Physicists directing training programs should cooperate to align student enrollment with market demand for medical physicists

Abstract

Many persons believe that the market demand for medical physicists is bound to diminish as a result of growing fiscal constraints imposed by the increasingly competitive environment of managed care. Some would say that the market demand for physicists has already begun to sink. They might argue that it is unwise for the discipline and unethical for the training programs to graduate more medical physicists than the market can absorb. They would endorse an agreement among training program directors to limit student enrollment so that it is aligned appropriately with the market demand for physicists. Opponents to this point of view might suggest that market demand is impossible to predict, and that one should be optimistic that the growing sophistication of diagnostic imaging and radiation oncology will require more medical physicists in the future. They also might propose that an academic discipline such as medical physics has no right to deprive interested young people from pursuing studies in the field, and that no discipline guarantees employment to its graduates. This debate is the subject of this month's Point/Counterpoint issue.