Improving Graduate Education

Graduate education in the sciences is evolving as the labor market for Ph.D.s changes. Here are reports and recommendations for ways to improve graduate education.

The Value of 'Learning Backward': Next Wave, May 31, 2002. "'Learning backward'... is about fixing the problems that are important to you and acquiring the skills and resources you need to solve them. Learning backward happens every day and should be recognized as an integral skill of functional professionals and citizens. Graduate programs that are recognizing this have developed courses and programs to prepare students for lives after their theses or dissertations; lives in which the capacity to fix problems is a critical survival skill."
"Learning To Be a Citizen-Scholar": "Imagine a graduate-education system that begins by asking students to think about what matters to them most and then uses their answers not only to create programs of research, but also exciting and varied career possibilities. We call this approach 'passion plus expertise,' and it is the premise behind the 'intellectual entrepreneurship' program at the University of Texas at Austin."
Intellectual Entrepreneurship: Successfully Engaging Hearts, Minds in Graduate Education: To achieve greater diversity, we must increase awareness of the value of graduate education and devise experiences allowing minority undergraduates to explore how advanced study can engage their hearts and minds helping them fulfill their professional visions and ethical commitments. Recruiting a critical mass of outstanding Hispanic and African American students requires a change in mindset. The Intellectual Entrepreneurship (IE) program at the University of Texas-Austin is an example of this new mindset. IE is a program and philosophy of graduate education that promotes the virtues of discovery, ownership and accountability. It challenges students to be greater than the sum of their disciplinary parts to be citizen-scholars contributing both to academe and the community. By demystifying graduate education and enabling students in traditional areas of study to put their knowledge to work in the community, it is not surprising that IE has attracted a disproportionate number of minority students; 20 percent of those enrolled in IE are underrepresented minorities, while the same group comprises only 9 percent of the total graduate student body.
Reforming Graduate Education in the Sciences: by Representative George Brown, Jr. A blunt assessment of what needs to change in higher education from one of the people who controls the purse strings. A definite must-read.
Doctoral Education: Preparing for the Future: Jules LaPidus, Council of Graduate Schools. "The best advice for faculty members is this: In order to help students prepare for a variety of possible careers, don’t train them too specifically for any one. Instead, provide the kind of education that enables them to know their fields, understand the processes of scholarly inquiry, and have a realistic picture of how they can use these incredibly valuable skills in a variety of ways, in a variety of settings, and in a variety of satisfying and rewarding careers." (Requires Adobe Acrobat)
Reshaping the Graduate Education of Scientists and Engineers: A 1995 National Academy of Sciences report recommending important changes in graduate education.
Harvard suicide colloquy sponsored by the Chronicle of Higher Education: A frank, high-level discussion of the recent chemistry grad student suicide at Harvard. Most of the participants are PhDs, many are professors.
Developing Intellectual Entrepreneurship: For graduate students, communication is a basis for success: The Scientist, March 5, 2001. "Doctoral programs do not adequately prepare students for the future.... To solve this problem the University of Texas, which produces the largest number of Ph.D.s annually, established a professional development program. Initiated in 1997, the mission of the University of Texas at Austin Intellectual Entrepreneurship Program is to help students realize the value of their expertise, discover their disciplinary identity, and become successful academic professionals." (Requires free registration)
"Ethical Commitments, Professional Visions, and Intellectual Choices: Students Call for Changes in Graduate Education," Communicator, July, 2003: In Spring 2003, Dr. Rick Cherwitz, Founder of the Intellectual Entrepreneurship Program, and English doctoral candidate Julie Sievers began a series of conversations about ethical commitments and graduate education. Approximately a dozen of the University of Texas best graduate students in the sciences, humanities, social sciences and arts took part in the first meeting. These discussions will extend into the 2003-2004 academic year; in addition to occasional articles published in the Austin American-Statesman (as part of the Citizen-Scholars series: http://www.utexas.edu/ogs/rc/citizen_scholars.html), the goal is to share what is learned with the larger academic community both locally and nationally. Questions being raised as part of this "Ethics Project" appear at: http://www.utexas.edu/ogs/rc/ethics_project.html
Intellectual Entrepreneurship: A Vision for Graduate Education,: Richard A. Cherwitz and Charlotte A. Sullivan, Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, Nov/Dec 2002. The thesis of this article is that successful and resilient academic professionals are intellectual entrepreneurs. They appreciate the enormous value of their scholarly expertise. They construct bold but attainable visions for putting it to use. They are willing to take risks, seize opportunities and marshal all the resources available to them to bring their visions to fruition. They understand the importance of collaboration and teamwork. Moreover, they have the passion and skills to utilize and sustain their expertise in multiple settings over the long course of a career. IE celebrates what is appropriate and valuable about the research orientation of graduate education. In fact, IE implores students, Never apologize for being a scholar. The challenge facing both graduate students and faculty is discovering the value of their scholarly expertise and documenting it for others.
