Adventures in Ethics and Science: What (not) to do when the system is broken.
Adventures in Ethics and Science: What (not) to do when the system is broken.
Although it was back in the dim mists of the Cretaceous era, I don’t think I ever harbored fantasies of wreaking revenge on my graduate advisors and professors. The closest I ever came (as far as I know) to experiencing this from the other side involved extended discussions with someone (a mathematician, as it turns out) who was interested in returning to graduate school in psychology or education. Over some months of occasional discussions, it became clear that this person had ideas about what graduate school entailed that made me very worried about the possibility of this working out. After deciding that this wouldn’t work out, I (and at least one other person) got vaguely threatening email messages about this, and as far as I know that was that.
I think there are two systemic sources of this problem, or at least two that can be easily changed. The first is the time that it takes to get a degree. In the UIUC Psychology department, students are guaranteed 6 years of support. I used to decry the fact that this sometimes was a negative factor in recruiting, interpreted as meaning that it takes 6 years to graduate vs. 4 or 5 years elsewhere. Ironically, the recruits’ complaint is probably correct—although there’s no reason it had to take students 6 years to finish, it almost universally did, with a few students taking longer.
Both Michigan Psychology and the Combined Program in Education and Psychology) try hard to get students done in 5 years, with occasional students taking longer. That requires a fairly high level of supervision and involvement from both faculty and students, but I think it really does make a positive difference.
What accounts for the difference? Sadly, perhaps, it’s because graduate tuition ends up being much more expensive here than at Illinois (where any grad student who’s appointed as an RA or TA gets a tuition waiver that’s not charged to the department). The financial viability of our graduate programs and the ability to admit new students depend on getting students to achieve candidacy relatively
early and finish up more or less on schedule. So there’s pressure on both faculty and students to ensure that students move through with dispatch.
The School of Education is in the middle, or perhaps the early middle stages of developing a similar culture, and I can see some of the reasons that lead to lengthy graduate careers and alienation. If students must find their own funding (at least in some cases), then it’s easy for faculty members to admit students they may have doubts about and not to push students to get over the inevitable stumbling blocks that arise in the course of graduate education. Furthermore, as students learn more and are acculturated to a program, they are more valuable as colleagues, and faculty may not feel so motivated to push them out the door toward their own independent careers, even if that’s the best thing for them.
Graduate school is a time of great ambivalence for most people; I know it was for me. Like ripping off a bandage, though, I think it’s something that should be done as quickly as possible. An academic career inherently involves life-long learning, but as much of that should be done as an independent, autonomous researcher or faculty member as possible.