I have some heartburn about the views expressed by John Rigden and James Stith. The situation they describe—too few students and apprentices for the existing supply of mentors and instructors—fits a correction of an oversupply of teachers as well as it fits an undersupply of students.

There is an underlying assumption that physicists are a superior divine caste whose population must be preserved or increased if for no other reason than preserving the caste or employing the teachers. Physicists, as well as practitioners of other disciplines, are needed to solve problems outside academia, not to fill classrooms. Research into new areas and production of new knowledge are not the exclusive capability or property of physicists. Witness the tremendous volume of engineering and chemical publications.

Physics students tend to be taught that they have some unique capability to do anything. Employers tend to want someone with demonstrated ability to solve this or that particular type of problem, in a particular field, by a particular deadline. Students who obtain advanced degrees in any number of other technical fields may be well trained in basic physical principles and scientific methods and be equally (or more) capable of solving problems in their chosen fields. As a retired physicist and manager, I know both physicists and nonphysicists can solve technical problems well and poorly. Finding the right person to solve the problem at hand is still a challenge. Physicist applicants who assert that they can “do anything” while having little detailed relevant experience might justifiably evoke laughter.

The idea of counting as physicists all students who obtain any degree in physics is a bit of a stretch. Many students change fields. Why shouldn’t a person who obtains a BS in physics and a PhD in, say, electrical engineering or biochemistry be known as an EE or biochemist? A person who gets a BS in physics might get a job as a technician and rightly be referred to as such. It is not, and should not be, particularly important to society as a whole how many “physicists” exist or what criterion one uses in counting them. After all, many subjects now in other academic departments were once considered studies in physics and are still fit subjects for original research. A more meaningful number might be the fraction of the population trained in several technical disciplines.