, the deep-pocketed executives of these companies are being heavily courted by presidential hopefuls Vice President Al Gore and GOP front-runner Texas Gov. George W. Bush, both of whom support the visa program. Recently, while wooing high-tech executives in Palo Alto, Calif., Mr. Bush called for raising the visa cap, saying that companies facing worker shortages would otherwise be hurt.

CRA releases The Supply of Information Technology Workers in the United States, a study to improve the understanding of the supply of and demand for information technology (IT) workers in the United States, and the surrounding contextual issues.

Constant Connections Through Cable or D.S.L. Mean New Security Headaches for Home Users

CERT^® MISSED MELISSA'S ultimate lesson. I don't make this claim lightly.

Regrettably, they got tied up with technical minutiae when the hysteria subsided. They needed to supply reportersCongress with facts & figures about the havoc it wreaked. Trademarking their name and launching a publicity campaign took its toll as well on the agency. CERT^® simply cannot see the forest for the trees right now. I dare say they no longer remember why they formed; they only remember how.

 

Pethia told Congress his agency reacted to Melissa with lightning speed. In truth, CERT reacted years after the fact.

How did CERT form? "A young college student wrote a 'worm program' that caused a geometric explosion of blah blah blah..." Okay, why did CERT form? "A young college student wrote a 'worm program' that caused a geometric explosion of blah blah blah..."

They forgot why, so I'll tell you. CERT assembled in 1988 to combat an infrastructure attack. Keep this in the back of your mind for a few moments.

A REUTERS NEWSWIRE says Boeing once again disconnected from the Internet as a precaution -- this time due to ExploreZip worries. Other reports say the aircraft giant noticed the virus on some systems and disconnected email as a precaution against "wider damage." Boeing possibly also disconnected from the web to stop employees from using free web-based email services as a workaround.

I feel sorry for network gurus at a time like this. Can you imagine the calls they get from frustrated users? "Network admin, this is Peter. Hey, Kathy. Nope, web & email aren't broken, we just shut them down as a precaution. Yes, because of a virus. No, I don't know when Security will let us turn it back on. Yes, we did spend millions to increase the reliability of our Internet connection..."

Don't tell John Popescu there's a shortage of high-tech workers in the Bay Area.

Popescu graduated with honors from San Francisco State University's computer science program in 1992, carries glowing letters of recommendation and is fluent in programming languages such as Visual Basic and Visual C++.

But countless high-tech firms have swept past Popescu's resume, not even bothering to interview him. He believes that at age 35 he is considered too old to be willing to work the long hours often required to complete a project on time.

The concept of the global economy is a common--and often academic--topic of discussion these days. But something is happening in the computer industry that is taking the discussion out of the classroom and putting it into the real world, adding flesh and bone to an otherwise clinical business-school analysis.

By an overwhelming majority, academic student employees at UCLA have chosen to be represented by the Student Association of Graduate Employees (SAGE) in collective bargaining negotiations with the university, the California Public Employment Relations Board announced Monday.

One of my most sobering experiences as a Senator occurred last year when the CEO’s of several large California high-tech companies told me we are simply not producing a sufficient number of highly skilled workers. Their message was clear -- in order to continue to grow and compete successfully in the international economy, America must increase the number of workers to fill vital information technology positions. This bill helps to do just that.

Even college-educated workers in the information technology field haven't fared particularly well. In 1997, for example, young engineers and scientists were earning 11 percent and 8 percent, respectively, less than their counterparts in 1989, despite notable wage growth over the 1996-97 period.

And young college graduates working in the computer and mathematics fields earned only 5 percent more in 1997 than in 1989, with the bulk of that gain coming only in the last year, after seven years of wage stagnation.

Despite the agreement to talk -- which came at the urging of the state's two most powerful legislators -- the fundamental issue of whether the university will recognize a union of its graduate students remained unresolved Sunday.

UC President Richard C. Atkinson's statement said that university officials ``continue to believe that teaching assistants are not eligible for collective bargaining.'' Nevertheless, the weekend agreement will lead to the first-ever direct discussion of the issues with the union representatives.

``Our goal is that the talks will result in recognition of the UAW as the exclusive collective bargaining agent for teaching assistants, readers and tutors,'' said UAW vice president Elizabeth Bunn. Union officials threatened to resume the strike after 45 days if they don't win recognition.

