End the Graduate University?

This opinion piece from the New York Times seems to use overstatement in its headline.  But, the piece makes some very interesting points.

Basically, Mark C. Taylor argues that the “dirty little secret” is that graduate students are underpaid for the work they do in helping teach and run laboratories for undergraduate students.  Taylor’s argument is that higher education needs to be “rigorously regulated and completely restructured” just like “Wall Street and Detroit.”  I am not sure I agree with that, but Taylor follows up with some interesting ideas … curriculum, departments, tenure, mandatory retirement, and more. 

I think the two most important points that he makes have to do with the traditional dissertation and professional doctorates.  Taylor correctly argues that most doctoral programs prepare students for research-university faculty positions that simply don’t exist.  He is correct in saying that “most graduate students will never hold the kind of job for which they are being trained.”  There simply aren’t that many research-university faculty jobs out there.  That does not mean that we should not encourage people to earn doctorates, but we need to prepare them, as Taylor argues, for “professional options.”  That is why the professional doctorates are becoming more common and more popular.

As for the dissertation, Taylor is correct that there is not an increasing need for more “books modeled on the medieval dissertation, with more footnotes than text.”  Instead, there is a need for more applied, analytical and relevant research and dissertation formats.  This is why there is increasing interest in action research.

Some of the changes Taylor calls for are underway.  But, as is common in higher education, the changes come slowly and not are not warmly welcomed by those who are heavily vested in the old ways.  But these changes will prevail because they are the right approaches for our time.

Your thoughts? Please feel free to leave a comment.

Mike