Re: Stirring the pot -Reply

[DAVID HARRISON <DHARRISON@doe.lanl.gov>]

If you have been tracking the number of job positions posted in the HPS
Newsletter, you've seen that it has been an exponential decay
throughout the past several years, with a half-life of about 1.5 years. 
There was a paper published in the Newsletter or Journal re: this very
phenomenon, written by TH of NFS.

DHARRISON@DOE.LANL.GOV

>>> Bruce Busby <bbusby@umich.edu> 07/11/96 09:00am >>>

I'll throw out something else. 

Is Health Physics Dead? I can attest to the fact that there are a number of
students graduating (graduated) with HP degrees, who are not able to
get jobs. Those who do, are looking at lower starting salaries or tech
jobs. Lay offs of fairly senior personnel have begun (right Sandy?).
Recent HP jobs that I know of have gotten over 50 applicants, with some
reported as many as 400. 

And with federal and commercial downsizing, power deregulation, DOE
hiring freeze and budget cuts, power plants getting older, research
dollars getting harder to come by, the future doesn't seem much better.  

Is this going to be discussed at the National Meeting? Or moreover, is
there anything we can do? What are new students being told? Is this as
grim as it looks?

-Bruce Busby
 


On Thu, 11 Jul 1996, James Mallon wrote:

>  >  > Well the HPS meeting is only ten days away and it is time to ask
the  > emotionally charged question.
>  >         Will the name tags indicate whether the wearer is ABHP
certified?
>  > Last year this thread generated alot of heat and I couldn't resist
throwing
> some gasoline on the fire.
>  > Jamie Mallon CHP ;)
> jmallo@sandia.gov
> 505-844-8287
>