Richard Hurd, a professor of labor studies at Cornell University, thinks that, in fact, a lot has changed since the Middle Ages, but colleges aren't willing to admit it. He notes that administrators fighting teaching assistants' unions usually make the philosophical argument that the T.A.'s aren't employees.

"That's the P.R. response," he says. "I don't place a lot of stock in that. Contemporary universities are administered in a much more businesslike fashion than they used to be." What he does put stock in is money. "If they're resisting to this degree, it's because of concern that a successful T.A. union will substantially increase the cost of undergraduate education," he says. "If they didn't have that concern there would be no pragmatic business reason to resist, especially in the face of a strike."

For now, the issue isn't about wages, it's about respect, says Christopher Thinnes, a fifth-year graduate student in English at U.C.L.A. He remembers how overwhelmed he felt teaching his first class. "I didn't want more money, but I certainly didn't want to walk into an environment where the administration's rhetoric framed me as some sort of apprentice to some sort of adviser I'd never met," he says. "I found it incredibly insulting." Like other students, Mr. Thinnes says he's received very little instruction from professors in whose courses he has worked as a T.A. In fact, veteran teaching assistants teach the courses on how to be a T.A.

Neil Bucklew, a professor of management and industrial relations at West Virginia University and its past president, watches the showdown with an outsider's perspective. Thirty years ago, he was a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who sat on the adminis tration's side of the table as it negotiated with the country's first T.A. union. Mr. Bucklew believes it is better to grant collective-bargaining rights than to go through a bitter fight over recognition.

"Generally, in our society, we have moved past the recognition issue," he says. "Prior to the 1930s, if a group of employees wanted recognition, normally they had to strike to get it. But we decided that was a scene we didn't need. We watched it in the railroad industry, the steel industry, the mines, and we decided it wasn't necessary -- it turned violent and ugly -- and it, in and of itself, had no value."

He thinks higher education needs to learn those lessons, too.

Teaching assistants at the University of California are planning a strike this fall on eight campuses. They are demanding that the university system recognize their right to engage in collective bargaining. University officials are strongly opposed to that demand, which they say is inappropriate because graduate students are enrolled in degree programs and their work resembles an apprenticeship. But the union organizers say that T.A.'s are primarily employees and should be viewed as such. The conflict in California may have a nationwide impact on this debate. Should teaching assistants be considered apprentices or employees? Should they have the right to unionize?

Proponents say the legislation -- which tightens protections on books, music, movies and other collections of information that have been converted into digital forms -- is necessary because it is so easy to steal, duplicate and distribute such works in the Internet age. Opponents, however, say scholars, film buffs, even average consumers could find long-held habits suddenly declared illegal.

Among the practices at risk:

• Making a copy of information -- be it a movie, record album or magazine article -- for personal use.

• Assembling a list of baseball statistics to figure the standings for your rotisserie league or office baseball pool.

• Giving a novel, record album or movie that you've purchased to a friend -- at least in a form that the friend can enjoy.

  While the wide-ranging legislation does not specifically prohibit these practices, experts say it threatens them in two key sections: One making it illegal to circumvent technology that guards against digital copying, and a second extending copyright protection to the facts collected in a work, rather than just the work itself.

White House and congressional negotiators struck a long-sought deal Wednesday night to allow more skilled foreigners into the country on temporary visas, handing victory to Silicon Valley executives who argued that a worker

Wednesday's agreement came after intense negotiations over a 10-day period between the White House and congressional leaders, represented by Sen. Spencer Abraham, R-Mich. And it came just before President Clinton, who threatened to veto the bill in July, heads to Silicon Valley for a Friday Democratic fundraiser.

But John Reinert, president of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers-United States, said the agreement is bad for American workers. The attestation provision, he noted, applies to so few companies it will not prove much of a deterrent to program abuses.

``I guess we look at it primarily as caving in on the part of the White House,'' he said of the agreement. ``It may have more to do with a Clinton trip to Silicon Valley and San Jose than what's right for the for the American worker."

