New Book Argues for Reforming the Process of the "Formation of Scholars"

December 19, 2007

A new title from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, called "The Formation of Scholars: Rethinking Doctoral Education for the Twenty-First Century," declares that significant aspects of U.S. doctoral programs aren't well understood by the professors who require them and by the students who must complete Ph.D. programs.

Rather than propounding an overhaul of graduate programs, the book suggests that transparency and clarification in the meaning and purpose of qualifying exams, dissertations, and apprenticeships would make a difference. Its conclusions are based on surveys of students and faculty members in six fields at 84 Ph.D.-granting institutions. The fields are mathematics, chemistry, education, English, history, and neuroscience.

"About half of today's doctoral students are lost to attrition — and in some programs the numbers are higher yet," the book's authors says. "Those who persist often take a long time to finish and along the way find their passion for the field sadly diminished. Many are ill-prepared for the full range of roles they must play."

Efforts to assess the quality of graduate education are minimal, the authors report, and most professors aren't eager to talk about these issues. "One finds attitudes of complacency ('Our application numbers are strong and so is our national ranking'), denial ('We don't have problems with gender or ethnic diversity here'), and blame ('Students these days just aren't willing to make the kinds of sacrifices we did to be successful.')," the book says.

While students in the Carnegie surveys said they understood the theory behind qualifying exams, for instance, many found the whole process mysterious, describing their experiences in the following phases: "we are left drifting," "in the dark," "terrifyingly nebulous," "opaque," and "just stumbling through."

It isn't much better as far as the dissertation goes, the authors stress. They found that "standards by which dissertations are judged are unclear to students, and faculty members complain privately that poorly written, poorly conceptualized, and poorly executed dissertations are often passed to appease a colleague or to simply get a student out the door." Yet, "the dissertation requires students to put theory into action, consider multiple lines of evidence, and display a comprehensive understanding of previous scholarship in the field; it is strongly linked to the development of research skills and content area mastery," the book says. The challenge, the book concludes, is to preserve only the good features of the dissertation.

As for the apprenticeship of doctoral students to their advisors, the authors point out that "when the relationship is bad, it can be horrid." At its worst, "it has contributed to murder and suicide, but more common problems are student attrition and the demise of passion and love for the field."

Other problems include the system's emphasis on the "reproductive model of mentoring," whereby students learn how one scholar thinks rather than how to think for themselves. One possible solution is a shift from "a system in which students are apprenticed to a faculty mentor to one in which they apprentice with several mentors."

Doctoral students have many needs, the authors say. "It is rarely the case that one relationship can meet all those needs," they note. "Today's students are thus best served by having several intellectual mentors."

But that's the case in only in some departments today. When doctoral students were asked about the number of mentors they had during their programs, more than 60 percent of chemistry students and about 50 percent in mathematics and the neurosciences said they had only one.

The authors of the book are: George Walker of Florida International University; Chris M. Golde and Laura Jones of Stanford University; Andrea Conklin Bueschel of the Spencer Foundation; and Pat Hutchings of the Carnegie Foundation.

Source: Carnegie Foundation, December 2007; Inside Higher Ed, Dec. 4, 2007.