Doctoral Education and the Faculty of the Future

5. Confronting Common Assumptions: Designing Future-Oriented Doctoral Education

5 Confronting Common Assumptions Designing Future-Oriented Doctoral Education Maresi Nerad Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis; one would think that this Latin proverb—“The times are changing and we are changing with them”—applies to all sectors of life and all societies. However, in the United States, doctoral education is, for the most part, still structured as if it were meant to prepare students for life as university professors— as if times have not changed and graduate students have stayed the same. This outdated assumption is one of a number of common erroneous assumptions that are still in the minds of faculty and higher education policymakers and are perpetuated by the dominant media. Others are: 1. All students who study for a PhD want to become professors. 2. Professorial positions are highly desirable, and the best doctoral recipients become professors. 3. The career paths of these people are linear and smooth traditional academic careers, moving from PhD completion to assistant professor, with perhaps two years of postdoctoral fellowship in between, then to associate professor, and on to full professor. 4. Everybody who successfully completes a PhD will most likely choose the very best academic job offer, unconstrained by relationship and family concerns. 5. Professors enjoy the highest job satisfaction compared to any other employment group. Confronting Common Assumptions 81 Most of these assumptions are outdated and based on anecdotal information rather than empirical data. Astonishingly, there is little actual knowledge of what happens to PhD recipients or of their employment status five to ten years after degree completion (National Research Council 2005b; Nerad 2004; Long 2001; Nerad and Cerny 1999 (b); National Research Council 1998; COSEPUP 1995; Nerad 1997). Until very recently we were left with a perplexing problem: How can we understand the effectiveness of our programs when we have no idea what happens to our PhD holders? How can the next generation of faculty improve doctoral education if we do not create a feedback loop from those who have applied their education and who, from the advantage of employment experience, can also evaluate the quality of their education (Aanerud, Homer, Nerad, and Cerny 2006)? Although currently enrolled students can evaluate their experience—as is increasingly done today in institutional exit surveys— they cannot adequately evaluate the quality of their education without having had an opportunity to apply it (Golde and Dore 2001). To shed light on the effectiveness of doctoral education, three national studies set out to fill in the gaps by providing empirical evidence to answer these questions. Nerad and Cerny undertook the PhDs-Ten Years Later study in 1996 and 1997 with funding from the Andrew Mellon Foundation and the National Science Foundation. In 2001 they surveyed art historians, PhDs in Art History–Over a Decade Later, funded by a grant from the Getty Foundation. Social Science PhDs—Five+ Years Out, fielded in 2005 and 2006, is the third national survey of doctorate recipients directed by CIRGE principal investigator Maresi Nerad. This study was funded by the Ford Foundation. In this chapter the results of these three comprehensive national PhD career path and educational outcome studies are presented. These studies have been the basis for confronting common assumptions about PhD holders and questioning whether we prepare our doctoral students adequately for the present and future in an era of globalization and increasing national interest in the role of doctoral education for the knowledge economy. In addition, comparative research that the author has undertaken over the years into innovation in doctoral education in Australia, Germany, and Japan has made it possible to identify characteristics of future-oriented doctoral education (Considine and Marginson et al. 2001; Grant 2002; Marginson 2004; Mcwilliam and James 2002; Nerad and Heggelund, 2008; Nerad 1994). The author argues that we need to begin now to implement such forward-looking doctoral education. The next generation of professors will need to prepare their doctoral students not just to be expert scholars but also to become world citizens who are aware of the negative effects of globalization and who 82 Doctoral Education and the Faculty of the Future are equipped to operate as informed leaders and responsible citizens on the world stage (Banks 2004; Parker 1996). In the history of universities we have come full circle from universities being universal centers of learning in the ancient period, to becoming nation-state universities that pursued national interests, to again emerging as international centers...