Aart de Geus is chairman and CEO of Synopsys says,

"Part of the problem is that not enough American students are pursuing careers in math and science. Last year, only 1 percent of incoming freshmen at U.S. colleges and universities said they would pursue computer engineering, and only three percent planned to be computer science majors. "

Part of the problem with the H1B visa debate is some people have a difficult time with math. Aart de Geus quotes the above study but gives us no context for us to meaningfully interpret the numbers. He implies that not enough American students are pursuing careers in math and science, and in computer engineering in particular. So how does he reconcile this with the fact that undergraduate enrollments in computer science and engineering are exploding? According to the Computing Research Association(www.cra.org) the nations undergraduate computer science and engineering programs are still reeling from a 40% increase in enrollment in 1995-96 over the previous year. These same academic departments were hit with another 39% jump in enrollment over 1996 levels in 1997. This will undoubtedly translate to a significant rise in the number of bachelor's degrees awarded starting next year. Meanwhile, many departments are finding their resources stretched to the limit as they struggle to cope with overflowing classrooms.

Aart de Geus concludes is H1B opinion piece with

"We need Congress to increase the number of H-1B visas, not to help foreign workers, but to help ourselves."

Does Aart de Geus include American's high tech workers in "ourselves?"

WASHINGTON -- The number of doctorate recipients in life sciences exceeds the research positions available in academia, government, and industry, says a new report by a committee of the National Research Council. To help improve the employment opportunities for such Ph.D.s and ensure that the most talented students will pursue careers in life sciences, universities and research institutions should not continue to expand enrollment in existing graduate education programs or develop new ones unless they are directed at a specific need -- such as increasing the number of minority students in a certain area or providing trained researchers for emerging new fields.

"The contributions that research in life sciences has made over the years in medicine, agriculture, and the environment have immensely improved the quality of our lives," said committee chair Shirley Tilghman, Howard A. Prior Professor of the Life Sciences, Princeton University, and investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute. "But to continue that success and attract the best and the brightest researchers, they must have reasonable expectations of building meaningful careers. Federal funding agencies and universities should work together to achieve a better balance between graduate education programs and needs of the research enterprise."

Companies may be wasting a powerful resource – the talent of older workers thought to be past their prime, notes an article in Across The Board, The Conference Board magazine.

As baby boomers begin to retire over the next decade, companies will find fewer younger workers in the 24-44 age group to step into their shoes. One obvious way to fill the projected void is to encourage older workers to stay on, according to Douglas H. Powell, a psychologist at Harvard University Health Services and author of the article.

He says few organizations are aware of the coming problem. A recent survey shows that only one CEO in nine recognizes that a major management challenge in the new millennium will be the shortage of younger men and women to replace the aging boomers.

In addition, while Boxer and other politicians have been quick to defend high-tech companies from having to pay more for training, that's not the major issue at this point.

Instead, Silicon Valley firms are upset about the White House's desire to make more companies attest that they won't lay off an American employee to fill the job with a foreign worker. The Clinton administration wants to achieve that goal by dropping the percentage of foreign workers in a company's workforce to 10 percent from 15 percent before granting an H-1B visa.

The other key sticking point is the White House's insistence on letting American workers who believe they've been illegally displaced by foreign workers arbitrate their case with the Department of Labor.

To paraphrase Bob Dylan, the senators and congressmen were heeding the call. They did not stand in the doorway or block up the hall.

Instead, Monday, they sat in yellow chairs 'round a purple table in the ``Definitely'' conference room (as in, ``I'm in Definitely.'') at Yahoo Inc.'s Santa Clara headquarters. And they listened. Raptly, to a 29-year-old deca-billionaire explaining why they should fight Internet censorship.

The times, they are changing.

Obviously we are disappointed,'' said Paul Kostek, president-elect of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers-United States, a 220,000-member group. Kostek said that since the visa cap became a national issue, unemployment among engineers has risen from 0.4 percent to 2.2 percent. Although the number is still small, he said, the trend was worrisome. ``One minute companies are laying off people, the next minute they are testifying that they desperately need more H-1B visas.''

Kostek said the IEEE has already urged President Clinton to veto the bill, if makes it through Congress.

''This is really a sell-out of American college graduates,'' said Jack Golodner, president of the AFL-CIO Department of Professional Employees, which represents 4 million professional, technical and administrative workers.

In layoffs' wake, unemployment hits 2% for EEs-- EE unemployment rose above 2 percent last quarter, the first hard evidence that recent staffing cuts at semiconductor and electronics companies are taking the bloom off a once-rosy job picture. EE Times' profession editor Bob Belligner reports on research done by Engineering Manpower newsletter which says that overall an aggregate 100,000 jobs have been cut since January from electronics, semiconductor and aerospace/defense companies.

