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Some of these specialists are trying for teaching jobs in the new, expanding community colleges and even high schools. The principal of the high school in Dayton, Texas (pop. 3.000), has hired Clement Lam, a Ph.D. from Ohio University, to teach the school's only physics course and math. Lam was one of 15 Ph.D.s who applied for the job. However, the long-range prospect for Ph.D.s in science is not so bleak. If substantial funds were devoted to environmental improvement, for example, it would provide work for many of the technicians formerly employed in aerospace. Even now, Ph.D.s in civil and mechanical engineering are not having the trouble that the aerospace and electronics men are having.
LAW. Although many recent graduates have had trouble finding jobs, applications to some law schools have doubled this year. "1971 is going to be the roughest year ever for a kid to get into law school," says Charles Consalus, director of the Law School Admissions Test. This year more than 100,000 students are applying for the 35,000 places available. The increased popularity of law is partly due to the drying up of the Ph.D. market. Mostly, though, it reflects students' concern for social change and the means of bringing it about. Says one law school administrator: "This college generation is perceptive enough to realize that the law is where the action is."
A surprising number of students have switched from engineering or science to law. Ray Herman. 24, who entered the University of Chicago Law School shortly after getting his M.S. in physics, explains that "The public men who are making the important decisions today are all lawyers." According to Joe Tom Easley, this year's managing editor of the Texas Law Review, every new law class enters with "a higher percentage of students bent on combining law with social change." Two years ago, Easley was the only member of his class to spend the summer working with Nader's Raiders in Washington; last summer, a dozen did so.
In the past few years, many Wall Street firms have allowed their lawyers to do pro bono publico work on company time. Even so, many of the more socially conscious young attorneys are joining the Office of Economic Opportunity's Legal Services Program or working for "public interest" law firms. One such lawyer is Tom Meites (Harvard Law '69), who is a counsel for a group of concerned Chicagoans called Businessmen for the Public Interest. In that capacity, he and two colleagues have presented major courtroom challenges to unfair legislation, like the Illinois law that allows a landlord to win a judgment against a tenant without first notifying him. Meites chose public-interest law, he says, because he "couldn't bother with the conventional lawyer's willingness to take either side."
MEDICINE. The nation's medical schools are also being besieged by a record number of applications from college seniors, as well as Ph.D. candidates switching from science or engineering. Harvard and the University of Southern California could more than fill next year's class with doctorate applicants. As