Science disciplines need overhaul.

• Position: Education

In the most comprehensive report in a half-century, specialists described fundamental changes needed in the education of the scientists whose work impacts medicine, drug discovery, and virtually every other discipline. The result of a year-long project of the American Chemical Society, Washington, D.C., the report was the topic of a symposium at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Although it concluded that the state of graduate education in the chemical sciences is productive and healthy in many respects, the report found that the education of doctoral-level scientists has not kept pace with major changes in the global economic, social, and political environment that have occurred since World War II, when the current system of graduate education took shape.

"The time for a close look at the education of tomorrow's scientists in this key discipline was long overdue," stresses Bassam Z. Shakhashiri, the William T. Evjue distinguished chair for the Wisconsin Idea at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who convened the Commission on Graduate Education in the Chemical Sciences at the symposium. "We hope the Commission's work will create the best possible experience for future scientists upon whom society will depend so heavily to address the great global challenges facing us all. They include climate change, population growth, finite resources, malnutrition, spreading disease and water management."

The Commission found that:

* Current educational opportunities for graduate students, viewed on balance as a system, do not provide sufficient preparation for their careers after graduate school.

* The system for the financial support of graduate students, as currently operated by private, institutional, state, and Federal funds, no longer is optimal for national needs.

* Academic chemical laboratories...