"Robert Rivers, editor of Engineering Manpower newsletter here, estimates 2.2 percent of EEs, or 14,000, were unemployed in the second quarter-more than double the 6,000 total in the first quarter, when the jobless rate was 0.8 percent. On the flip side, 635,000 EEs had jobs in the second quarter, vs. last year's overall average of 649,000, Rivers calculates.

More than 35 electronics, semiconductor and aerospace/ defense companies have cut an aggregate 100,000 jobs since January-some due to layoffs, some to attrition.

And, "it's going to get worse," Rivers said. The Asian financial meltdown is worsening, not improving, he maintained. Japan's political situation is in turmoil, and there are fears that the yen will be devalued, touching off devaluation by China. Virtually all the U.S.-based companies that have downsized have laid the blame for missing their financial targets on the economic problems in the Far East"

The numbers will not improve the chances for passage of an industry-backed bill to raise caps on temporary workers, particularly for engineering and software people.

While it passed the Senate, the bill is stalled in the House as industry fights so-called "worker safeguards" incorporated into the bill.

In addition to coinciding with the beta release of Communicator 4.5, the Secure Internet Programming group discovery and notification to Netscape comes as the House of Representatives marks up the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Some versions of the controversial act would criminalize the kind of activity that the SIP engaged in to discover the Navigator security hole, in an attempt to penalize those who tamper with security technologies. "We're quite concerned about the anticircumvention language in that bill," said Felton. "Some versions of that bill would make it illegal for us to examine software for security flaws, and many forms of reverse-engineering would be illegal. There needs to be some kind of exception for people who do security research. Otherwise these holes might be found, but not by the kind of people we want to have finding them."

University of California and California State University compose the most advanced and productive system of public graduate education in the world. UC produces one of every 10 doctoral degrees conferred in the United States, and it awards more than 6,000 master's degrees annually. CSU produces approximately 12,000 master's graduates every year and is the largest educator of school teachers in the nation. Nevertheless, the need for a well-educated workforce is increasing at a dramatic rate, to the point that we now must bring in foreign workers with advanced training. Global competition for these men and women is projected to continue to rise.

Another point the panel agreed on was that intellectual property standards accepted on the Internet are anathema to the corporate culture of Hollywood and old media in general. Once such standard is the growing freeware movement that gives rise to free--through still copyrighted--products such as the Apache Web server.

Non-profit Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network has launched a new Workforce Initiative to help alleviate the immediate worker shortage, as well as to help grow the future workforce. The Initiative is being led by director Kay Mascoli, with help from co-chairs Neil Bonke, retired chairman of Electroglas, and Bob Caret, president of San Jose State University.

Yes--but it's not as dire as the computer industry says

Don't tell Steve D. Schultz about Silicon Valley's labor crunch. The 48-year- old programmer spent five years designing software for a large drug maker. Then last year the company brought in a junior programmer from Taiwan at half the $160,000 Schultz earned as a contract employee.

In November, the drug maker didn't renew Schultz's contract. For four months, he searched for a job but turned up nothing, even at far lower pay. Finally, in April, his former employer called him back--still as a temp--to train his replacement. ``The computer industry isn't begging for workers,'' says Schultz. ``It's looking for 20-year-olds who will put in 80-hour weeks or people from overseas who will be captives at one company.''

Driven by rising salaries and widely reported work force shortages, enrollment in freshman engineering programs at U.S. colleges and universities for next fall's school year has risen 5.6 percent from last year's levels, reversing a four-year decline.

Here's the good news. If you are a young engineer, your salary is going to keep on rising for the foreseeable future because the demand for your skill exceeds the available supply. And the companies that want you, driven by the free market and the need to maximize profits in the short term, seem able to do little to alter the overall balance.

If you are an older engineer, the news is less good. Companies like young talent; someone fresh out of university with a double-E degree, or perhaps a master's, who they can mold into their type of engineer is fine. Even better is the second- or third-jobber with experience in C++, Java, VHDL, mixed-signal ASIC design or radio-frequency design. But the 50-year-old who knows electronics from the transistor level up, it seems, is less valuable to the industry.

This article features a nice collection of quotes from older workers who have trouble finding programming work. I'm surprised, though, that she (or the editor) let Harris Miller's remarks about university CS enrollment go unchallenged. Again, enrollment has been skyrocketing in recent years, and it is NOT true that "a significant number" of the BSCS degrees are going to foreign students, as claimed by Harris. (The actual figure is 6%.)

