I'm on leave for the next several weeks, so I have queued up a series of "reboot" posts, revisiting evergreen material of mine from this blog and other corners of the interwebs [1].
Left to right: start of grad school, middle phase, end of grad school (where almost nothing I worked on was part of "the plan.")
I wasn't supposed to be a graduate student. I was a first-gen kid with no expectations of advanced degrees [1,2]. I didn't know anything about what grad school was supposed to be [3]. That left me learning a few things "in the trenches" that no student should have to learn. These are avoidable takeaways. They are, in our most principled visions of the grad programs we run, the wrong takeaways.
And yet, these takeaways almost certainly apply to numerous (and increasing) proportions of the graduate students that I (and you, dear reader) teach, support, advise, and hire.
Put another way, my grad school experience profoundly informs my approach to teaching and mentoring grad students now, because I'm trying to prevent any more students from experiencing it like I did. And, to be honest, my experience was a glowing success compared to what a lot of students experience! Nevertheless, doing better by the next generations of students it drives my commitment to assessment in our department (and beyond, including grants/projects evaluation), curriculum development, and strategic planning at all levels.
I'll also note that it would be easy to dismiss the following takeaways as specific to my graduate degree in literary arts/humanities. But, that's simply not true. These situations are relevant and on-going for the STEM grad students you likely work with.
My intention, in sharing these with you, is to help us all identify and work to correct the takeaways we're facilitating for students right now. (I don't know what you hope grad students learn from you/your program, but I can assure you my grad school profs, and my colleagues now, do not intend for the following to be primary outcomes of the grad degrees they support. But, in my experience as a student and beyond, these are far-too-common conclusions.) I also offer high-level suggestions about how we can rectify the situation and shift to more positive, productive takeaways. What I'm suggesting isn't possible overnight. But it's not possible at all if we don't (a) take responsibility and (b) action to improve the nature of our programs and what we offer within them.
1. It takes active (too-often neglected) effort to welcome and orient all participants.
I was waitlisted by the one program I applied to. That meant I wasn't invited to tour campus, meet prospective advisors, learn more about the town, etc. I didn't get any schmoozing or explanations of "this is how our program is supposed to work" and "here's how it could help you."
No one ever told me why I was a good "fit" or why they wanted me in the program.
One day, I just got an email. The message was basically, beige-ly: "So, if you want...you can come, too."
And then there I was. In a program I knew nothing about.
Turns out the program was very highly ranked in the U.S. at the time. Turns out the faculty were big-deal writers. Turns out my cohort saw themselves the same way.
I was prepared for none of this.
I felt pretty out of the loop as it all became clearer. Clearer in the sense that I heard enough people say things like this from the point-of-view of assuming we all knew the status of the program, faculty, etc.
All of these cracks in the onboarding could have been smoothed out by creating an orientation process that did not assume we all came from creative writing/publishing backgrounds.
Here's how I'd recommend we do it instead:
Onboard students at the same time (common in humanities, etc.; variable in STEM; rare in my current dept.).
If you're onboarding at the same time, departments/programs can and should prioritize funding that supports recruitment for all prospective students. This recruitment should happen at set times that enable all students to receive the same level of exposure (and schmoozing) before they join the program.
Do the necessary reflection and strategic planning to be able to make very clear to students the focus, opportunities, and gaps in your program. So you're focused on academic-career- training, not on applied careers? That's not a great marketing plan in 2024, but at least be transparent so students know what they will/won't get if they join.
2. The way grad school programs are run makes clear they're not necessarily going to help you make a living using what you learned in the program [4].
The program I was in focused on writing-as-art/craft. It offered little discussion or formal programming around making a living as a writer. The logistics and social nuances of pitching to paying outlets or scholarly publications weren't discussed. Instead, prestigious-to-the-field, unpaying, literary journals were emphasized. Coming, as I had, from several years as a freelance writer and adjacent to STEM scholarship, I was astonished by this gap. When I said so, I was met with shrugs from peers and deflection by faculty.
(All this also applies to the "orient everyone" point above. If I'd understood what was offered by this particular program, I probably still would have applied and accepted the offer. But I wouldn't have felt so off-base with my expectations for professional development via the program.)
