Consumerism, Manpower Management, and Graduate Education

Abstract

More and more the crisis of graduate education is being viewed as a part of the larger problem of manpower management. Put this way, academic hackles are bound to rise, and rightly so. All the same, given the numbers of students involved; the costs in faculty and supportive services their preparation necessitates; their expectations, realistic or otherwise, but nonetheless very real to them; and their potential role in society, the direction and dispersal of trained manpower must be of concern to all who are involved in graduate education. And this must include not only faculty in their dual capacity as teachers as well as prospective employers of graduate students in a shrinking academic marketplace, but the students themselves, their families, their future employers, and, above all, society itself which in the end bears the total cost of graduate education, first, through taxes directly, and second, through the profits from which the donations of individuals and corporations are derived. From this point of view, the distinction between public and private financing disappears; in the end, we all pay for everything, with about as much control over the ultimate disposition of our money, either as taxes or as profits, in the one sector as in the other. Thus, a tremendous investment in people, time, effort, and resources