There are many incentives to increase graduate enrollment. They justify keeping, and even adding, faculty positions. Graduate courses are the most prized teaching assignments in the curriculum. Sustaining a curriculum in which all faculty members have the opportunity to teach graduate students requires substantial graduate enrollments. And finally, graduate students offer an inexpensive source of instruction for freshman composition and for sections in undergraduate lecture courses.
Research universities are structurally dependent on graduate programs.
Federal investment in scientific research and what seemed like continuing growth in undergraduate enrollment have supported the expansion of graduate programs. Humanities departments have followed the pattern of the sciences, increasing the number and size of doctoral programs over the past forty years. Many are now questioning the relative value of this investment. Several months ago I went to a conference on planning the field of history for the University of California system. In attendance were chairs of history departments, head graduate advisers from history departments, deans responsible for history departments, and vice chancellors from all the University of California campuses.