The Responsive Ph.D.: Innovations in U.S. Doctoral Education
In collaboration with members of the Responsive Ph.D. network, Woodrow Wilson released in fall 2005 a major publication, The Responsive Ph.D.: Innovations in U.S. Doctoral Education. This report summarizes analytical lessons from the Responsive Ph.D. initiative and examines 41 innovations in doctoral education by Responsive Ph.D. institutions. An accompanying CD contains detailed assessments of each of these innovations.
Leaders of a wide range of institutions of higher education expressed strongly positive responses to the publication. Requests for additional copies or statements of interest were received from dozens of institutions and organizations in the U.S. and abroad, ranging from the American Council on Education, the National Research Council, and Yale University to the European Commission in Brussels and the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa).
The publication identified four principles to support genuine change in doctoral education:
- A graduate school for real: A truly responsive Ph.D. requires strong graduate schools and graduate deans with real budgets and real scope a stronger administrative structure than typically exists at present.
- A cosmopolitan doctorate: The doctorate will benefit enormously from a continuing interchange with the worlds beyond academia. To become more relevant and garner more support, the doctorate must open to the world and engage social challenges more generously.
- Drawn from the breadth of the populace: For reasons of both equity and efficacy, doctoral education must place a still higher priority on attracting, cultivating, and retaining a larger next generation of Ph.D.s of color.
- An assessed excellence: The quality of doctoral education depends upon assessment with reasonable consequences. Attainment of specific objectives can be rewarded through commensurate increases in valued resources.
- New paradigms: Far from hindering the evolution of the Ph.D., as some previous studies have implied, scholarship is the heart of the doctorate. Rather than fault traditional research and scholarship, the Responsive Ph.D. asks, what encourages or discourages truly adventurous scholarship?
- New partnerships: Increasingly, Ph.D. graduates find employment in a range of positions beyond the traditional academic posts. The Responsive Ph.D. seeks an essential and continuous relationship between those who create the doctoral process and all those who employ its graduates.
- New practices: Teaching and service, as evolving aspects of the doctorate, demand new kinds of training. The Responsive Ph.D. seeks to make all aspects of doctoral training, including pedagogy, truly developmental, and to make the application of knowledge beyond the academy integral to doctoral experience.
- New people: As discussed earlier, the Ph.D. cohort, source of the nation’s college and university faculty, is not changing quickly enough to reflect the United States diversity (see the separate report, Diversity and the Ph.D. [May 2005]).
The report reaffirmed four key commitments identified in the early stages of the Responsive Ph.D. initiative:
The report’s 41 case studies cover new practices ranging from extensive pedagogical training and teaching experience (many of which were launched as part of the Preparing Future Faculty initiative) to an ongoing national program to recruit promising minority students to doctoral education.
Read/download the executive summary and/or the full report
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