Former AFPE Fellow Gordon L. Amidon, Ph.D., currently the Charles R. Walgreen, Jr. Professor of Pharmacy at the University of Michigan, offered an interesting analysis of, and potential solution for, the "glut" of biomedical Ph.D.'s in the United States in his November, 1998 article in The Scientist and in remarks to the Board of Directors of the American Foundation for Pharmaceutical Education (AFPE).

Dr. Amidon suggested the perception of a "glut" of biomedical Ph.D.s may be due to selective job availability rather than too many biomedical Ph.D.s. While acknowledging the annual production of biomedical Ph.D.'s has increased from 3,900 in 1980 to 4,369 in 1988 to 5,878 in 1995, Dr. Amidon pointed out the unemployment rate for biomedical Ph.D.'s has never been more than 1.9% since 1973. The problem, he says, may be underemployment, not unemployment, due to the tendency of new Ph.D.'s to focus only on securing academic positions as their career goal.

Employment opportunities in academia are declining, according to Dr. Amidon. The percentage of new Ph.D.'s employed by academia has declined from 66% in the 1970's to 50% in 1995 while applications for tenured faculty positions have increased. There were 24,442 tenured faculty positions in the biomedical sciences in 1981 and a decline to 24,082 in 1995. Simultaneously, lower paying, non-tenured faculty positions in the biomedical sciences expanded approximately 64% in the same time frame.

The solution to the problem of underemployed biomedical Ph.D.'s may lie in the pharmaceutical industry sector which has expanded its hiring of pharmaceutical sciences and biomedical Ph.D.'s from 15.6% in 1981 to 31.9% in 1995. According to Dr. Amidon, employment opportunities in the pharmaceutical sciences business enterprise provide a wide variety of exciting careers for biomedical Ph.D.'s.

While current biomedical Ph.D.'s are trained well for drug discovery, they are not trained for drug development, approval, manufacturing, and marketing. Dr. Amidon suggests retraining under-employed or under-utilized biomedical Ph.D.'s in the pharmaceutical sciences to make them competitive for alternative careers in areas of need such as product research and development (which depend on bio-pharmaceutics and drug delivery), analytical research and development, quality control and assurance, medical and regulatory affairs, process development, pharmaceutical manufacturing, marketing, sales, and business development. New graduate education programs may be needed to accommodate the re-training requirements for alternative careers in the pharmaceutical sciences.

AFPE Chairman Ernest Mario, Ph.D., thanked Dr. Amidon for his insightful analysis of the perceived "glut" of biomedical Ph.D.'s and the identification of a potential new source of scientists for the pharmaceutical sector. Dr. Mario recommended Dr. Amidon's 1998 report in The Scientist be forwarded to the soon­to-be established AFPE Industry Advisory Group for review and consideration.

Dr. Amidon acknowledged the contribution of his colleague, Dr. David Pang, Ph.D., in developing the content of the article and the presentation to the AFPE Board. Dr. Pang is Director of Scientific Affairs at the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) of which Dr. Amidon is a Past-President.