Society in general and university students in particular actively participated in this shift. The natural reaction of the student body is to pursue perceived opportunity. The university culture reacted in a lurch from one dominating group to another. The consequent detrimental effect on the humanities at the universities has been regularly argued with passion in the forty years since Snow's lecture.
There is now some evidence that another cultural shift is taking place or, in the language of Snow, that a third culture is growing to stand beside the other two. Unlike Snow's vision of a third culture, this one is technologically based and cares little about bridging any perceived gap between the other two.
This new shift presents significant challenges to the natural sciences not unlike those presented to the humanities at the last significant shift. Ignore it and the cost to the natural sciences could be great; recognize it and it could be significantly accommodated. Either way, there should be a renewed urgency in the university culture to ask the perennial question of what constitutes a well-educated citzenry.