Doctoral Education and the Faculty of the Future

6. Generating Doctoral Degree Candidates at Liberal Arts Colleges

6 Generating Doctoral Degree Candidates at Liberal Arts Colleges Robert J. Lemke Liberal arts colleges are an important source of PhD candidates. While these colleges award about 11 percent of all undergraduate degrees in the United States, almost 17 percent of all PhDs awarded to American students are to graduates of liberal arts colleges. The most recent data suggest that about 5.3 percent of all graduates from the best liberal arts colleges eventually earn a PhD, while only 2.2 percent of all graduates from the best universities do. There is also a substantial difference across liberal arts colleges, with the best colleges producing PhD candidates at three times the rate of lower-ranked colleges. How is it that some liberal arts colleges are consistently more successful than other institutions at producing graduates who go on to earn a PhD? The answers to this question are inherently complex and difficult to isolate. This chapter is a first attempt to unravel parts of the story. The social benefits provided by institutions of higher education in the form of having a highly educated citizenry are well understood. Society benefits from scientific discoveries, creative works of art, and informative policy analyses as well as from having a more knowledgeable electorate . Institutions of higher education, however, vary greatly in their approach toward education. At liberal arts colleges, where graduate degrees are seldom awarded, the primary mission is focused on educating 94 Doctoral Education and the Faculty of the Future undergraduates. Even though graduating students who will eventually earn a PhD is not the sole objective (and maybe not even a primary objective) of liberal arts colleges, the graduate school success of their students is important to liberal arts colleges. As socially conscious institutions , colleges value education and the benefits that a graduate education offers. Many faculty members at liberal arts colleges measure their contribution to society in part by the students they produce, including future PhD recipients who go on to undertake meaningful research of their own. More locally, the rate at which an institution’s students pursue graduate study indicates generally how successful the institution is at fostering growth in its students’ enjoyment of learning and a desire to pursue their own path toward understanding and discovery after college . Liberal arts colleges also have a preference, at least marginally, for hiring faculty with a liberal arts background. This suggests there is some consensus, at least among college deans, that liberal arts college graduates may have a greater appreciation, if not a greater affinity, for teaching (Astin 1999; Warch 2001). And more pragmatically, college rankings, the accreditation process, and granting agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF) all consider the graduate school success of alumni when evaluating institutions of higher education. This chapter also provides insight into the relationship between faculty scholarship and the graduate school choices of students. Whether faculty scholarship should be required at liberal arts colleges has long been debated. Through the 1950s, college faculty were not expected to be engaged in research. Over the last forty years, however, scholarship expectations have changed. Presently, the most elite colleges require their faculty to be deeply engaged in research. Most lowerranked colleges also consider scholarship in tenure decisions, though the quantity and quality of the scholarship requirements are less than at the top institutions and vary considerably across institutions (McCaughey 1994). Some argue that imposing unnecessary research expectations on faculty detracts from high-quality teaching, the foremost stated mission of liberal arts colleges, as research competes for scarce funds and faculty time. Faculty who spend more of their time engaged in research, the argument goes, have less time to devote to teaching and advising, persuading fewer students to pursue a PhD.1 In contrast, others maintain that engagement in scholarship, at least at the very best liberal arts colleges , helps faculty become better teachers (McCaughey 1994). Faculty research can engage students directly and foster excellent teaching. As a result, students are more likely to pursue a PhD.2 The results presented herein suggest that both effects exist, with the positive effects of faculty scholarship being strongest at the best colleges. Generating PhD Candidates at Liberal Arts Colleges 95 Generating PhD Candidates For our purposes here, the process of “generating” a PhD candidate occurs during one’s undergraduate education. Specifically, an institution is said to generate a PhD candidate when a graduate from...