Here's how I'd recommend we do it instead:
Again, do the necessary scoping, strategic planning, and curricular reform (including re-assigning teaching to meet intended outcomes) to ensure the program actually does prepare students for a wide array of careers (most especially accounting for how few will likely desire or secure an academic job).
3. Abdicating responsibility for climate/vibe of the program to students is reprehensible yet common.
I got a spectacular education from my cohort, for which I will be forever grateful.
But, some of that education was how not to call people out and how not to tell people that they have things to learn.
I was a lot older than everyone in my cohort, and I was nowhere near as woke as most of them. I got judged really hard for wanting to write about nature and conservation instead of contemporary social issues. Put another way: the program did very little to mitigate the amplitude of judgement and peer pressure some folks (including some faculty) levied on people who just weren't doing the same thing as the folks who formed the nucleus of cool-writers-with-potential.
The sense of superiority held by some of my peers also played out in another way that was both unfounded and never reigned in by the program. That is, we were in a parallel cohort with people pursuing master's degrees in English literature (aka an M.A.). We all taught the same course(s), so no "advantage" there. Furthermore, course registration among grad students in these two programs was porous (we took M.A. classes, they took MFA classes). The M.A. students underwent a rigorous program of developing a 100+-book reading list and an oral examination (more akin to the STEM grad programs I was used to). Remarkably, we MFAs wrote and read (or didn't) whatever we wanted. There was no expectation of rigorous, scholarly attention to reading, writing, citation, and the like. And yet, a scrum of MFAs in my cohort regularly made clear they considered themselves better writers (and cooler people).
I don't mention this to trash the program or any of those people. I mention it because one of the hurdles facing graduate students, in any degree program, is that faculty far too often leave students to set the tone of the program. While there must, of course, be space for a program to be responsive to students (and there must be space for students to make it their own), I find most programs (across disciplines) are too hands-off. Perhaps this is the nonprofit administrator or community developer in me, but the bottom line is that faculty are responsible for creating and delivering a program. That includes at minimum (and I'd argue more importantly than "content"):
the tone of the program;
the sense of belonging (or not) that students experience;
cultivation of a degree of social and professional connection to each other, faculty in and beyond the program, and other professionals in the field; and
the rigor and relevance of the training provided therein.
For "all. the. reasons.," faculty frequently abdicate this set of responsibilities. Sometimes staff (or just a few faculty, rather than the whole) assume this work. But, too often, the vacuum is filled by students. In my experience as a graduate student, faculty member, and previously as someone adjacent to academia in many ways, this vacuum (and the frequently counterproductive ways students handle it) indicates a programmatic failure.
Here's how I'd recommend we do it instead:
Articulate expectations for mutual respect, support, and outputs for faculty and students.
Identify the facilitation necessary to provide a supportive, rigorous program that holds the same expectations of respect, outputs, etc. for all students (and faculty).
Pay for faculty/admins to get training to offer this level of facilitation and oversight, and/or hire people who can deliver this level of leadership. (Consider building in leadership development as part of the programming for students, too.)
Establish a schedule of rotating admin-leadership responsibilities for faculty, admins, and students. Hold faculty accountable for performing to expectations here, and provide (paid as necessary) support/training to ensure they achieve those expected levels of leadership.
Establish and invest in a calendar of community-building and professional development opportunities (e.g., orientation/welcome events; check-ins and/or trainings mid-term, end-of-term, etc.). Commit to the program providing the sense of continuity, programming, etc., that warrants being called a program (vs. looking to students to lead and sustain the core functions of the program.) This commitment will require sufficient staffing and faculty involvement. (If this cannot be achieved, stop calling it a program and acknowledge the reality that it is a student-run organization.)
4. There's no "map" (or if there is, it's faded, obscure, and has parts missing but still asserts to be "the one true way").
Graduate students also face a challenge in the "map" given them. That "map" is most frequently (and unhelpfully) distilled down to one direction: "do the work." This directive is fairly universal, regardless of discipline (unless we're talking professional certification programs with highly prescriptive, skill-based curricula, e.g., nursing).
