Of the 15
hydrogeologists in the Denver office where Zeiler works, only three have Ph.D. s. That's typical of the field as a whole: AGI
estimates that university programs graduate five times as many M.S. students as Ph.D. s. Its figures show that about 18,000 hydrologists and
hydrogeologists now work in the environmental industry, a few thousand in the mining and petroleum industries, and about 850 in academia, the only sector for which a doctorate is required.