Adapt or Die: The Grad School Survey: by Stefanie Sanford, HMS Beagle, Dec. 10, 1999. "In a preliminary survey, graduate students rate their academic programs, revealing good news and bad. The conclusion: U.S. graduate education is in desperate need of reforms, many of which were initially proposed 30 years ago." (Requires a free subscription to HMS Beagle)
AAU Committee on Graduate Education Report and Recommendations: 1998 recommendations for best practices in graduate education. The report contains a number of good ideas, but what's really significant is that these ideas are being endorsed by the presidents of a number of major universities. The key now is to push for implementation.
Graduate Students Weigh In on Their Programs: by Gabriela Montell, Chronicle of Higher Education Career Network, May 14, 1999. Chronicle coverage of the PhDs.Org Grad School Survey.
At Cross Purposes: What the experiences of today's doctoral students reveal about doctoral education: Results of a University of Wisconsin survey on graduate education. Key findings: "The training doctoral students receive is not what they want, nor does it prepare them for the jobs they take." and "Many students do not clearly understand what doctoral study entails, how the process works and how to navigate it effectively."
Broader Ph.D. Training Can Benefit Science and Society: by Ricki Lewis, The Scientist, February 1, 1999. "[F]or a grad student, finding a position outside academia is easier said than done. Part of the problem is image... In interviewing hundreds of graduate students, Karp found many feel pressured to follow the trajectory of their mentors, from Ph.D. to postdoc (to postdoc), to faculty position. Deviation may be actively discouraged, as a biostatistician at a West Coast biotech firm who got his Ph.D. in physiology discovered..."
The PhD: A Tapestry of Change for the 21st Century: Jody Nyquist, Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 2002. "Re-envisioning, rethinking, re-examining, or re-assessing the PhD has occurred at various points in this country since 1930--just as is happening today. The general consensus on each past occasion has been that the degree, the pinnacle of academic success, is just fine -- especially because it attracts students from abroad by the thousands. Are the current efforts to focus attention on doctoral education one more fleeting look at the degree? Will they result in another declaration of the success of the enterprise? And a shelving of reports from its critics?"
Virtual Center for Research on Graduate Education: A web site devoted to research on graduate education, containing information both on enrollment and degree trends and on policy issues in graduate education.
Physics for Fun and Profit: "Eager to help grad students make the leap to the business world, Georgetown is trying a radical approach to teaching science." Christopher Shea, Washington Post, May 13, 2001.
Pimping a Ph.D.: "A new graduate program turns Chaucer scholars into money-grubbing entrepreneurs." By Michael Erard, Salon, December 13, 1999.
Results of the 1999 Graduate School Survey: Notes from Geoff Davis's March 16, 2000 presentation of the PhDs.org Graduate School Survey results to the National Science Board in Washington, DC.
AAUP's Statement on Graduate Students: A statement on graduate student rights from the American Association of University Professors.
Practical Ph.D.s: New programs ready students for real-world jobs: by Miriam Horn, US News & World Report, 1999 Graduate School Guide.
Vertically Integrated Grants for Research and Education in the Mathematical Sciences (VIGRE): An important new NSF progrm designed to encourage departments to rethink their graduate, postdoctoral, and undergraduate training programs. The initiative fosters all the right things, and is an important first step in getting the recommendations of the NAS and others actually implemented.
NIH Shelves Graduate School Plan, Will Bolster Training Instead: By Rich McManus, The NIH Record, August 10, 1999. The NIH shelves plans to establish a degree-granting graduate school.
The Activated State: An Argument for Involved Scientists: by Peter Fiske, Next Wave, May 21, 1999. Why young scientists should get involved in shaping graduate education.
