Help Wanted: Science Manager

Feature Open access, freely available online " I didn't want to be just another MBA, " says Pascal Herzer, one of the fi rst recipients of a new graduate credential known as the professional science master's, or PSM. " Not many people have the ability to understand science and business, and [the PSM] program was designed for that very purpose. " PSMs are two-year American master's degrees fi nanced in large part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to cultivate science managers. Sloan's ultimate goal is to make science careers more attractive to talented young people like Herzer, a 2003 PSM graduate in Applied Biosciences from the University of Arizona, who believes his PSM makes him more marketable to science-based businesses. " I am at the true junction of science and business, " he says. Fortunately for Herzer, the business of science is booming. Jobs for scientists and engineers grew four times faster than the United States national average since 1980, and should outpace the market until at least 2010. Surprisingly to many academics, most of these jobs are in industry. In 1999, the last year with complete data, two out of three employed science and engineering (S&E) graduates worked in industry, including the great majority of bachelor's and master's degree holders, and 40% of doctorates. In other words, industry, not academe, now drives American S&E employment, and will for the near future. Like academia, industry needs scientifi cally literate personnel; unlike academia, industry wants employees with business savvy as well. However, in the past, graduate students received either science or business instruction, not both. " Industry simply hired regular master's-degreed people, or MBAs, or more likely PhDs, and just expected them to learn their weaknesses on the job, " says Eleanor L. Babco, Executive Director of the Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology, a nonprofi t corporation with funding from the Sloan Foundation to assess PSM graduates. For science-based businesses, then, the American S&E doctorate—viewed by many as the worldwide gold standard for science education—is too specialized for their needs (see Box 1). But a master's degree may be just right. During the 20th century, the master's degree evolved as a professional credential in many fi elds, including business, education, and social work, and more recently, pharmacy, physical therapy, and accounting. In the 1990s, non-incidental master's in the sciences—in other words, intentionally terminal degrees, not consolation prizes for …