The Invisible University: Postdoctoral Education in the United States. Report of a Study Conducted Under the Auspices of the National Research Council. [Richard B. Curtis, Study Director] (1969) / Chapter Skim
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IMPLICATIONS FOR ACADEMIC INSTITUTIONS
IMPLICATIONS FOR ACADEMIC INSTITUTIONS
Pages 143-193
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From page 143... ...
While the top 30 schools produce 48 percent of the PhD's in physics, they produce 69 percent of the PhD's who take an immediate postdoctoral appointment. Similarly, these same schools serve as hosts for 68 percent of the physics postdoctorals at academic institutions.
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From page 146... ...
In a poll of administrators at 140 universities, only three said that their institution actively promoted postdoctoral work and only about 10 percent suggested that there was considerable control by the central administration over postdoctoral appointments. The dean at a distinguished eastern university exercising considerable control, relatively speaking, over its postdoctoral appointments wrote as follows: The extent of the review of postdoctoral fellows within individual departments varies.
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From page 147... ...
The variation in qualifications of postdoctorals in a university like this one is far greater than the variation in credentials of either undergraduate or graduate students." Not only is there little central control over the quality of postdoctorals, but there is also little oversight with regard to numbers and treatment of postdoctorals. The spokesman for a major west coast university wrote: "It is a simple fact that we have no adequate control over the number or the use of postdoctoral fellows.
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From page 148... ...
Although a few administrators are aware of potential dangers, even fewer recommend taking any steps to mitigate them. Whether the issue is the contribution of postdoctorals to research or teaching, the competition with graduate students for space and faculty time, the adequacy of graduate programs, or the cost of postdoctoral activity to the university, most administrators believe either that what has evolved is adequate or that any steps to control or regulate the activity would do more harm than good.
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From page 149... ...
The administration cannot educate the state until an institutional rationale is developed in which postdoctoral education takes its place within the complex milieu that is a modern university. In developing that rationale the goals of the individual university will have to be taken into account.
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From page 150... ...
150 IMPLICATIONS FOR ACADEMIC INSTITUTIONS 1 8 .2 S > < 5 3 «^ f f el £
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From page 151... ...
151 EFFECT ON THE DEPARTMENT IliN11.
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From page 152... ...
If we examine Table 37, which displays the data on departmental size and composition, we see that all of those departments of chemistry and the basic medical sciences that have postdoctorals have fewer than ten graduate students per postdoctoral, with the density of postdoctorals increasing with increasing reputation. At the other end of the scale are engineering, the social sciences, and geology (except at the ten leading institutions)
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From page 153... ...
To summarize the findings, a postdoctoral takes up about half as much time of the faculty as a graduate student and requires about a third more space. It is not surprising that those institutions heavily involved in postdoctoral work are also those with faculty who themselves have had postdoctoral experience.
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From page 155... ...
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From page 159... ...
1 Biosciences 1 Medical Sciences Social Sciences ! i; 1 1 TOTAL 1 Source NRC, Office of Scientific Personnel, Postdoctoral Faculty Questionnaire
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From page 160... ...
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From page 161... ...
The chairman of the department of physics at a major west coast institution expressed the attitude of most chairmen in fields where postdoctoral study is abundant by stating, "Although the postdoctoral experience is an extremely valuable one for the postdoctoral, at our university the postdoctoral contributes more than he takes away." Another chairman found the postdoctoral not only useful in carrying out research activities, but critical to the informal teaching that is valuable in a productive department. He said, "The postdoctoral is both being productive and being educated." The president of a distinguished university expressed the dominant opinion when he wrote:
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From page 162... ...
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From page 163... ...
The effectiveness of the postdoctoral as a graduate teacher is usually explained by the closeness in age and the lack of formal status that permit an identification between the two. Graduate students are "generally very happy to be able to waste a good number of silly questions on their postdoctoral colleagues rather than have to display their ignorance to their faculty research directors," as one graduate dean put it.
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From page 164... ...
Thus, the dean at another institution wrote: The holder of a postdoctoral appointment during his formative years loses his awareness of the complete picture of the conventional academic man. The postdoctoral fellow misses the fact that he has personal responsibility for the running of the affairs of the community of scholars to which he belongs.
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From page 165... ...
