IHE: radical restructuring of graduate education

[Hibush]

The graduate dean at UC Riverside, Gillian Hayes, has an opinion piece in IHE.

We know the problems of adjunctification, exploited grad students and postdocs, and withering disciplines.  So I won't repeat those, but go straight to the remedy for research universities:

More full-time instructors could create a better undergraduate experience.
More full-time researchers could create a more efficient and productive research environment.
Much smaller cohorts of Ph.D. students with more support could shorten and improve the journey to a Ph.D.

She says those things will happen as an inevitable consequence of market forces. How will that affect your graduate program. How will that affect your faculty structure?

We already see 20% of research universities produce 80% of the PhDs. If the number of PhDs dropped by half or so, even fewer programs would be able to maintain a reasonable cohort. That would inevitably lead to faculty in each discipline coming from an even smaller number of programs.

I'm curious how dean Hayes envisions that at UCR. It is are a strong school, but would be able to support fewer grad programs than local larger alternatives at UCLA and UCD. But UCR would still have a good grad programs, albeit in fewer fields. She says that the first movers will succeed and the laggards won't. Perhaps she's positioning for UCR to be an early mover. 

One related emphasis in the piece is to professionalize teaching more, eliminating the use of TAs who are newbies at teaching and of researchers who don't want to be in front of the class. Would that make the R1&2 classroom experience more similar to SLACs?

[dismalist]

Like virtually all pleas emanating from the academy, the success of this one -- higher wages for fewer present and future faculty -- depends on collusion among universities, nationally, at that. Aside from the fact that that will never happen -- there are ca. 270 R1 + R2 universities in the US, guaranteeing intense competition -- collusion is is illegal by the Sherman Act [except for unions in non-right-to-work States, by Taft-Hartley].

Looks more like the article is a wish list to allow California universities to finance [perhaps] the plan. It's a substitute for statewide unionization. The consequence would be that non-California R1's and R2's would expand in size and/or number, and California adjuncts, would be out of their jobs.

[Hibush]

Like virtually all pleas emanating from the academy, the success of this one -- higher wages for fewer present and future faculty -- depends on collusion among universities, nationally, at that. Aside from the fact that that will never happen -- there are ca. 270 R1 + R2 universities in the US, guaranteeing intense competition -- collusion is is illegal by the Sherman Act [except for unions in non-right-to-work States, by Taft-Hartley].

Looks more like the article is a wish list to allow California universities to finance [perhaps] the plan. It's a substitute for statewide unionization. The consequence would be that non-California R1's and R2's would expand in size and/or number, and California adjuncts, would be out of their jobs.

Why would it require collusion? The assertion is that only schools that make this move will be economically viable because they are more efficient at producing a quality product. The people teaching and doing research would be happy because they have job security and high but achieveable performance criteria doing what they are good at.

That model relies on the "consumer" recogizing product quality. Do you think that assumption doesn't hold?

[dismalist]

Like virtually all pleas emanating from the academy, the success of this one -- higher wages for fewer present and future faculty -- depends on collusion among universities, nationally, at that. Aside from the fact that that will never happen -- there are ca. 270 R1 + R2 universities in the US, guaranteeing intense competition -- collusion is is illegal by the Sherman Act [except for unions in non-right-to-work States, by Taft-Hartley].

Looks more like the article is a wish list to allow California universities to finance [perhaps] the plan. It's a substitute for statewide unionization. The consequence would be that non-California R1's and R2's would expand in size and/or number, and California adjuncts, would be out of their jobs.

Why would it require collusion? The assertion is that only schools that make this move will be economically viable because they are more efficient at producing a quality product. The people teaching and doing research would be happy because they have job security and high but achieveable performance criteria doing what they are good at.

That model relies on the "consumer" recogizing product quality. Do you think that assumption doesn't hold?

Good question! It's just that I don't think it would have an effect on quality.

Research universities are about finding the best people, and the more people you have, the better the chance for finding the best.