A New Gene-eration of Bio Grads: by Katie Dean, Wired News, July 24, 2000. "The newly formed Keck Graduate Institute in Claremont, California, is designed to prepare students for the bioscience industry, combining elements of different scientific disciplines with technology and management skills. The school -- part of the highly acclaimed Claremont Colleges -- will open its doors on Aug. 1."
Exploring Ways to Shorten the Ascent to a Ph.D.: "For those who attempt it, the doctoral dissertation can loom on the horizon like Everest, gleaming invitingly as a challenge but often turning into a masochistic exercise once the ascent is begun. The average student takes 8.2 years to get a Ph.D.; in education, that figure surpasses 13 years. Fifty percent of students drop out along the way, with dissertations the major stumbling block. At commencement, the typical doctoral holder is 33, an age when peers are well along in their professions, and 12 percent of graduates are saddled with more than $50,000 in debt."
Preparing Physicists for Life's Work: Physics Today, April 2001. "Physics departments are exploring ways to turn out students well matched to today's--and tomorrow's--job opportunities."
The Ph.D. Careers Project: The Ph.D. careers project is an investigation of the careers of recent Ph.D. physical science graduates. Our goal is to determine what types of work these scientists obtain, how that work relates to their graduate education, and how satisfied scientists are with their careers. We are using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. Using "ethnographic" interviewing techniques, about four dozen Ph.D. scientists have described to us their graduate education, their jobs, and how these fit into their lives. We have used our analysis of these interviews to construct a survey questionnaire that was sent out to over 1100 recent graduates. The qualitative and quantitative data are being analyzed and results are being reported in presentations and publications.
Graduate Research, Education, and Training (GREAT) Group: The Graduate Education Research and Training (GREAT) Group was established in September 1996 by the AAMC's Executive Council to provide a national forum for professional development and exchange of information and ideas related to biomedical graduate education and training in medical schools.
Private Funders Have a Role in the Training of Life Scientists: Editorial in November 1998 The Scientist by Susan Fitzpatrick, Program Director of James S. McDonnell Foundation
Re-envisioning the Ph.D.: A national discussion on "How can we re-envision the Ph.D. to meet societal needs of the 21st Century?", April 13-15, 2000, University of Washington. Lots of interesting material.
Colleges Shouldn't Be Employment Agencies: by John V. Lombardi, President of the University of Florida, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 16, 1999. "We think America has too few people with advanced training, and too few Ph.D.'s in most fields. We also know that too few women and members of minority groups earn doctorates. And so we are enthusiastically expanding our doctoral and other graduate programs." The Chronicle is sponsoring a debate on the topic.
Meta-themes from the Re-envisioning Conference: An overview of the discussions from the Re-envisioning the Ph.D. conference.
Educating Mathematical Scientists: Doctoral Study and the Postdoctoral Experience in the United States: 1992 report of the National Research Council
Graduate Education: Consensus Conference Report: Federation for American Societies for Experimental Biology, 1997. "What are the driving forces that have resulted in ...[the 50% increase in biomedical Ph.D.'s in the past decade]? Can the increased production of biomedical Ph.D.s continue without altering the job market for new graduates? Should this growth be curtailed in order to achieve a new steady state and, if so, at what point?"
Center for Innovation and Research in Graduate Education: The Centers vision of change and advancement encompasses all aspects of graduate education, from financial support, faculty mentoring, time-to-degree, attrition, job placement, etc., to broader issues such as under-representation of students of color and of women in all fields of graduate study, and the special circumstances of international students. Our aim is to build national and international cultural awareness among graduate students and postdoctoral fellows throughout their graduate education.
What Makes Grad Students Graduate?: "A new study by a team of researchers at the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute suggests that a key factor may well be expectations management.... The new study — based on survey interviews with students about the factors that helped them finish up — was designed to go 'inside the black box of doctoral education' and to find the factors that are most important to getting students through."
Academic Duty: by Donald Kennedy. From the publisher: "Kennedy suggests that meaningful reform cannot take place until more rigorous standards of academic responsibility--to students, the university, and the public--are embraced by both faculty and the administration. With vision and compassion, he offers an important antidote to recent attacks from without that decry the university and the professoriate, and calls upon the college community to counter those attacks by looking within and fulfilling its duties."

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Improving Graduate Education