Rethinking the Doctorate
Lewis M. Siegel
Former Dean of the Graduate School
Training for the Ph.D., with its focus on research and individual scholarship, is the “jewel in the crown” of American education. The opportunity to train for a Ph.D. in the United States is the ambition of students throughout the world, and applications for and enrollments in U.S. doctoral programs are at an all-time high. At the same time, beginning with a 1995 report from the National Academy of Science's Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy, there has been a growing concern that, in the U.S., Ph.D. education has been so narrowly conceived that it does not meet the needs of the “real world” employers that increasingly have become the major employers of new Ph.D.s in a number of fields. This concern has been exacerbated by the mismatch between the number of Ph.D.s produced in many disciplines and the number of “traditional” academic jobs open in those disciplines. There has been an explosion of data collection and opinion surveys on various aspects of Ph.D. education in the past decade. Based on this information, a number of projects are now under way (or recently have been completed) that seek to find ways to improve the process of Ph.D. training in U.S. universities. Among these are:
The Responsive Ph.D. Project brings together 14 leading research universities, including Duke, to develop, share and test new practices in the conduct of Ph.D. training. As one of its contributions to the Project this past academic year, the Graduate School conducted a thorough review of the processes of student selection, recruitment, orientation, integration, examination, advising, and monitoring of degree progress in each of its Ph.D. programs, and brought together all Directors of Graduate Study to discuss practices which might reduce attrition from their Ph.D. programs. The Graduate School is now preparing a report of this project for fall distribution.
The Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate is a research program, based in specific disciplines, aimed at developing improved models of doctoral training to create Ph.D.s who will be “stewards of their discipline,” regardless of the type of job they eventually hold. Several Duke programs are participating in the Carnegie Initiative.
The Re-envisioning the Ph.D. Project has resulted in the development of over 700 model practices (including several from Duke) for improving specific aspects of doctoral education; these now appear on a Web site managed at the University of Washington. (See Important Web Addresses, p.17)
The Council of Graduate Schools , with Duke as a leading participant, is planning a major study of factors contributing to the high rate of attrition from U.S. Ph.D. programs and developing projects in individual universities that promise to encourage completion.
The National Association of Graduate-Professional Students has published the results of a broad survey of 32,000 U.S. graduate students about their opinions on what is right and wrong about doctoral education in U.S. universities. The results, while not statistically valid for individual programs, show that, in general, student satisfaction is strongly linked to opportunities to have training, choice of careers, and faculty respect for the choices made as a key aspect of doctoral training. Almost identical results were found in a more focused study by Chris Golde, At Cross Purposes: What the Experience of Today's Doctoral Students Reveals about Doctoral Education . Duke has committed to support development of a more statistically valid survey to aid prospective students in making a more informed choice when choosing a suitable Ph.D. program than is currently possible using the information accompanying the faculty rankings of Ph.D. programs by the National Research Council or U.S. News and World Report.
Ph.D.s Ten Years Later , a major study by Marisi Nerad and Joseph Cerney, investigates the level of satisfaction among Ph.D.s in several disciplines a decade after receiving their degrees.
The Graduate Record Examination Board , of which I am a member, is undertaking a major revision of the Verbal and Quantitative General Tests, and has already introduced an Analytical Writing component to the tests in order to make the results more relevant to U.S. doctoral programs' need for improved selection information.
As you can see, this is a time of great activity and potential change in a model of education that has served the needs of the world for over a century. The process is leading us to re-examine basic issues, such as the purpose of doctoral education: Is it training for the pursuit of pure knowledge, or does it involve, at least to some degree, preparation and training for an actual career? Is it possible for Ph.D.s who find careers that are not based either in academia or in research to continue as “stewards of the discipline” in such settings? Is a university's substantial investment in Ph.D. education primarily designed to serve the faculty, the student, or both; or is it to fulfill, at relatively low cost, a number of service needs that all universities have? If the latter is a factor of importance, then we must realize that there is often a conflict between the interest of faculty in getting teaching help or completing research, particularly when it is funded by external grants or contracts, and the interest of the student in obtaining the best possible education. My firm view is that the Graduate School must always work to ensure that the graduate student is treated primarily as a student, and not just a source of labor.
The national debate about the Ph.D. is well underway. As Duke engages in this important enterprise, I hope that you will send me your thoughts and suggestions on how doctoral training at Duke and similar universities could be improved. I look forward to hearing from you.
This article originally appeared in The GRIND, Fall 2003 Issue.