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Preparation for Industry

However, some concerns were expressed about the level of additional education that is needed before recent graduates become fully participatory employees. Here is an example of a response from one major industrial employer that hires 150-400 advanced-degree people into its laboratories each year from many universities and in many disciplines:

Even "the best of the crop" take anywhere from 6 months to 2 years to become good, productive industrial researchers. Most recent graduates, particularly those who have not summer-interned, do not have the foggiest idea of what industrial research is all about. Some even think that using or developing technology to do something useful is not research and if it is a product that makes a profit, is even slightly dishonorable.

Preparation for Teaching

Almost everyone expressed support for better preparation of graduate students for teaching. Respondents generally cited numerous reasons for this improvement, including the following:

· Students pay high tuition for instruction, and they deserve better. Courses taught via recitation do not help students learn or graduate students teach.

· It is wrong to assume that anyone working on a PhD is automatically able to teach.

· Students aiming at careers in academe should take formal teacher-training courses to learn pedagogy as well as they learn research.

For example, the following comment is from a graduate dean and provost:

I have long been concerned about the teaching expectations of graduate students—all graduate students, not just in the sciences and engineering. How we can expect that an individual will intuit teaching skills is an amazement. While teaching is somewhat an art, there are many skills and techniques that need to be learned before an individual should be turned loose to teach a course. We do our graduate students no service, and certainly provide no service to the teachers, if