**The Future of Graduate Education**

### Dr. Eamon Kelly

### Chairman, National Science Board

### 

###  Remarks to the

**Council of Scientific Society Presidents**

**Twenty-fifth Anniversary**

Washington, D.C.

December 7, 1998

Today I have been asked to address the Future role of Graduate Education
over the next 25 years. This is a rather large topic which includes the
adaptation of graduate education to both the needs of science, in
particular the expanding and changing opportunities in science and
engineering, and to the practical needs of individual students, the
workforce and society.

# We are all aware that the current state of graduate education, and the National Science Foundation itself, results in great measure from the conscious national policy put into place at the end of World War II. Without revisiting one more time the Vannevar Bush initiative and the positive aspects of this very successful policy, it is obvious that some problems have emerged since the establishment of the Federal/university partnership.

# 

# These problems have created rising stresses in the enterprise since the end of the "Golden Age" of academic research and education, a little more than a quarter century ago. The "Golden Age" ended when the exponential growth in Federal support to research universities stopped, just as many new research universities had begun to participate in the system, particularly the large public university systems. 

More recently, with the end of the Cold War, the fierce competition for
research dollars has been coupled with a decline in the public sense of
urgency toward funding fundamental research, particularly Defense
related research in the physical sciences and engineering.

The findings of studies sponsored by the Academy, the NSB and other
organizations reveal growing pressure on research and graduate
education, due to the expanding demands on universities from diverse
stakeholders, and the competitiveness of the research system. Demands
and competitive pressures have been exacerbated by rising costs, budget
constraints on traditional sources of funds, globalization of advanced
education, and rising demands from the public for accountability for
research dollars through demonstrated social benefits.

Simultaneously we hear a rising chorus of criticisms from employers of
Ph.D. graduates, from students themselves, and from the public. These
include the narrowness of the curriculum and the experience provided by
Ph.D. programs, the unresponsiveness of universities to the needs of the
workforce, the lengthening time to degree, the large number of foreign
students in our graduate programs, as well as the low participation by
women and some domestic minority groups in science and engineering
degree programs and on our faculties.

There are further complaints concerning the inaccessibility of research
faculty to their students, and the lack of guidance to graduate students
on realistic future careers. There is, finally, the suspicion that time
to degree for some graduate and especially postdoctoral students is
prolonged not to benefit their education but rather to provide a source
of cheap labor for their faculty advisers.

On the other hand, the faculty-centered model for graduate education
also places enormous stress on individual faculty members. Graduate
education is essentially an apprenticeship, which can demand substantial
faculty time and personal involvement.

Frequently, it also involves responsibility for obtaining support for
the student through the faculty member\'s research program as well as
managing growing regulatory and administrative requirements of the
Federal government, university administrations and the competitive grant
system.

The NSB has initiated several efforts to understand better the role of
the Federal government in general, and NSF in particular, in the
education of graduate, and especially Ph.D., students.

Recently, the Board published *The Federal Role in Science and
Engineering Graduate and Postdoctoral Education*. In this report, the
Board identifies several areas for improvement in the
government/university partnership, while reaffirming the critical role
of Federal support for graduate education and its benefits to the
Nation. The recommendations address:

1\) Federal policies and processes that inadvertently undermine both the
government/university partnership and Federal objectives for funding
research and education in academic institutions;

2\) the need for Federal encouragement of institutional and faculty
efforts to develop innovative programs that broaden guidance for student
career decisions;

3\) the need to promote diversity more effectively in graduate education
by identifying and encouraging promising students earlier in their
educational careers.

With respect to this third issue, the Board has expanded its efforts to
examine the entire educational career, including science and mathematics
education at the K-16 levels, and issued a formal statement recognizing
the importance for the future of our society\-- as well as for the
future of science\--of a rigorous, content-rich preparation in
mathematics and science at the precollege and undergraduate levels for
all students.

The Board has further urged in its report on graduate and postdoctoral
education that universities reassess their criteria for admission and
support for graduate students. Rigid, inappropriately applied admissions
criteria can pose insurmountable and unnecessary hurdles to graduate
education in science and engineering for many students who, if admitted,
might well succeed.

