(FORTUNE Magazine) – Scientists don't feel sympathy for the middle managers of the 1990s; they feel empathy. While the number of Ph.D.s awarded in all sciences increased to nearly 19,500 in 1993, up 25% from 1983, the number of college teaching and research positions did not rise at all. At the same time, defense cuts have shorn budgets at government-run labs. And corporate labs, which performed 70% of all U.S. research last year, are as plum a target for downsizing as fat layers of middle management.

So it's no surprise that 132 applicants sought admission to a unique new 12-month MBA program for scientists at Cornell University's Johnson Graduate School of Management. The 25 students admitted get credit for their graduate degrees in science, and squeeze another semester's worth of statistics, finance, and marketing into a ten-week summer slate, which starts in June. Says John Elliott, a Johnson dean: "These are not people who will find the idea of regression analysis or linear programming difficult." The budding entrepreneurs will then get mainstreamed into the regular pool of second-year MBAs.

One matriculant is Carl McGee, 37, currently an assistant professor in the nutritional program at the State University of New York at Buffalo. The job market in his field isn't as tough as in some other sciences--but McGee spends more time writing grant proposals for limited research funds than doing science. "There is so much lack of real productivity," he laments. And he expects things to be better in the business world?

- JACQUELINE M. GRAVES