Make California academia, say, smaller, and the others will get bigger. Of course, California could attract the best, but others would match, without giving up the low paid adjuncts.

The planned cost increase can only work with lots of free money or lack of competition.

Edit: Spelling!

[jerseyjay]

I have not read the article. That said, hiring more professors full-time professors and researchers and cutting down the number of PhD students would probably make being a full-time academic a better profession for many of us. That said, I don't really think it is a "solution," any more than "building more homes" is the solution to the homeless crisis.

Dim as some academic administrators may seem to be, I think that they realize that if they hired more people, academic quality of life would improve. But this raises the question of why they don't. At my school, the reason is there really is not enough money, which has to do with higher education funding. I don't think that the decline in full-time lines and the rise of casual academic labor (adjuncts) is because somebody actual thought that this would be better for education--rather it was an attempt to make higher education cheaper. Increasing the demand of full-time academics and reducing the supply would result in hire salaries, which would be (in my mind) a good thing. But it would require much more money than my school currently has. At my school, there is the opposite trend: a decrease in the number of full-time faculty. I don't think anybody actually thinks that this is a good thing, but it is justified by budget problems which at bottom is because government funding  has decreased. (Private schools have a different source of funding, but except at a very few schools, still a finite supply of money.)

One could argue that if the ratio between administrator and full-time faculty were changed there would be better education, but, again, I don't think many administrators would want to put this into practice .

Similarly, reducing the number of graduate students: I suppose if the number of full-time researchers and instructors increased, there would be an increased demand for graduate students. Still, there are probably enough PhDs in some programs (history! English!) to allow a vast expansion of the profession without running out of people. But which schools are going to cut their graduate programs, or even the number of students they admit? How is this going to be decided or enforced?

At bottom, I think the problems in academia reflect the way that higher education is organized in general, and the broader relationship between education and society.

Finally, one problem with this solution is that academia is made up of very different disciplines with different relations to the nonacademic world--engineering is different than English.

[RatGuy]

I have not read the article. That said, hiring more professors full-time professors and researchers and cutting down the number of PhD students would probably make being a full-time academic a better profession for many of us.

Our university is moving to something like this, and the department with which I am most closely affiliated has slashed graduate admissions (to one incoming student, for Fall 23). That said, there has been two significant consequences: the FTI and FTR salaries are well below the national averages, and in my case I have only seen one salary adjustment in 10 years. Merit raises don't really exist -- the differences between faculty in the same cohort are differentiated by about $100/yr. Secondly, the TT faculty are resentful, seeing as "inferior" scholars and instructors are "replacing" them. Indeed, in many departments, full-time non-tenure-track faculty are not allows to participate in departmental governance. Not allowed to attend voting meetings or otherwise have a voice in departmental issues. I think the admin accepts this, because if long-timers like me do leave, then they can save money by offering even lower salaries to our replacements.

[Hibush]

At my school, there is the opposite trend: a decrease in the number of full-time faculty. I don't think anybody actually thinks that this is a good thing, but it is justified by budget problems which at bottom is because government funding  has decreased.

This is a natural-short term response, trying to maintain programs with cheaper inputs. In Hayes' view, that leads to a lesser undergraduate experience, so good students choose schools that offer a better one at a similar cost. The latter experience will be at schools that took the route of hiring top-notch full-time permanent lecturers to teach the main lower-division courses.

Schools at the lower end run into existential problems, so there is some attrition for following an unsustainable strategy.

How does that mechanism manifest at your school? I suspect the determining factors are different than for UCR.

But which schools are going to cut their graduate programs, or even the number of students they admit? How is this going to be decided or enforced?

Finally, one problem with this solution is that academia is made up of very different disciplines with different relations to the nonacademic world--engineering is different than English.

One mechanism of reducing the size of grad programs is by having the standard for doctoral stipends move up.

I see that very clearly in my grad program since we compete for students with schools that set a high bar. If the applicants come to expect a minimum stipend of $35,000 per year and a tuition waiver--which is close to what the UC students got--then you simply cannot support as many students.