But, telling a student to "do the work" is a grand over-simplification that obfuscates a spectacular amount of nuance. Predictably, most of us know only how to provide advice based on our individual, personal experience. But, most faculty have only ever been been academics [5], while most of our students are "non-traditional" now [6]. That means faculty frequently extrapolate their past into a prescribed course of action for a student's future that is unattainable for the student. In other words, most of our advice smacks of "the way it worked for me should work for you" vibes while failing to recognize (a) the world has changed drastically and (b) students' goals are wildly broader than academia.
Telling students to "do the work" means that students are expected, largely on their own, to figure out how to:
Dedicate the majority of their time to familiarizing themselves with the published discourse of their field (even though it is figuratively, and perhaps actually, a foreign-to-them language).
Join these intellectual conversations convincingly (vs. merely spectating/parroting/repeating) but with very little concrete guidance about how to do so.
Innovate new methods, theoretical framings, juxtapositions of existing/past efforts or answer novel questions in mature ways. (Guidance and mentorship here varies enormously.)
Ideally, publish early and often. Minimally, publish everything before or soon after they graduate. (Again, support for this varies tremendously.)
De-emphasize course work (and the time they put into it) in favor of the above...but also, don't do so poorly at it that they jeopardize their funding. (But students reliably see coursework as a vital part of the up-skilling they are in grad school for.)
Same for teaching, and especially be sure to spend very little time on prep and grading (as if we've figured out how to ourselves!). (If they're spending lots of time, don't mention it, certainly not with expectation of sympathy or workload reduction.) (But, it's not possible for a novice teacher/grader to be highly efficient. And, lots of students actually value and want to get better at teaching, not undercut it.)
Same for volunteering/service work. Be especially cautious of (read, avoid) service that (a) "distracts" from publishing peer-reviewed work on the topic of their graduate study and/or (b) makes extra work for faculty/administrators (aka, social justice, systems change, equity topics). (Myriad, valid reasons about for why students prioritize this work, frequently over coursework or research/publication.)
There's a reality that "do the work" attitudes (and degree plans/programs built around this attitude) fail to account. That is, it's way too easy to make grad students feel like they're doing it all wrong. And, we're guaranteed to make them feel that way if we imply or state outright that there's only one right way to do graduate school (and that way is the "classical" or "typical" or "historical/traditional" way). As I've noted above, there are a host of reasons why students are not prioritizing the same activities that help faculty get jobs and obtain tenure. (Ahem! That "do the work" recipe is, really, a toxic, tenure-track recipe.)
The wonderful, daunting reality of graduate education is this: however many people there are in grad school, there are that many ways to do grad school.
We don't even know what the world is going to want from us as faculty in the next 5-10 years! There's absolutely no way we can anticipate what our students will need to be able to think about, improvise on, create, question, and critique someday. If students only do the tenure-track model of graduate school, they're gonna miss things. We are for sure going to miss connecting them important things like how to prepare for and pursue options in and beyond grad school.
Here's how I'd recommend we do it instead:
Conduct regular market research (involving prospective employers, alumni, etc.) to determine what skills, knowledge bases, theoretical orientations, social/professional connections, applied experiences, etc., the students in the program need.
Conduct a gap analysis to identify how well the program is or isn't addressing these needs.
Get real about mapping out how to close those gaps (programming, curriculum, staffing, partnerships in and beyond academia, etc.).
Do the hard work of transforming the program into a program that does what needs to be offered to students in the modern era.
5. Some people and programs are actively trying to do better.
This is a vital takeaway. There are precious few graduate programs that have managed to correct for the negative conclusions I've articulated above. However, these programs exist, and we can all learn from them how to better run the grad programs that we lead and contribute to.
And, the only way to do respectfully learn from them is by first adequately, equitably compensating, supporting, rewarding, and fostering capacity for the people running these better-run programs. Only then should we be inviting them to consult with and advise us on how to do better ourselves. Otherwise, we're cannibalizing programs, ideas, and the bandwidth/expertise of people that have, for the most part, struggled against inertia, indifference, or even active obstruction and managed to do better despite the resistance [7].
How about you?
If you or people you know went to grad school, what did you learn about that experience that could help make grad school better for students now and in the future?
NOTES
If you have issues accessing any of the sources linked here, let me know. I'm happy to send you a PDF.
