An Assessment of Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States Biological Sciences (1982) / Chapter Skim
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I. Origins of Study and Selection of Programs
I. Origins of Study and Selection of Programs
Pages 1-14
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This multidimensional approach represents an explicit recognition of the limitations of studies that rely entirely on peer ratings of perceived quality-the so-called reputational ratings. Finally, in the compilation of reputational ratings in this study, evaluators were provided the names of faculty members involved with each program to be rated and the number of research doctorates awarded in the last five years.
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m e overall study encompasses a total of 2,699 graduate programs in 32 disciplines. In this report -- the fourth of five reports issuing from the study -- we examine 616 programs in six disciplines in the biological sciences: biochemistry, botany, cellular/molecular biology, microbiology, physiology, and zoology.
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The Educational Testing Service, with the sponsorship of the Council of Graduate Schools in the United States and the Graduate Record Examinations Board, has recently developed a set of 3Council on Postsecondary Accreditation, The Balance Wheel for Accreditation, Washington, D.C., July 1981, pp.
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. Just as consumer knowledge and honest advertising are requisite if a competitive economy is to work satisfactorily, so an improved knowledge of opportunities and of quality is desirable if a diverse educational system is to work effectively.8 Although the program ratings from the Cartter and Roose-Andersen studies are highly correlated, some substantial differences in successive ratings can be detected for a small number of programs -- suggesting changes in the programs or in the perception of the programs.
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. All the attempts to change higher education will ultimately be strangled by the "legitimate" evaluative processes that have already programmed a single set of responses from the start.9 A number of other criticisms have been leveled at reputational rankings of graduate programs.~° First, such studies inherently reflect perceptions that may be several years out of date and do not take into account recent changes in a program.
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Other ratings based on faculty publication records have been compiled for graduate programs in a variety of disciplines, including political science, psychology, and sociology. These and other studies demonstrate the feasibility of a national assessment of graduate programs that is founded on more than reputational standing among faculty peers.
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On the one hand, "a substantial majority of the Conference [participants believed] that the earlier assessments of graduate education have received wide and important use: by students and their advisors, by the institutions of higher education as aids to planning and the allocation of educational functions, as a check on unwarranted claims of excellence, and in social science research." 6 On the other hand, the conference participants recognized that a new study assessing the quality of graduate education "would be conducted and received in a very different atmosphere than were the earlier Cartter and Roose-Andersen reports.
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(2) m e multidimensional approach represents an explicit recognition of the limitations of studies that make assessments solely in terms of ratings of perceived quality provided by peers -- the so-called reputational ratings.
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In the case of cellular/molecular biology, consideration was given to the fact that the NRC count excludes doctoral awards in genetics, anatomy, developmental biology, and other related fields and thus substantially underestimates the total number of doctorates in cellular/molecular biology.20 The selection of biological science disciplines to be covered in the assessment was especially difficult since there are differing opinions within the scientific community concerning the most appropri2 ° evidence for this may be found from the data provided by institutional coordinators, who reported that a total of 1,871 doctoral recipients graduated from 89 cellular/molecular biology programs during the FY1976-80 period. See Table 1.2, p.
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Differences in field definitions account for discrepancies between the ETS and NRC data. 2 NRC data exclude doctoral awards in genetics, anatomy, developmental biology, and other related fields and thus substantially underestimate the number of doctorates in cellular/molecular biology.
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Since biology encompasses many different biological science disciplines, members of the committee were concerned that a university coordinator, when asked to identify research-doctorate programs to be included in the assessment, might have considerable difficulty in deciding whether a particular biological science program belonged under "biology" or one of the other disciplinary categories. It should be noted that many programs found in departments of biology have been included in the assessment of programs in cellular/molecular biology.
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As a result of nominations by institutional coordinators, some programs were added to the original list and others dropped. Table 1.2 reports the final coverage in each of the six biological science disciplines.
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The committee wishes to emphasize that there are limitations associated with each of the measures and that none of the measures should be regarded as a precise indicator of the quality of a program in educating scientists for careers in research. The reader is strongly urged to consider the descriptive material presented in Chapter II before attempting to interpret the program evaluations reported in subsequent chapters.
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