Mass. Has `Too Many' Professionals

BOSTON--The head of the New England Board of Higher Education has recommended establishing a regional clearinghouse to monitor the supply and demand for scientists and highly trained technicians and other professionals.

Relative to its population, "New England has trained a surplus ranging from 50 percent to 90 percent of regional proportionate need (for professionals)," John C. Hoy said Monday.

"The degree of overproduction by New England institutions during the past two decades has provided the most significant human resources insurance policy available in the industrialized regions of the U.S. and the world," he said.

Hoy said the oversupply of professionals has led to New England's economic resurrection. However, he warned that the region's revival could weaken if more attention is not paid to the surplus.

Hoy's analysis was written originally for the Alden Seminars. This week the seminars published it as part of a white paper titled "Massachusetts Higher Education in the Eighties: Higher Education and Workplace Needs."

The seminars bring together executives in industry, business and higher education to discuss major issues in higher education and devise solutions for problems.

During the post-war prosperity of the 1940s and 1950s, New England suffered the highest unemployment levels in the country. The 40-year metamorphosis of New England's economy from an aging industrial region in decline to a leader in the information services boom remains unacknowledged, Hoy wrote in his report.

A decade later, New England "has fully recovered from a harrowing period of high unemployment, low wages, mounting inflation and depressed investment," Hoy wrote.

He said the recovery was the result of an oversupply of professionals in the areas of high technology, such as scientists and engineers, and those in the so-called "sophisticated services" -- principally finance, insurance, health care, consulting, professional and sales.

Between 1980 and 1990, New England's demand for engineers is expected to grow 27.1 percent, for lawyers 26.2 percent, physicians and dentists 23.9 percent and scientists 18.2 percent, according to Hoy's report.

With projected need of that magnitude, he said, "New Englanders must be concerned about possible interruptions in the supply of well-educated, professional people needed to keep our knowledge-intensive industries thriving."

Among Hoy's recommendations are the creation of centers to keep track of the region's need for professionals in the various disciplines and setting up a regional program for career development to cater to professionals in expanding fields where demand is on the rise.