An Assessment of Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States Social and Behavioral Sciences (1982) / Chapter Skim
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1 Origins of Study and Selection of Programs
1 Origins of Study and Selection of Programs
Pages 1-12
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From page 1... ...
During the past two decades increasing attention has been given to describing and measuring the quality of programs in graduate education. It is evident that the assessment of graduate programs is highly important for university administrators and faculty, for employers in industrial and government laboratories, for graduate students and prospective graduate students, for policymakers in state and national 1
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At the outset consideration was given to whether a national assessment of graduate programs should be undertaken at this time and, if so, what methods should be employed. The next two sections in this chapter examine the background and rationale for the decision by the Conference Board of Associated Research Councils2 to embark on such a study.
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Other efforts are being made by universities to evaluate their programs in graduate education. 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 procedures to assist institutions in evaluating their own graduate programs.4 3 Council on Postsecondary Accreditation, The Balance Wheel for Accreditation, Washington, D.C., July 1981, pp.
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J Andersen, A Rating of Graduate Programs, American Council on Education, Washington, D.C., 1970.
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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rankings of graduate programs.~° First, such studies inherently reflect perceptions that may be several years out of date and do not take into account recent changes in a program.
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Rather than repeat such ratings, many members of the graduate community have voiced a preference for developing ways to assess the quality of graduate programs that would be more comprehensive, sensitive to the different program purposes, and appropriate for use at any time by individual departments or universities.~ Several attempts have been made to go beyond the reputational assessment. Clark, Harnett, and Baird, in a pilot studying of graduate programs in chemistry, history, and psychology, identified as many as 30 possible measures significant for assessing the quality of graduate education.
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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) The 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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Originally the committee had decided to include only the first six social and behavioral science disciplines listed in Table 1.1. However, at the urging of many individuals in the academic community and at the request of the National Science Foundation, which provided supplemental funding, geography ° was added to the list of social and behavioral science disciplines to be covered in the assessment.
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, Graduate Programs and Admissions Manual, 1979-81, and the NRC's Survey of Earned Doctorates, 1976-78. Differences in field definitions account for discrepancies between the ETS and NRC data.
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The committee received excellent cooperation from the study coordinators at universities. Of the 243 institutions that were identified as having one or more research-doctorate programs satisfying the criteria (listed earlier)
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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. In presenting a frank discussion of any shortcomings of each measure, the committee's intent is to reduce the possibility of misuse of the results from this assessment of research-doctorate programs.
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