The Board has identified the following issues in graduate education for
immediate attention:

-   The appropriate breadth and focus in education and training
    responsive to the growing diversity of career and employment
    opportunities;

-   The utility and predictive value of specific assessment tools, such
    as the Graduate Record Examination, for entry to and financial
    support for graduate education;

-   The integration of teaching and research, and encouragement of
    institutional reward systems that support mentoring and outreach;

-   The development of partnerships among disciplines and institutions
    and enhancement of collaboration among research and non-research
    institutions; and

```{=html}
<!-- -->
```
-   Improved data to identify current and emerging national needs for
    the science and engineering workforce as guidance to graduate
    students for careers appropriate to their training and interests.

## 

For the next quarter century, we will need to deal with the following
additional questions, among others, concerning the institutional
environment for graduate education:

1\. As funding sources become more diverse, can an environment of free
and open inquiry be maintained for research and graduate study?

2\. How can we determine the highest priorities for Federal investments
in science and engineering research, and

3\. How can new technologies be integrated into research and education
to expand synergy among researchers and accelerate learning?

In this latter context, as we look to the next quarter century for
graduate education in the university, there can be no doubt that it will
continue to experience change and adaptation as a result of the
remarkable transformations in computing and information systems, among
other factors.

These new tools promise to transform both science and education in
general. But we need especially to acknowledge the central role that
universities will continue to play in innovations based on the new
capabilities.

The National Science Foundation is committed to its role as a major
partner with the academic sector in supporting innovation involving the
Nation's high performance computing, as it has since the early 1980s.
This commitment, as we all know, has resulted in substantial advances in
computing and communication, both for the scientific community and
society in general\--worldwide.

NSF recently reaffirmed its commitment to supporting advances in this
area. The Foundation's commitment is evidenced in:

-   the implementation of the PACI program (Partnerships for Advanced
    Computational Infrastructure),

-   the establishment of the Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence
    (KDI) theme within NSF across fields of science, engineering, and
    education, and

```{=html}
<!-- -->
```
-   the Board's recent resolution supporting a leadership role for NSF
    in this area among Federal agencies.

NSF recognizes the importance of computing and communications as a
central enabling technology across all fields of science, as well as
itself being the focus of fundamental research.

The academic sector has a special role in innovations in information
science and technology, both in research and in education. Academic
institutions must grasp and adapt to broad-based innovations in the
movement and relationships of producers and users of information.

As a result of the partnership between the Federal government and
universities in advanced scientific computing and communication, what is
now happening is that information\--the commodity on which knowledge,
learning, and education depend\-\--is moving between distributors and
users in new ways that are not susceptible to the old rules and
hierarchies.

Relationships between owners, distributors, and users of information
have become fluid. Boundaries are blurred. And low-cost, high
performance computers enable people to access and apply information to
contexts never thought possible before.

Just as this new fluidity in the distribution of information is
affecting such diverse businesses as financial institutions and movie
distributors, so universities must both grasp and capitalize on the
implications of this new medium for the distribution of knowledge and
the support of learning.

As universities have brought the Internet to the broad American public
and then to the world, I wonder if we have even begun our next task.

Have we given enough thought yet to how information systems will alter
not just the way we communicate, but what we communicate? Have we
considered how it will alter the cultural and institutional context in
which we conduct our mission in graduate education?

It seems to me that our greatest challenge is not as simple as mastering
and extending the technology of information systems. It is much more
difficult; it involves building a new culture for the academy.

The revolution in information technology is bringing and will bring
significant changes in how we perform our functions as teachers and
scholars, and how students learn. Those changes create an imperative for
new institutional structures and a new academic culture.

It will offer new opportunities for cooperation across
institutions---for example among researchers employed at research
institutions and in primarily teaching institutions---and for
collaborations across fields of science.

I believe that one of the most dramatic changes will take place in the
way we teach. In a current lecture class, students sit passively,
receiving information. The mode of learning is task-oriented, with
students succeeding by demonstrating, through written examinations, each
one's assimilation of certain knowledge.