Martin said: They have brought a stream of exceptionally able young mathematicians here who have been a wonderful stimulus and example to the graduate students, as well as providing us with some very excellent formal teaching. The department could never have so many young men competing for tenure as assistant professors and the teaching the Moore Instructors provide is therefore a bargain at the price.
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From page 166... ...
It would appear to spread one's postdoctoral program very thin to include teaching ... as a part of it." The dean at another leading university put it this way: The central purpose of postdoctoral education is the stimulating interaction between the professor and the Fellow.
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From page 167... ...
sci. 72 55 ' Biosciences 59 49 22 Internal medicine 78 56 \ 69 Other clinical medicine 81 54 ' Allied medical sciences 64 58 76 Psychology 58 461 24 Social sciences 50 30 J Arts and humanities 27 34 5 Education and professional 53 57 18 Total 64 48 36 Source: NRC, Office of Scientific Personnel, Postdoctoral Census and Departmental Questionnaires.
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From page 168... ...
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From page 169... ...
There is reason to believe that some of the postdoctorals did not recognize the informal instruction of graduate students in their group as "teaching" and as a result did not check the chart. Had they done so, the percentages would have been higher.
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From page 170... ...
The results are shown in Figure 15 where the bars stretch one standard deviation in each direction from the mean response.3 It must be kept in mind that the question was phrased in relation to the professor's teaching effort, i.e., the degree to which the graduate students, postdoctorals, or research staff assisted the professor in his teaching. No evaluation is made of how well they did teaching their own formal courses.
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From page 171... ...
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From page 172... ...
Another dean avoided the question of indispensability, but wrote: Research with postdoctoral s can be even more adventurous than research with graduate students. The former possess more highly trained skills and broader knowledge of thensubject.
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From page 173... ...
Before such a statement can be made with assurance, however, there needs to be an investigation by the sponsoring and the host institutions of the style of postdoctoral education, both as sponsored and as handled locally. Similar to the question on how much help graduate students, postdoctorals, and research staff are to a professor's teaching effort was a question to the faculty regarding the contribution to research by these same groups.
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From page 174... ...
174 IMPLICATIONS FOR ACADEMIC INSTITUTIONS FIGURE 16 Contribution of Research Group -- Graduate Students, Postdoctorals, Professional Research Staff -- to Faculty Research in the Natural Sciences. Contribution to Faculty Research by Graduate Students B J Postdoctorals Professional Research Staff MEAN SD Type of Research None Small Small Large Large Very Very Contribution 01234 , .1'-r-J ]
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From page 175... ...
After making reference to this article, a graduate dean wrote: "It would appear that postdoctoral study is ideally suited to the means." Postdoctoral s also leave the university and carry with them the association with the department to which they were attached. A departmental chairman judged that 40 percent of the high reputation that his department enjoys is due to the postdoctorals that they have hosted, with 60 percent of the reputation ascribed to the PhD's produced.
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From page 176... ...
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From page 177... ...
Departments from the ten leading institutions through the established institutions were stronger in their endorsement of postdoctoral activity and were more likely to have had experience with postdoctoral s in the past. With some exceptions, most of the developing institutions' departments felt that they would have difficulty fitting postdoctoral s into their organizations and challenging them academically.
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From page 178... ...
It may be that those graduate students who worked side-by-side with postdoctorTABLE 47 PhD Production by Research Groups with and without Postdoctorals, by Field PhD.s Granted in 1966 and 1967 in Research Groups with without Postdoctorals PhD.s Granted per Year per Graduate Student in Research Groups PhD.s Granted per Year per Faculty Co-Worker in Research Groups Postdoctoral Field with without Postdoctorals with without Postdoctorals Physics Chemistry Earth sciences Biochemistry Physiology Biosciences Medical specialities Social sciences 2.8 2.3 3.0 2.8 2.8 2.2 1.7 1.9 1.8 2.4 2.0 2.3 0.6 0.4 4.3 3.0 0.22 0.27 0.25 0.26 0.22 0.17 0.20 0.24 0.24 0.26 0.21 0.20 0.24 0.47 0.21 0.27 0.52 0.59 1.14 1.08 0.67 0.41 0.46 0.63 0.36 0.72 0.42 0.61 0.10 0.08 0.56 0.67 2.6 2.5 0.61 0.66 Total 0.23 0.23 Source: NRC, Office of Scientific Personnel, Postdoctoral Faculty Questionnaire.
