From Diplomas To Doctorates

This volume is designed to illuminate the educational experiences of Black women, from the time they earn their high school diplomas through graduate study, with a particular focus on their doctoral studies, by exploring the commonalities and the uniqueness of their individual paths and challenges. The chapters of this volume newly identify key factors and experiences that shape Black women’s engagement or disengagement with higher education.The original research presented here – using an array of theoretical lenses, as well as qualitative and quantitative methods – not only deepens our understanding of the experiences of African American women in the academy, but also seeks to strengthen the academic pipeline, not only for the benefit of those who may have felt disenfranchised in the past, but for all students.The contributors eschew the deficit-focused approach – that implies a lack of social and cultural capital based on prior educational experiences – adopted by many studies of non-dominant groups in education, and instead focus on the strengths and experiences of their subjects. Among their findings is the identification of the social capital that Black women are given and actively acquire in their pre-collegiate years that enable them to gain greater returns on their educational investments than their male peers. The book further describes the assistance and the interference African American women receive from their peers during their transition to college, and how peer interactions shape their early college experiences, and influence subsequent persistence decisions.Whether studying how Black women in the social and natural sciences navigate through this often rocky terrain, or uncovering the extent to which African American women doctoral students access postsecondary education through community colleges, and their special needs for more mentoring and advising support, this book provides researchers and graduate students with rich information on how to successfully engage and succeed in the doctoral process.It also demonstrates to women faculty and administrators how they can become better navigators, guides, and advocates for the African American women who come after them.

By fixing the PhD, we can benefit the entire educational system and the life of our society along with it.

Doctoral degrees have been a part of higher education ever since the first was conferred in Paris in around 1150. It is remarkable that this degree has survived and thrived for over eight centuries without significant change. Keith Allan Noble provides a concise, international summary of the past and present of doctoral degrees and predicts possible future developments, based on a study involving 67 scholars from Australia, Canada, Britain and the USA. He examines the strengths and weaknesses of both traditional and non-traditional doctoral programmes, and concludes with pragmatic recommendations suggesting how doctoral programmes should change. "Changing Doctoral Degrees" should be of interet to academics supervising doctoral canditates and for scholars researching higher education.

Universities and nations have long recognized the direct contribution of graduate education to the welfare of the economy by meeting a range of research and employment needs. With the burgeoning of a global economy in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the economic outcome of doctoral education reaches far beyond national borders. Many doctoral programs in the United States and throughout the world are looking for opportunities to equip students to work in transnational settings, with scientists and researchers located across the globe. Nations competing within this global economy often have different and not always compatible motives for supporting graduate training. In this volume, graduate education experts explore some of the tensions and potential for cooperation between nations in the realm of doctoral education. The contributors assess graduate education in different systems around the world, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, the Nordic countries, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Many factors motivate the need for a global understanding of doctoral education, including the internationalization of the labor market and global competition, the expansion of opportunities for doctoral education in smaller and developing nations, and a declining interest among international students in pursuing their graduate education in the United States.

What percentage of graduate students entering PhD programs in the arts and sciences at leading universities actually complete their studies? How do completion rates vary by field of study, scale of graduate program, and type of financial support provided to students? Has the increasing reliance on Teaching Assistantships affected completion rates and time-to-degree? How successful have national fellowship programs been in encouraging students to finish their studies in reasonably short periods of time? What have been the effects of curricular developments and shifts in the state of the job market? How has the overall "system" of graduate education been affected by the expansion of the 1960s and the subsequent contraction in enrollments and degrees conferred? Is there "excess capacity" in the system at the present time? This major study seeks to answer fundamental questions of this kind. It is based on an exhaustive analysis of an unparalleled data set consisting of the experiences in graduate school of more than 35,000 students who entered programs in English, history, political science, economics, mathematics, and physics at ten leading universities between 1962 and 1986. In addition, new information has been obtained on the graduate student careers of more than 13,000 winners of prestigious national fellowships such as the Woodrow Wilson and the Danforth. It is the combination of these original data sets with other sources of national data that permits fresh insights into the processes and outcomes of graduate education. The authors conclude that opportunities to achieve significant improvements in the organization and functioning of graduate programs exist--especially in the humanities and related social sciences--and the final part of the book contains their policy recommendations. This will be the standard reference on graduate education for years to come, and it should be read and studied by everyone concerned with the future of graduate education in the United States. Originally published in 1992. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

A “magisterial [and] elegantly written” study of Renaissance Italy’s remarkable accomplishments in higher education and academic research (Choice). Winner of the Howard R. Marraro Prize for Italian History from the American Historical Association Selected by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title of the Year Italian Renaissance universities were Europe's intellectual leaders in humanistic studies, law, medicine, philosophy, and science. Employing some of the foremost scholars of the time—including Pietro Pomponazzi, Andreas Vesalius, and Galileo Galilei—the Italian Renaissance university was the prototype of today's research university. This is the first book in any language to offer a comprehensive study of this most influential institution. Noted scholar Paul F. Grendler offers a detailed and authoritative account of the universities of Renaissance Italy. Beginning with brief narratives of the origins and development of each university, Grendler explores such topics as the number of professors and their distribution by discipline; student enrollment (some estimates are the first attempted); famous faculty members; budgets and salaries; and relations with civil authority. He discusses the timetable of lectures, student living, foreign students, the road to the doctorate, and the impact of the Counter Reformation. He shows in detail how humanism changed research and teaching, producing the medical Renaissance of anatomy and medical botany, new approaches to Aristotle, and mathematical innovation. Universities responded by creating new professorships and suppressing older ones. The book concludes with the decline of Italian universities, as internal abuses and external threats—including increased student violence and competition from religious schools—ended Italy’s educational leadership in the seventeenth century.

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