Some Problems of the Graduate School

Some Problem8 of the Graduate School IDavid L. Thomson The decentralization of advanced postgraduate studies in Canada has been a striking feature of the last few years. Not so long ago, the Ph.D. degree was virtually confined to Toronto and McGill, and, of course, to the French-Canadian universities; of the latter I shall have nothing more to say, beyond remarking that in scientific subjects their doctorates, in principle and procedure, are constantly approaching closer and closer to the "standard" North American pattern. Today the Ph.D. is being offered in several fields by the universities of the four western provinces, by Western Ontario , McMaster, and Queen's, and occasionally in the Maritimes; and the migrations of graduate students are much more various than they were. It would be interesting to know how far the new Ph.D. curricula have used Toronto and McGill as models, and how far they have been influenced by the universities of the United States, especially those (such as Minnesota, Wisconsin, Chicago, Cornell, Brown) to which Canadian students have so often turned: but I believe that this question has not been studied. In any case, the trend towards decentralization is marked, and likely to continue; and some consideration of the problems of a graduate school may be timely. Decentralization is, of course, but one facet of a larger question, that of the increasing number of graduate students throughout North America; in three generations or so, this number has increased from less than one hundred to more than two hundred thousand. A university is confronted by a number of difficulties when its graduate school is in active growth, not the least of which is the difficulty, the near-impossibility, of determining what it costs. It is true that the expensive requirements for laboratory research are almost wholly met by outside funds, and constitute little direct drain upon the university's own resources; and it is also true that it might not be too hard to estimate 210 THE GRADUATE SCHOOL 211 either the cost of providing and servicing the space occupied by graduate students, or the increased library expenditures. What is really hard is to allot to the graduate school the proper fraction of the total salaries of the staff; in fact, this is seldom attempted. There are some members of every faculty whose distinction as investigators is so generally recognized that they are gladly excused from taking much part in formal teaching or general administration; but they are greatly outuumbered by those for whom the direction of graduate students is unrealistically regarded as a parergon, almost a hobby. Of two graduate students working under the same research-director, one may require far more books or equipment and also far more of the professor's time than the other; and directors vary greatly in their generosity. It is obviously impossible to relate the fees charged to the individual graduate student to the demand which he (as an individual) represents upon the university's general funds: and it has accordingly seemed rather futile to try to relate the average fee to the average demand. I feel certain that the average graduate student costs the university far more, especially in terms of staff-time, than the average undergraduate; but the fees do not reflect this. The universities rightly regard the graduate student with some benignity: both by his own research and as a collaborator with his professor, he may enhance the prestige of the institution; he is interesting to teach and to train, and this enhances the liveliness and contentment of the staff; and he is potentially a member of some academic staff, somewhere. Therefore the unsympathetic glare of the cost-accountant is not turned upon him, and he escapes with a fee so unrealistically low that the university may be said to award an "invisible bursary" to almost every graduate student: the situation is more extreme here than elsewhere, even if there be no area within the university in which fees cover all the costs. In this essay, however, I wish to deal with academic rather than with financial problems. It might be said that every graduate school must uneasily defend itself against two accusations: that...