Graduate education is rubbish
by Benjamin on April 28, 2009
At least that’s what Dr. Mark Taylor is arguing in this New York Times op-ed. He provocatively opens with the statement that,
Graduate education is the Detroit of higher learning. Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields within subfields and publication in journals read by no one other than a few like-minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising cost (sometimes well over $100,000 in student loans).
And yes, he raises a lot of very good points, some of which I agree with, others which I do not. I would echo his sentiment that often graduate (and undergraduate students) are not taught the tools they need to participate in the job market – we are not even taught how to lecture, and neither were our lecturers for that matter. We are underpaid and cheaper than hiring staff for which there is always a poor demand, and as specialisation is the order of the day “research and publication become more and more about less and less”, but Taylor has a list of solutions:
1. Re-think departments and organise both the undergrad and graduate curriculum around cross-disciplinary issues. 2. abolish departments for problem solving oriented programs focussing on an overarching topic; Water, oil, faith, unemployment, the middle east. 3. More cross institutional collaboration, and interactive teaching which will cut back staff requirement. 4. Drop the undergrad and graduate dissertation for interactive projects and problem solving. 5. Expand range of professional options taught. 6. Impose mandatory retirement and abolish tenure.
I quite like some of Taylor’s points, but I am not convinced about all the cross discipline talk, alot of which sounds like fluff. I don’t see how specialising universities and cutting departments in non-specialised institutions would improve either teaching or the graduate job market – regardless of comparative advantage Mr. Ricardo. I also disagree with Taylor’s approach to the dissertation. I think that learning to write a proper report / paper on a problem, with good referencing and structure is vital for anyone graduating from university – of course that means we have to teach how to write and solve problems analytically – which we hardly do today. Ending the procedure of tenure and imposing mandatory retirement age might be good for the new people coming in, but it might equally limit original or radical scholarship, so I am not really sure about that plan – but does the current system of peer-review not already restrict academic output? I have to agree that the teaching of students needs to be re-oriented towards transferrable skills (presenting, report writing, problem solving). This would avoid the current system where the whole education system, from kindergarten to post-docs, seems geared towards creating new academic professors (as Sir Ken Robinson quipped beautifully in this talk - worth watching, it’s 18 mins of brilliance!). But then again, we all want to be professors, right?
Why else? [from PhD Comics - check out the two preceding strips for the whole conundrum of a Ph.D. students inevitable destiny...]
The last few years have witnessed a welcome questioning of the way economics is taught at the undergraduate and graduate level. The publication of the French student manifest against economics as an “autistic science” in 2000 triggered subsequent calls for more realism in economic models, rejection of the use of math as an end in itself, and respect for a plurality of approaches to economic science.