Envisioning the Future of Doctoral Education: Preparing Stewards of the Discipline—Carnegie Essays on the Doctorate (review)

Abstract

Envisioning Future of Doctoral Education: Preparing Stewards of Discipline--Carnegie Essays on Doctorate, edited by Chris M. Golde and George M. Walker. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2006. 480 pp. ISBN 0-7879-8235-0. The Carnegie Initiative on Doctorate (CID) is working with departments in selected disciplines (mathematics, chemistry, neuroscience, education, history, and English) in United States to reconsider purposes, processes, and outcomes of doctoral education. For CID's first product, Research Director Chris Golde and Project Director George Walker invited 16 eminent scholars from six disciplines to address two provocative questions: What is purpose of doctoral education? and If you could start de novo, what would be best way to structure doctoral education in your field? (pp. 16-17). The essays are interspersed with useful descriptions of state of current doctoral education in six disciplines, including number of doctoral degrees awarded per year, average time to degree, course of study and nature of research, and relations between doctoral students and their advisors. In her introduction, Golde says that doctoral education should prepare stewards of discipline, scholars will creatively generate new knowledge, critically conserve valuable and useful ideas, and responsibly transform those understandings through writing, teaching and application (p. 5). Stewardship involves both competence with roles and skills of a discipline and a sense of moral purpose. Three integrative commentaries make sense of 16 disciplinary essays for stakeholder groups. Kenneth Prewitt argues that disciplinary leaders should focus on reforming what is taught (content) and that institutional leaders should focus on reforming how it is taught (process). Reform in either case, he says, will require aligning external funding and institutional budgets with desired changes. From a faculty perspective, David Damrosch notes that eminent scholars asked to envision doctoral education reaped rewards from excelling in current system, so they may not have most creative ideas for improving it for others. Damrosch would prefer ideas from current doctoral and recent doctoral students, including adjunct, not-yet-tenured, and recently tenured faculty. Similarly, Crespin Taylor argues that doctoral students as stakeholders should be part of developing reforms and that efforts should be informed by doctoral education outside United States. The lone international voice is provided by Yehudi Elkana, rector of Central European University, who argues that centrality of philosophy and epistemology to Doctor of Philosophy degree has been lost in overspecialization, pressure toward consensus, and rigor in name of objective science. Mathematician Hyman Bass asserts that stewards must attend to both discipline (a knowledge domain) and profession (a community of human practice). Tony Chan thinks a math doctorate should be more appealing to a wider variety of students but is uncertain whether current faculty have will to effect change. Alvin Kwiram outlines a curriculum to incorporate professional skills during doctoral education in chemistry. Ronald Breslow summarizes a 2003 National Research Council report on chemistry and applies it to current doctoral training in that discipline. Disciplinary leaders should be expert learners according to chemist Angelica Stacy, and she argues that doctoral students with most potential may be leaving programs that require them to fit narrow expectations. Several authors discuss interdisciplinarity, but neuroscientist Zach Hall suggests that development of interdisciplinary doctoral programs served as a catalyst for transforming conduct of research. Neuroscientist Steven Hyman agrees, asserting that the key to coalescence of a new discipline is graduate program. …