Higher education officials say they are encouraged by the research results. The author concludes that renewed public interest in the doctoral experience can lead to improvements in conditions for students and in program quality. A sociological portrait of those who pursue Ph.D.s in the U.S. and Canada is presented. For example, half of the students in the U.S. and Canada who start a doctoral program never receive the degree, and the median age of doctoral recipients is increasing. Recommendations for further research with regard to doctoral education include examinations of social stratification, retention in programs, student debt and post-doctoral career choices.
Graduate students push for reforms.
This article reports on reforms passed at the National Association of Graduate-Professional Students' 1998 conference. Included were resolutions to increase their health care, to make professors and institutions accountable for better faculty advising, and to support collective bargaining rights for teaching assistants. Concerns about the mental health of graduate students were frequently voiced at the conference in the wake of the recent suicide of a Ph.D. student at Harvard. To hold faculty members accountable for better advising, the conferees passed a resolution urging universities to explicitly include advising as a faculty responsibility and to evaluate professors on their advising along with their research and teaching. Finding jobs was also the topic of many of the sessions.