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From page 179... ...
What is new is that most of the groups with postdoctorals have more funds per research group than most of the groups without postdoctorals, regardless of the reputation of the school. Recruitment of Postdoctorals as Faculty The postdoctoral appointment is a useful mechanism for having a parade of bright young men pass through the department.
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From page 180... ...
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From page 181... ...
Another chairman of physics from a less prestigious school agreed in principle, but found it more difficult to attract people with postdoctoral experience. A biology chairman explained that the desirability of a postdoctoral background in faculty candidates depended upon the subfield.
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From page 182... ...
The flow of students to the job market would not be any greater than it is with the existence of postdoctoral study, but the mobility that characterizes and enriches postdoctoral study would be absent. Because of the differential in stipends between the graduate student and the postdoctoral, the net effect (according to those who make this argument)
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From page 183... ...
The sudden flooding of the market would occur only once, and then the readjustment would take place. Even institutions that do not appoint many former postdoctorals as faculty recognize that light-load assistant professorships do not provide all of the benefits of a postdoctoral appointment.
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From page 184... ...
Up to 32 percent of the graduate deans considered that the development of postdoctoral study was an indictment of graduate education.8 The faculty, whether or not they were working with postdoctorals, were satisfied that there were reasons for postdoctoral study even for those PhD's whose predoctoral education was excellent. When asked if the character of predoctoral training should be changed in the light of the growth of postdoctoral study, the faculty responded as follows: Predoctoral Education Predoctoral Education No Should Change Should Not Change Opinion Faculty with postdoctorals 6% 59% 35% Faculty without postdoctorals 5% 46% 49% Most deans and almost all professors see merit in postdoctoral education for the reasons given earlier.
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From page 185... ...
If the PhD degree ever did prepare a particular kind of person for a particular kind of position, it no longer does. It would be extremely fortuitous if a single kind of predoctoral experience were appropriate for the creation of a graduate faculty member, a small college professor, an industrial researcher, and a science administrator.
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From page 186... ...
Finally, in those fields and subfields where the situation occurs, one must ask why faculty members urge particular thesis projects on their graduate students, thereby depriving them of the necessary experience of "seeking out, sizing up, and carrying through a research project." The answer that the professor is more interested in his own research and is looking only for contributions to it is probably limited in its applicability. To blame the phenomenon on selfishness is to foreclose the possibility that in some fields the nature of the subject and the degree of conceptual sophistication required to make "an original contribution to knowledge" are such that only after the experience of an extended and directed research project is a man ready to seek out the next project.
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From page 187... ...
Biochemistry and the other basic medical sciences have almost no roots in the undergraduate program. Students who choose these fields will learn the field mainly as graduate students, with two of their four or five graduate years devoted to thesis research.
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From page 188... ...
Yet physics PhD's take almost a year longer on the average to earn their doctorate than the chemists.9 Apparently growing out of their earlier close association with industry, the chemistry departments consciously move their students through the doctoral program with more speed. The postdoctoral appointment is then used to supply whatever might be missing in the graduate experience for those who seek academic careers.
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From page 189... ...
Because the engineering doctorate is relatively new and consequently postdoctoral work is not traditional, most employers do not expect postdoctoral experience. The "chicken and egg" situation occurs where demand will not occur until there is a supply and vice versa.
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From page 190... ...
It is apparent that while the able social scientist is always learning and needs free time for research, the needs of social scientists vary, and the immediate postdoctoral appointment is not nearly so common as in the physical and biological sciences. There are several explanations for the differences in attractiveness of the postdoctoral appointment for social scientists as compared to scientists.
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From page 191... ...
Scholars in the humanities have special opportunities for postdoctoral work through support from a variety of sources, including academic leave. The chief purpose of these forms of support and encouragement is to enable scholars in the humanities to have the free time to pursue their research and the opportunity to use library and other resources to supplement local collections.
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From page 192... ...
Such compulsions are largely absent in humanistic scholarship. The young humanistic PhD may feel the urge to publish or to develop some useful discovery or interesting idea arising from his graduate studies but he is at the same time aware that his most important contributions will require maturing and that they lie in the future.
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From page 193... ...
Three points of contact with postdoctoral education are closely correlated. These are the production of PhD's who take postdoctoral appointments, the hosting of postdoctorals, and the recruiting of former postdoctorals as faculty.
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