Science: Technical Deferment

“In a fairly short space of time you can, if need be, turn a chemist into a fighting man; but you cannot turn a fighting man into a chemist.”

In these words Vice Chancellor Sir Hector James Wright Hetherington of the University of Glasgow last month advised the U.S. about drafting technical, scientific and professional students.

The warning went apparently unheeded in Washington until last fortnight. Then Purdue’s President Edward Charles Elliott, chief of the Professional & Technical Division of the War Manpower Commission, got a resolution from an official engineering committee for the immediate but temporary deferment of students in recognized engineering schools.

What the engineers wanted was much more than advice and suggestions to the local draft boards. They wanted a rational national program for the best use of the limited supply of new engineers. The Institute of Chemical Engineers had already reported that the engineering colleges could enroll a total of only 40,000 entering students per year, about 3.7% of the annual crop of 18-year-olds. Of these only 18,000 would graduate, half fit for commissioning, half for industry. Thus the loss to the armed forces would be less than 1%.