''There are now many more jobs than qualified people to fill them,'' said Kenneth Mokler, director of worldwide staffing for EMC Corp. of Hopkinton, a maker of computer storage systems.

But a growing number of unemployed and underemployed older high-tech workers tell a different story.

The rules in this high-stakes game are extraordinarily loose:

• Some of the top users of the program, which requires an H-1B visa, are foreign-owned firms that don't consider hiring American engineers or programmers. They recruit only from abroad.

• Current safeguards, designed to make sure employers can't bring in H-1B workers at low wages, don't work because "prevailing wage" figures are often misleading.

• Labor Department officials say their hands are tied and their eyes blindfolded under the current regulations. They've asked Congress for either a meaningful oversight role or no role at all.

• The Immigration and Naturalization Service has so completely abdicated its H-1B responsibilities that it doesn't bother to check if the foreign workers go home when their visas expire.

• Many of the most active H-1B importers are temporary staffing agencies that recruit foreign workers simply to lease them to U.S. companies. The U.S. companies like the arrangement, because they can hire for specific projects and then let workers go when the projects are over. This lowers their overall labor costs.

In a letter to the editor, T.J. Rodgers, CEO of Cypress Semiconductor says,

"The IEEE-USA represents neither me nor Cypress engineers -- 100 of whom recently wrote the organization to dispute its position on H-1B immigration and the fact that the organization to which they pay dues misrepresents them without having ever once obtained their opinion on immigration. It's probably safe to say that virtually 100 percent of the IEEE's immigrant membership feels the same way."

He concludes by asking the question, "So exactly whom does the IEEE-USA claim to represent?" I suppose the same question can be asked about T.J. Rodgers.

In 1996, federal obligations for academic science and engineering (S&E) revealed a yearly decline for only the fourth time since 1963, the year NSF first began surveying this form of government investment in S&E.

But in their humble, down-home, Garrison Keillor way, the folks from the Land of 10,000 Lakes are doing their best in a just-launched advertising campaign to entice fed-up Silicon Valley residents to Minnesota.

Without a magic potion to make workers willingly take on the costs of moving here from elsewhere, companies are increasingly trying a new approach: If you can't bring the worker to Silicon Valley, bring Silicon Valley to the worker.

[This seems almost too outrageous to be true. On the very same day that the U.S. Senate passes a bill to import more high-tech workers from overseas (supposedly because of a severe high-tech worker shortage), Microsoft publishes an article on their web-site which says, with a little hard work and studying, just about anyone can get a high-tech job.]

"I had no computer experience -- I couldn't even run Word four years ago! But I knew this was an area in which I would be needed, be paid well, and be valued as a woman," Kaufman said. "Employers are looking for people who can learn the technology, but also communicate well."

Kaufman enrolled in an AATP course in Boston and began developing skills for a new IT career.

Currently a Systems Engineer/Consultant at a consulting firm in Boston, Kaufman says that not only does she love what she's doing, but she is "absolutely certain" that she can now finance her childrens' college education.

The panel suggests that NSF work to broaden education in undergraduate and graduate mathematics, increase support for graduate and postdoctoral study in mathematics, strengthen interaction between creators and users of mathematics, and generally work to sustain current U.S. world leadership.

The panel calls current U.S. leadership in mathematics "fragile" and heavily dependent on importing foreign talent. Much of that brain-power has come in recent years from the former Soviet Union, a source that has now dried up. On the other hand, "Young Americans do not see careers in the mathematical sciences as attractive," the report says.

The full report is at http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/1998/nsf9895/start.htm

The big news is the continued explosion in undergraduate enrollments for the second straight year. Still reeling from last year's 40% increase over the previous year, academic departments were hit with another 39% jump in 1997. This will undoubtedly translate to a significant rise in the number of bachelor's degrees awarded starting next year. Meanwhile, many departments are finding their resources stretched to the limit as they struggle to cope with overflowing classrooms.

Chairman of the Department for Professional Employees (DPE), AFL-CIO, declares that allegations of major shortages in information technology (IT) jobs are unfounded. He states, "We should be very careful about I.T. employers crying wolf just to enlarge the labor pool, depress salaries and benefits and undermine working conditions as has been done by other employers in the past." He states, further, that "what we should focus on are the education and training needs of American workers to meet future demand and a true reform of the immigration laws, we must stop current abuses and ensure that foreign guest workers who are employed here supplement but do not undercut and supplant workers already in this country."

