Accepting fewer students is only part of Washington's new approach to graduate education. It is also recruiting more selectively, and it is providing every student with full financial support for six years. But very few support all of their Ph.D. candidates for six years of their training. The architect of Washington's new plan is Robert E. Thach, dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. We decided the way to do that was to reduce the number of graduate students admitted to our programs.
Professors do have concerns about the new policies.
They worry about their Ph.D. programs' becoming too small and about a possible shortage of teaching assistants. But many here say their willingness to go along is not surprising, given the weak academic job market in the 1990s. It is hard to justify enlarging Ph.D. programs these days. The job market makes clear this is an important direction to go in, but you try to resist it, thinking that your department is different. But you know it's good medicine.