[1] This post was prompted by my comments during a 'Diverse Faculty Panel' sponsored by our Graduate School and now-demolished Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. You can watch a full recording of our panel discussion here.
[2] As I've written previously, I went to graduate school a decade after completing my undergraduate degree. I spent the intervening time working a host of roles, jobs, and gigs in a range of sectors that could equally be seen as random or framed as strategic.
[3] By which I mean, I didn't know what grad school would be for someone like me, in a program like mine. I was very familiar with grad school in ecology/conservation biology by then, thanks to extended exposure (husband, many friends, colleagues, interviewees). But, it turned out that a creative writing MFA was nothing like the STEM grad school I was used to (and expecting).
[4] I'm gonna continue to argue, though, that attitude is morally bankrupt. The people who design, offer, recruit for, and fund grad programs (in any/all disciplines) absolutely should care about and calibrate to multiple potential career pathways (and concrete training) that offer students a hope of a living wage post-graduate. Furthermore, there's considerable evidence that most of students will not become academics, both because it's not mathematically possible (too few jobs) and because they primarily opt not to. See, for example:
Kezar, A., and D. Maxey. 2013. “The Changing Academic Workforce.” Trusteeship Magazine, May-June, 2013. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1013444
Mason, M. A., M. Goulden, and K. Frasch. 2009. “Why Graduate Students Reject the Fast Track.” Academe 95 (1): 11-16.'
Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching (QILT). 2021. Graduate Outcomes Survey. https://www.qilt.edu.au/surveys/graduate-outcomes-survey-(gos)
[5] For details on faculty demographics, see:
Morgan, A.C., N. LaBerge, D. B. Larremore, M. Galesic, J. E. Brand, and A. Clauset. 2022. “Socioeconomic Roots of Academic Faculty.” Nature Human Behavior 6: 1625–1633. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01425-4
National Center for Education Statistics. 2023. “Characteristics of Postsecondary Faculty.” Condition of Education. U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/csc
[6] For details on student demographics, see:
Cataldi, E. F., C. T. Bennett, and X. Chen. 2018. First-Generation Students: College Access, Persistence, and Post Bachelor's Outcomes (NCES 2018421). National Center for Education Statistics. https://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2018421
Radford, A. W., M. Cominole, and P. Skomsvold. 2015. Demographic and Enrollment Characteristics of Nontraditional Undergraduates: 2011-12 (NCES 2015025). National Center for Education Statistics. https://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2015025
Nazmi, A., S. Martinez, A. Byrd, D. Robinson, S. Bianco, J. Maguire, R. M. Crutchfield, K. Condron, and L. Ritchie. 2019. “A Systematic Review of Food Insecurity among US Students in Higher Education.” Journal of Hunger & Environmental Nutrition 14 (5): 725–40. https://doi.org/10.1080/19320248.2018.1484316.
Nikolaus, C. J., R. An, B. Ellison, and S. M. Nickols-Richardson. 2020. “Food Insecurity among College Students in the United States: A Scoping Review.” Advances in Nutrition 11 (2): 327–48. https://doi.org/10.1093/advances/nmz111
[7] While there are of course many examples, I can share two programs I'm involved with that are doing (or trying to do) better. By no means do these programs get everything right. But the following links can offer some starting points:
Barrile, G. M., R. F. Bernard, R. C. Wilcox, J. A. Becker, M. E. Dillon, R. R. Thomas-Kuzilik, S. P. Bombaci, and B. G. Merkle. 2023. “Equity, Community, and Accountability: Leveraging a Department-Level Climate Survey as a Tool for Action.” PLOS One 18 (8): e0290065. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0290065
Deanna, R., B.G. Merkle, I. Baxter, K. P. Chun, R. Zuo, L. M. Diele-Viegas, P. Geesink, V. Aschero, D. Navarro-Rosenblatt, A. Bortolus, P. A. Ribone, E. Welchen, M. J. de Leone, S. Oliferuk, N. H. Oleas, M. Grossi, A. Cosacov, S. Knapp, A. López-Mendez, G. A. Auge. 2022. “It Takes a Village: The Importance of Diverse Networks in Academic Mentorship.” Nature Communication 13: 1-7. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-28667-0
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