"Employment growth has been rapid...but not among computer programmers. Most importantly, the trends in real wages do not indicate the rapid growth in compensation that would suggest a market in which employers are attempting to adjust to a labor shortage."

"The degree holder is the waste product of a job system that produces Ph.D. holders but does not use them. In language and literature more than any other field the teaching machine runs on non-degreed labor...."

"Opening the immigration floodgates is a simple and easy solution that will create complex and difficult problems down the road. ...Training and education will help the free market utilize our domestic technical labor supply more efficiently -- resulting in many benefits to American industry, workers and the nation."

It is not in the national interest to turn the program into a major, ongoing source of skilled labor for U.S. employers' needs. Rather the H-1B program should be returned to its original purpose: to provide employers with a temporary source of labor for acute, demonstrable, short term labor market needs. "This is not a crisis that requires Congressional action. It is a challenge for the industry and an opportunity for America's universities and America's youth. Congress should not underwrite the industry's destructive reliance on foreign labor which is not in the nation's long-term national interest."

"The truth is the recent graduate does not have the latest in IT technology because the vast majority of innovation is produced in industry, not the university system. Another basic truth is both the recent graduate and foreign worker are cheaper and more likely to be subservient to the masters of the IT industry. ...The IT industry has a deplorable record of de facto age discrimination." Also, "retraining, spoken of by the industry in total dollars, is impressive until you break it down...typically less than $100.00 per year per person."

Projections from all sources show a widening gap between supply and demand for software professionals.  This shortage is worldwide, not just in the US, is not limited to any specific technology, like Java, SAP or Year 2000 workers, and extends across all industries, not just high-tech.  

The report is a combination of good data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, statistically unreliable data from a survey by the Information ciation of America, (ITAA), quoting of biased samples from commercial organizations and selected anecdotal information. There are numerous instances of contradictions from one part of the report to another. In summary, it is not an acceptable piece of work upon which to base policy decisions.

Are low-paid foreign programmers taking jobs away from American engineers? Or are they alleviating a critical skill shortage in the US software industry?

It doesn't take a rocket scientist (pardon the expression) to identify forces driving this. Prospective physics students are now well aware of lengthening times-to-PhD-degree and postdoctoral terms as well as the difficulties obtaining potentially permanent physics jobs in recent years. Competition from other exciting emerging areas, such as biological sciences, engineering, and information technology, etc., may also draw some talent away from physics. Many think that these declines are a natural and necessary drop to a lower, more sustainable, level - a supply/demand thing. Others argue that we are vastly overreacting and are in danger of the pendulum swinging too far. They fear that overly publicizing past employment trends may cause unnecessary hysteria that will lead to a shortage of physicists, even in academia, in the near future. So, who is right?

For a significant number of the finalists and winners, however, the Science Talent Search will be the highlight of a very short scientific career. In a unique longitudinal study, education researcher Rena F. Subotnik of Hunter College in New York has been following the careers of about 100 of the semifinalists from the 1983 contest, including 9 of the 10 top winners. At the time, all but a few were intent on pursuing a career in science. Now in their early thirties, about half of them are still in science, many in applied fields like medicine or engineering. Only a few are established in academic research careers.

• On hiring teachers... (San Jose Mercury News, 17 May 1997) ###

Business thinking about software will undergo radical change in the next few years.  A worldwide shortage of software talent will force business executives and product designers to realize that some mission-critical projects are beyond their capacity and that they must make difficult choices about what software to build.  Since software has become a competitive weapon in many industries, strategic thinking about how to garner and deploy top software talent will become a common and crucial element of business planning.

• See also a letter to the WSJ editor about this article

• How Bad Is the Job Market for Physicists?
• The New Chemistry Doctorate: Look What They're Saying!
• Rationalizing Ph.D. Production
• Employment Prospects for U.S. Microbiologists Are Sound
• Employment of Recent Doctorates ###
• 1995 NSF Data on Labor-Market Conditions for New Ph.D. Recipients
• Employment Experience of Recent Doctoral Recipients in the Mathematical Sciences

• Allan Bromley (AIP President) and Andrea Dupree (AAAS Presdient) on the Joint Statement on Scientific Research (5 March 1997)

While technological developments have enabled global distribute of software development teams, and wage differentials have stimulated offshore software services export industries such as India's, the overriding factor in the growth of globalization in this industry is the search for talented software people.  The best software talent is in increasing demand as the software industry itself grows, and as software systems become a competitive tool in many other industries.  Unfortunately, global supplies of the best talent are already tapped and there are no significant new sources available in the near future.  The implications for US trade  and public policy are far-reaching.

