| Abstract: | Industrial sociology faces a renaissance if the leaves of social change can be read correctly. The permissive freedom of the 1960s and 1970s is being curtailed by some harsh economic realities. Parents and students alike are seeking the economic promise of job guarantees when the students graduate. Liberal arts education is on the defensive. Such training must demonstrate it has vocational opportunity or can be converted to such opportunity by postgraduate training. Sociologists who have had the freedom to do their own thing for 20 to 30 years are being forced to make some agonizing appraisals. The entire field of sociology has been placed under scrutiny. The drastic cuts in research funding are only one index of the governmental depreciation of sociology and most other social sciences. The loss of sociology majors and enrollments is another index of student and parental lack of confidence in sociology as a good investment. Academic sociologists who have placed applied sociology in a second-rate category are beginning to recognize that research training of graduate students must turn to applied training or jobs will not be available for many, if not most, of their graduate students. In a similar manner, research funding and graduate fellowships will not be available unless this change is made. |
