What Matters for Excellence in PhD Programs?: Latent Constructs of Doctoral Program Quality Used by Early Career Social Scientists

This paper unpacks how social science doctorate-holders come to evaluate overall excellence in their PhD training programs based on their domain-specific assessments of aspects of their programs. Latent class analysis reveals that social scientists 6-10 years beyond their PhD evaluate the quality of their doctoral program with one of two approaches. Graduates of elite programs rely heavily on perceptions of the program’s academic rigor; others use perceptions of diverse factors including support in meeting program requirements and efforts to foster a sense of belonging. Those currently employed as faculty tend to use the latter approach.

Early career social scientists’ assessments of the overall quality of their doctoral program are unrelated to standard measures of program faculty scholarly reputation indicating that alumni assess different dimensions in constructing their conceptions of quality.

Characteristics such as gender, age at PhD, career goals at PhD, and social science discipline are also unrelated to which approach to assessing quality respondents employed suggesting that norms about PhD quality are remarkably universal across these types of contextual variables.

Morrison, E., Rudd, E., Zumeta, W., & Nerad, M,. (2011). What Matters for Excellence in PhD Programs? Latent Constructs of Doctoral Program Quality Used By Early Career Social Scientists, Journal of Higher Education. Vol. 82, no 5, pp 535-563.

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It takes a global village to develop the next generation of PhDs and postdoctoral fellows

Preparing the next generation of PhDs to function successfully and contribute to the global world currently and in the future requires broadening the conceptual approaches to doctoral education beyond the apprenticeship model to a community of practice. It also requires coordinated efforts of many levels within and beyond a university. This next generation of researchers must acquire traditional academic research competencies, professional skills and intercultural competencies in order to work and function in a world of multinational teams and multinational settings. Learning at the doctoral level needs to be structured to allow for true discovery and intellectual risk-taking.

Nerad, M. (2011). It takes a global village to develop the next generation of PhDs and postdoctoral fellows. Acta Academica Supplementum – South Africa, pp. 198-216

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What We Know about the Dramatic Increase in PhD Degrees and the Reform of Doctoral Education Worldwide: Implications for South Africa

Theories of the “knowledge economy” view knowledge, and particularly new knowledge, as a critical resource to enhance a nation’s economic growth. Governments around the world have invested in doctoral education expansion. Reforms in doctoral education are being shaped by the changing needs of society, of research modes, and of a changed labor markets for PhD holders. The reform elements strive for excellence, expansion, quality assurance, accountability, and international and inter-sector network building. The expansion in doctoral studies has gone hand in hand with an increased flow of international doctoral students, the wish to become a world-class university, and the adoption of more standardized structures and practices of doctoral education. This paper ends with a number of promising reform practices that may be useful for South Africa’s expanding doctoral systems, such as the introduction of postgraduate schools that help implement and initiate innovations in doctoral education on a campus with an eye to high quality.

Nerad, M. (2011). What We Know about the Dramatic Increase in PhD Degrees and the Reform of Doctoral Education Worldwide: Implications for South Africa. Perspectives in Education. Vol. 29. No. 3, pp.1-12.

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Globalization and the Internationalization of Graduate Education

Since the 1990s, globalization has become a central phenomenon for all of society, including graduate education and particularly doctoral education. Globalization takes place in a context where doctoral education and research capacity are unevenly distributed and where a few research universities, mainly in wealthy countries, have become powerful social institutions. But all graduate education systems are increasingly part of an international context in which policy-makers — at every level — are aware of and responding to developments in higher education outside their national borders. For the ﬁ rst time, conditions exist for the emergence of a truly international system of doctoral education; this openness to innovation and expansion holds enormous potential for advancing a more effective future-oriented PhD.

The ideas presented in this article are a synthesis of published and in-process research on the impact of globalization and graduate education, which was mainly inspired by two international research workshops that focused on globalization’s forces and trends in graduate education and its promising practices, rather than its best practices. One conference took place in 2005 in the United States (in Seattle) and the other in 2007 in Australia (University of Melbourne). Organized by the Center for Innovation and Research in Graduate Education (CIRGE) at the University of Washington in Seattle and mainly funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, these two workshops brought together top university administrators, senior members of national research councils and institutes, and doctoral education researchers from 6 continents and 14 countries.

Nerad, M. (2010). Globalization and the Internationalization of Graduate Education: A Macros and Micro View. Canadian Journal of Higher Education, Volume 40, issue 1, pp.1-12.

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Increase in PhD Production and Reform in Doctoral Education Worldwide

The expansion in doctoral studies has gone hand in hand with an increased flow of international doctoral students, the wish of universities to become “world-class”, and the adoption of more standardised structures and practices for doctoral education. This paper presents the nature of reforms in postgraduate and doctoral education in a wide range of countries (including China, Europe, Australia, Japan, Ireland, Iceland, Brazil, India, Malaysia). It also includes a number of reform strategies which may be useful for countries with emerging doctoral systems, such as the introduction of North-American type graduate schools that help to implement and initiate innovations in doctoral education on a campus

Nerad, M. (2010). Increase in PhD Production and Reform in Doctoral Education Worldwide. Higher Education Forum. Research Institute for Higher Education, Hiroshima University. Vol 7. pp. 69-84.