Many young scientists are struggling to find employment in their field of training. As a young Ph.D. physicist, I know the situation. However, did you ever consider that there are reasons why you SHOULD get out of science, and that there is little reason to be unhappy about it? Let me tell you about my personal perspective on this and how I found a job.

Physics postdoc Kevin Aylesworth first clanged the employment problem alarm a few years ago. Now another postdoc has written the most practical and readable career and employment guide available. Peter Fiske's To Boldly Go: A Practical Career Guide for Scientists is chock full of useful advice and tips for both early- and mid-career physicists. It is about creating options, recognizing opportunities, and avoiding pitfalls. In 188 easy-to-read pages, Fiske's guide helps you chose which jobs to go after, backup strategies to your dream career, how to get past the first fatal 20 seconds, how to clinch the offer, and even how to negotiate favorable employment terms (salary). Fiske dispenses wisdom beyond his years with efficiency and good humor. It is best read twice: once well before active job seeking begins and again during the process.

While Siders emphatically believes that GRE requirements should be dropped for graduate admissions, Georgi favors a modified version of the GRE physics subject test, reducing the number of questions by half to give students time to think through the answers and eliminate time pressures, focusing instead on basic skills and knowledge. However, "As presently constituted, it's quite possible that the GRE physics subject test does more harm than good, and we should either fix it, or seriously consider getting rid of it altogether," he said.

• The Forces Making for an Economic Collapse
• The Economic Consequences of Mr. Clinton

Over the last 30 years, the percentage of physics Ph.D.s awarded to women annually has risen from three percent to 12 percent, but the percentages of African-Americans and Hispanics receiving Ph.D.s has remained essentially level at 1 percent each, according to recent data collected by the American Institute of Physics (AIP). Speakers at a Wednesday afternoon session, at the March Meeting, on women and minorities in physics discussed possible reasons why the percentage for minorities in physics has remained stagnant, considered some factors for the improvement in the numbers of women, and discussed how changes in affirmative action policies might affect the numbers of women and minorities in physics.

This continued questioning of affirmative action ranges from whether it is truly effective, to the ethics of giving preferential treatment on the basis of race and sex, and to the morality of merging minorities into fields with a grim job market. I believe that most of the people who have criticized affirmative action are not directing their objections to those programs aimed at making the playing field level.

As we are all keenly aware, we are living through volatile times. The turbulence of the last several years in both the national and international arenas has sent shock waves through the job market for physicists, hitting recent degree recipients the hardest. Downsizing of major corporations has resulted in the loss of many physics-related positions and a change in the type of work that physicists perform. The unprecedented zeal for cutting federal budgets is heightening concern about the long-term health of scientific research, in general, and the future of the national laboratories, in particular. Increasingly, physics departments are having to justify the size of their programs and, in some cases, their degree-granting status.

The upheaval in East-West relations and the rapid transformation of global markets have stimulated a fundamental re-examination of U.S. science and technology activities. So far, however, there has been little serious assessment of the underlying assumptions, expectations, and requirements of Ph.D. programs in science and areas of engineering closely allied to science. In my view, it is time for such a reassessment.

This evening we will examine the latest data on the supply and utilization of physicists. Most of the data come from studies conducted by AIP's Education and Employment Statistics Division. We have included some data about other disciplines to help ascertain the degree to which the dynamics affecting the physics community are also at play in related disciplines. Finally, it is important to note that the general trends we will be looking at are often masking complex dynamics and that many of the data points have both positive and negative interpretations.

In a recent op-ed piece, James J. Duderstadt was critical of a hearing that I chaired in April ["Too Many Scientists? Don't Believe It," June 2]. The hearing revealed serious flaws in a National Science Foundation study forecasting a future shortfall of 675,000 natural scientists and engineers.

Duderstadt characterizes the NSF study as "a single preliminary research study performed five years ago." But, in fact, the study underwent numerous revisions between 1987 and 1991; was broadly distributed by the foundation to academics, policy makers, Congress and the media; was never subjected to peer review; was cited by the former NSF director more than 50 times in speeches and congressional testimony; and has undoubtedly influenced the direction of federal policy.

The writer is president of the University of Michigan and chairman of the National Science Board, the body responsible for overseeing the policies governing the National Science Foundation.