Planning for the Research Mission of Public Universities in the Twenty-first Century
no. 101 - June 1997

The State of Research Endeavors: View from the Administrative Level

Andrew P. Debicki
Dean, Graduate School and International Programs
University of Kansas

Any discussion of research goals and patterns must take into account changes currently occurring in graduate education, since graduate students comprise much of the staff of research activity on the one hand, and represent the researchers of the future on the other. In addition, teaching and research activities are inextricably connected parts of the process of learning, of discovering knowledge.

National conversation about graduate education has stressed, recently, concerns about the overproduction of Ph.D.'s. In many fields of the natural and social sciences, such overproduction is probably overstated: actual unemployment is low. But increase in "supply" has led to increased use length of post-doctoral appointments preliminary to eligibility for tenure-track academic positions. It has also led research universities, in the humanities and social sciences, to demand previous full-time teaching experience as well as significant research accomplishments of candidates for tenure-track assistant professorships. All this makes the progress to an academic career longer and more arduous. In some cases, it leads graduate students to do a "cost benefit analysis" and leave at some point (the M.A. level, the early Ph.D. level) for more lucrative or earlier careers outside the academy.

An additional issue, raised by Brian Foster, is that most positions in academia that will become available in the future will not be at Research I institutions, but rather at four-year colleges, community colleges, and comprehensive universities. Faculty members mentoring Ph.D. candidates should realize that they are preparing them for positions at such institutions more often than for positions at institutions comparable to their own. This suggests that they should pay attention to various skills in teaching and service, and also offer guidance on the variety of academic institutions to which a graduate might apply, and the advantages and disadvantages of all of them. (And to avoid communicating a sense that any position outside of a major research institution constitutes a career failure.)

In many disciplines, mentors should be alert to the career opportunities available outside academia - in governmental organizations and in industry. Mentoring and guidance of doctoral students, as well as the breadth of training recommended in the COSEPUP Report, are ever more important in the current setting. Also important will be each program's continued assessment of its graduates, and of their placement and career as they move on beyond their degrees.