There are clear limits to the intellectual dimensions of this kind of
learning. A student can "study to test," focusing on acquiring the
information needed to succeed but never really connecting on an
intellectual and analytical plane with the subject.

With information technology the possibilities open to making the task of
learning into a complex, active, and intellectually challenging
engagement with a subject.

The communication of knowledge becomes more dynamic, encouraging
analytic inquiry earlier in the educational career and the cultivation
of diverse perspectives and new insights.

# 

In the past, universities and schools have been charged with producing
the concepts from which new tools are developed. The globalization of
teaching and learning through information technology means that now the
raw data and observations from which researchers draw their insights,
and on which they build their theories, can flow more quickly into their
laboratories.

What does this transformation of teaching and learning mean for graduate
education? Some prognosticators say that the research university as we
know it will vanish, replaced by a "virtual university" where degrees
can be pursued electronically from the students' homes.

Only a few faculty will be required to research and design new learning
software, which will be used by thousands, if not millions, of students
across the world. Campuses will disappear.

However, this image of the lone student, able to learn and apply his or
her skills to generate new knowledge in isolation with only his or her
computer to stimulate and provide feedback, does not reflect the reality
of scientific research today. And I feel certain this will not be a
model for academic research and graduate education in the future.

My own prediction envisions greater interdependence rather than
independence among cutting edge researchers. Teamwork and collaboration
will become ever more important as research questions draw on the
expertise of diverse fields of knowledge.

Yes, information technology will change the "chemistry" of what makes a
given college and university or department appeal to its students, but I
do not believe that it will overshadow the elements that currently
define graduate education.

In fact, I believe the faculty and the aggregation of scholars and
research resources within a university context will become even more
important to the students of the future than they are today.

Though the physical facilities of a campus will still be important, but
in a very different way, the residential component for graduate and
professional students may change. My prediction is that, rather than
spending several years on a single campus, graduate students are likely
to come to campus for shorter periods of concentrated interaction with
faculty and research collaborators.

They may travel to several campuses in various parts of the world; and
they are likely to be attracted to a university that offers a diversity
of physical settings, with modules offered abroad or to other affiliated
campuses.

The introduction of electronic learning will make the faculty more
essential to universities than ever before. A professor's ability to
recognize and cultivate qualities in students that are uniquely human is
beyond the capacity of any technology available on the market.

Today, faculties are important as repositories and transmitters of
information\--as pedagogues who shape students' intellectual growth and
as creators and sustainers of distinctive academic programs. But the new
electronic learning will cause the nature of the student-mentor
relationship to develop in new directions.

The faculty of the future will need to be adept at drawing out the
individual intellectual and creative talents of each student in guiding
him or her beyond the mastery of information to the use and extension of
knowledge. The future faculty will have to be not only adept but also
extremely facile and creative at using the tools of information
technology in order to fulfill their roles.

I believe we are now entering a new Golden Age for research and
education in the next century. This new age also will be supported by
the Federal/university partnership, but will include greater
participation by other stakeholders, both in the U.S, and in the
international science and technology communities.

We should build on the base of our experience, using the new tools past
public investment has provided us to expand knowledge and innovation.
But graduate education must continue to change, both to address the need
for greater flexibility for students in career preparation, and in
response to relevant concerns raised by our stakeholders in industry,
the academy and the public.

To sustain the new Golden Age, we need to continue to be more agile in
identifying and adequately supporting the most promising areas for
research.

We need to enable broader cross-disciplinary, cross-sector, and
cross-institution collaborations among researchers and their students,
even while providing strong support to traditional fields. We must
remember that research supported in institutions of higher learning has
an impact on our national science and technology capabilities for the
future---both human and physical.

We should be quick to seek opportunities to employ the latest in
technology in research and learning in an environment of free and open
inquiry. And we should be more creative---and effective\--in identifying
strategies for expanding participation of underrepresented groups in
academic research and education.

We have a system that works, that is internationally admired as the
finest science and engineering graduate education system in human
history. We must continue to enhance this system and expand its
benefits.

It is our obligation to provide our future citizens with a healthy
infrastructure of cutting edge scientific research and graduate
education not just for today but to serve the next quarter century and
beyond.

Thank you.