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Are You Satisfied? PhD Education and Faculty Taste for Prestige-Limits of the Prestige Value System

This paper empirically evaluates Caplow and McGee’s (The academic marketplace, 1958) model of academia as a prestige value system (PVS) by testing several hypotheses about the relationship between prestige of faculty appointment and job satisfaction. Using logistic regression models to predict satisfaction with several job domains in a sample of more than 1,000 recent social science PhD graduates who hold tenure-track or tenured faculty positions, we find that the relationship between prestige of faculty appointment and job satisfaction is modified by PhD program prestige. Graduates of high prestige PhD programs value prestige more highly and graduates of low prestige programs value salary more highly. We explain our findings by incorporating reference group theory and a theory of taste formation into our model of the academic PVS, which identifies PhD programs as sites of socialization to different tastes for prestige (a process of cultural transmission) in addition to their well recognized role in transmission of human and social capital. We discuss practical and theoretical implications of our findings in relation to efforts to measure PhD program quality and to understand the structure of academic labor markets.

Morrison, E., Rudd, E., Picciano, J., & Nerad, M. (2010). Are You Satisfied? PhD Education and Faculty Taste for Prestige-Limits of the Prestige Value System. Research in Higher Education 52 (1), pp. 24-46.

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Graduate Education and its changes in the U.S.

Changes in graduate education in the U.S. emerges from the bottom up: from individual departments of programs not from a ministry or a central agency that initiates reform. In fact, there is no ministry of higher education or ministry of sciences and technology in the U.S. Graduate programs and Graduate Schools –the latter are the administrators, advocates and catalysts for graduate education at a university- receive impulses and input from different constituencies and sources. These include professional associations, public and private funding agencies, employers, trends in students enrollment , and, particularly, program reviews. U.S. graduate education, as well as al of U.S. higher education, is market driven: responding to supply and demand of student enrollment, labor market needs, funding possibilities, and accountability requirements. Globalization has increased the intensity and speed with which higher education is responding to market forces. Globalization has also affected doctoral education in the U.S. and worldwide as doctorally-trained persons, particularly in sciences and engineering , are perceived as sources of innovations in the employment sector, contributing eventually to economic growth (National Academies 2007).

Nerad, M. (2009). Graduate Education and its Changes in the U.S., in Daigakuin Kyoiku no Genjo Kadai [Graduate Education, and Future]. Hiroshima: Research Institute for Higher Education, Hiroshima University, Japan. pp.291-305.

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Social Science PhDs—Five+ Years Out: Sociology Report

Presents key findings from the Social Science PhDs—Five+ Years Out based on sociology graduates’ views of the quality of training and on their career paths. The sociologists in this study, like respondents in other fields, reported positive evaluations of their graduate training programs. They rated their programs highly with respect to academic rigor and training in thinking critically. However, ratings were substantially lower for training in skills for presenting, writing, and publishing. The study suggests that sociologists from these cohorts encountered a relatively strong job market, especially as compared to historians and anthropologists. Sociology, the field in this study with the most women, is also the only field with clear evidence of gender inequalities in careers.

Morrison, E., Rudd, E., Nerad, M., & Picciano, J. (2008). Sociology Report: PhD Program Quality, Early Careers, and Gender Stratification. CIRGE Report 2008-05. CIRGE: Seattle, WA. www.cirge.washington.edu

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Social Science PhDs—Five+ Years Out: History Report

Respondents give high marks to their history programs for “academic rigor,” and training in “critical thinking” and “data analysis and synthesis.” They also identified areas to target for improvement, including training in writing and publishing reports and articles and in how to teach, as well as providing concrete feedback to students on their progress, socializing students into the academic community and having a diverse student population. Surveyed historians urged programs to address the fact that the academic labor market cannot absorb all the doctorate holders, to be aware of opportunities for historians outside academia, and to recognize the value to society of historians working in diverse employment sectors. Even knowing what they know now about the history job market, more then 80% of respondents would get a PhD in history again.

Sclater, K., Rudd, E., Morrison, E., Picciano, J., & Nerad, M. (2008). After the Degree: Recent History PhDs Weigh In On Careers and Graduate School. CIRGE Report 2008-04. CIRGE: Seattle, WA. www.cirge.washington.edu

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Social Science PhDs-Five+ Years Out: Geography PhDs

Geography respondents from the Social Science PhD’s – Five+ Years Out survey reflected upon their doctoral education and indicated areas that could use improvement, including: career preparation for academic and non-academic careers, help with publishing from the dissertation adviser, training in writing and publishing received during PhD studies, and training for teaching.

Babbit, V., Rudd, E., Morrison, E., Picciano, J., & Nerad, M. (2008). Careers of Geography PhDs: Findings from Social Science PhDs—Five+ Years Out. CIRGE Report 2008-02. CIRGE: Seattle, WA. www.cirge.washington.edu

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