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Peer Review, Spring 2004
The Responsibility of Doctoral Programs for
the Career Preparation of Future Faculty
By Chris M. Golde, senior scholar, The Carnegie
Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching |
As doctoral students begin graduate school and contemplate
their future careers, many, if not most, imagine that they
will become faculty members. Despite more than a decade of
reports describing the arduousness of the path and revealing
the relatively small proportion of students who actually secure
tenure-track positions, the next generation is undaunted in
their desire to pursue a faculty career.
In many ways, that is good news. American colleges and universities
must continually be replenished with passionate, committed
scholars and researchers. The undergraduates of tomorrow deserve
to be challenged and inspired by teachers who are familiar
with the latest discoveries and well versed in contemporary
pedagogical practice. But can we be confident in this vision
of the future? Are research universities and graduate programs
preparing doctoral students who will be the engaged educators
every professor wants as a colleague and every parent wants
teaching their child?
In 2001 my colleague Tim Dore, a chemist now
at the University of Georgia, and I published the results
of a national survey of doctoral students. More than 4,000
doctoral students in eleven disciplines at twenty-six universities
responded to a lengthy survey that covered many aspects of
their experiences as students, as well as their perceived
preparation for their careers, particularly for faculty careers.*
Findings
We learned from our survey that students enter graduate
school holding idealized, and in some ways unrealistic, views
of faculty life. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the graduate school
experience provides a somewhat rude awakening to many. The
lives they see their professors leading do not match the image
in their minds. Many adjust their vision—replacing the
"Mr. Chips" picture of life led by the gifted
teacher who inspired them to go to graduate school with the
publication—and grant-seeking life they see their advisors
lead. Others are discouraged; they look at the untenured research
faculty and opt away from such careers. Still others find
their passion for their field undaunted.
We also found a mismatch between the aspects of faculty roles
that students reported being interested in and looking forward
to, and the ones for which they reported being prepared by
their programs. These data (see table 1) tell us two things.
First, doctoral students are interested in the variety of
faculty roles; they do not aspire solely to be researchers.
In fact, taken in the aggregate, doctoral students
are interested in—and, one can assume, understand—the
various aspects of teaching. A substantial proportion of students
are interested in service roles. The application of research
and expertise in broader disciplinary and public contexts
has definite appeal. And while it may not be surprising that
campus service roles—here represented by a question
about committee work—are the least enticing, the responses
to another question reveal significant interest in campus
life: 69 percent reported interest in becoming involved in
activities with undergraduates outside of class.
The second thing these data tell us is that, in general,
the conception of "preparation" held by doctoral
programs is quite narrow. The proportion of students who report
that their program has helped to prepare them for these various
tasks and roles is disappointingly low. For nearly every role
or task performed by a faculty member, there is a significant
gap between the proportion of students reporting interest
and the proportion reporting preparation. The gap is small
for conducting research, but much larger for many teaching
and service roles .*
There are those who respond to these data by pointing out
that the goal of doctoral education is to prepare excellent
researchers and scholars; doctoral education is not skill-based
career preparation. However, researchers and scholars must
understand and take into account the uses and applications
of the knowledge they create. Moreover, they must be able
to transmit that knowledge by communicating with others in
a variety of settings: with students in classrooms, with colleagues
from other fields on interdisciplinary research teams, and
with policy makers. Teaching, whether in an article, classroom,
or grant proposal, is an integral part of investigation and
scholarship. Researchers must be able to contextualize their
work, both within their discipline and the world, and to explain
its importance to others.
University-level teaching is a complex act, and the student
respondents were able to identify the ways in which their
programs had prepared them—and the ways in which their
preparation fell short. Some of these data are presented in
table 1; many more are in the project report. It is important
to recognize that some departments and disciplines focus attention
on preparing their doctoral students as teachers. The field
of English, for example, is most likely to offer a course
on pedagogy lasting at least one term; 79 percent of students
in English said that this was available in their departments.
Students from other teaching- intensive fields also reported
the availability of such a course in their departments: mathematics
(58 percent) and sociology (60 percent). By contrast, chemistry
(28 percent), biology (30 percent), and art history departments
(33 percent) did not routinely offer such preparation to students.
How do students' desires and perceptions change over
time? Although we did not follow students over time, we asked
them to think back to the start of their programs and recall
whether their interest in a faculty career had increased,
decreased, or stayed the same. Approximately one-third (35.4
percent) said their interest had declined, but another fifth
(21.1 percent) reported that their interest had increased.
The trend (although the differences are not statistically
significant) is that those toward the end of their studies
are more likely than those at the start to desire a faculty
career, and there is a dip in the middle years. About half
of the respondents see this goal as realistic, and more of
those at the end of their graduate school careers than those
at the beginning see this goal as realistic.
Surprisingly, comparing the students at each stage of graduate
study does not reveal differences between them in either the
level of interest or the level of perceived preparation for
various tasks of faculty work. The big exception is preparation
to conduct research; in this case, student interest and preparation
both rise over time in a linear way. Perhaps what is most
important here is the contrast with teaching, advising, and
service. This finding reinforces the perception that attention
to preparation for teaching, advising, service, and governance
is at best sporadic and haphazard. By contrast, research is
an activity in which students gain increased proficiency over
the course of their time in graduate school.
Conclusion
These data provide a rich profile of a large number of students
at a moment in time. The current state of affairs is clearly
unsatisfactory—at least to students. And we argue that
students have a clear-headed view that should serve as a wake
up call to faculty members and administrators at colleges
and universities. Responsibility for change, however, rests
on many shoulders. We generated a number of recommendations
for students, for those at colleges who are sending students
to graduate school, and for those at PhD-granting institutions.
The data from our survey are intended to prompt all members
of a department to ask, In what ways does our doctoral program
meet student needs, and in what ways does it not? Asking this
question in a spirit of collaborative inquiry, reshaping doctoral
programs with creativity and with deliberate speed when necessary,
and making the rationale and structure of the program transparent
to all will ensure that the next generation of faculty members
are prepared to tackle their myriad roles as engaged scholars.
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