Here is how that can play out. In my program, we expect to fund a doctoral student for five years and can do so with a combination of teaching assistantships and research grants. But only about half as many as in the past, and faculty without the ability to get substantial grants cannot afford to advise doctoral students. In English, the doctoral program is typically seven years. I don't know how they would pull off a commitment of that size. One way would be to pay doctoral students on teaching assistantships, which are based on undergraduate enrollment in the department's courses. The college would have to justify paying the teaching assistant in a course $17,500 for the semester. How many could they afford to support? A fairly small number, most likely.

Schools that don't offer that kind of stipend would probably quickly develop a reputation for having poor placement. That would be the mechanism for students' decisions.

[quasihumanist]

At my school, there is the opposite trend: a decrease in the number of full-time faculty. I don't think anybody actually thinks that this is a good thing, but it is justified by budget problems which at bottom is because government funding  has decreased.

This is a natural-short term response, trying to maintain programs with cheaper inputs. In Hayes' view, that leads to a lesser undergraduate experience, so good students choose schools that offer a better one at a similar cost. The latter experience will be at schools that took the route of hiring top-notch full-time permanent lecturers to teach the main lower-division courses.

Schools at the lower end run into existential problems, so there is some attrition for following an unsustainable strategy.

How does that mechanism manifest at your school? I suspect the determining factors are different than for UCR.

It's not the schools at lowest end that run into existential problems.  The schools that run into problems are the ones that spend money, but not enough, to try to maintain quality.  If you decide to basically pass everyone for minimal work without teaching them much, then you might not get good students, but bad students still pay tuition and attract state funding as long as they generally pass their classes and graduate.  It's not that hard to have enough of a facade of students doing some learning to satisfy accreditors.

But which schools are going to cut their graduate programs, or even the number of students they admit? How is this going to be decided or enforced?

Finally, one problem with this solution is that academia is made up of very different disciplines with different relations to the nonacademic world--engineering is different than English.

One mechanism of reducing the size of grad programs is by having the standard for doctoral stipends move up.

I see that very clearly in my grad program since we compete for students with schools that set a high bar. If the applicants come to expect a minimum stipend of $35,000 per year and a tuition waiver--which is close to what the UC students got--then you simply cannot support as many students.

Here is how that can play out. In my program, we expect to fund a doctoral student for five years and can do so with a combination of teaching assistantships and research grants. But only about half as many as in the past, and faculty without the ability to get substantial grants cannot afford to advise doctoral students. In English, the doctoral program is typically seven years. I don't know how they would pull off a commitment of that size. One way would be to pay doctoral students on teaching assistantships, which are based on undergraduate enrollment in the department's courses. The college would have to justify paying the teaching assistant in a course $17,500 for the semester. How many could they afford to support? A fairly small number, most likely.

Schools that don't offer that kind of stipend would probably quickly develop a reputation for having poor placement. That would be the mechanism for students' decisions.
[/quote]

Again, it's perfectly possible to run a large graduate program having terrible placement, especially in anything that can look like STEM.  As long as your stipend meets the low threshold for F1 visas, the supply of international students who want a degree and hence 3 years of OPT status is endless.  They might not be any good, might not really in your eyes deserve the degrees they're getting, and their TAing might be terrible, but you just need a cheap warm body to stand in front of undergraduates who don't care whether they learn much as long as they get a degree anyway.

Moral: None of this is very hard as long as you accept a drift towards DIPLOMA MILL status.

[Caracal]

To some extent this trend started happening a long time ago. My grad program decreased cohort size by about 30 percent after the Great Recession and never increased it and at the same time increased stipends. I believe the story is similar at many top tier places. It might also be happening at other institutions, but I'm not sure.

The potential problem is that what really defines the top tier in the humanities is the ability to offer guaranteed funding for most of the PHD. Mostly, the schools that can do this are private schools. Reducing the number of grad students isn't much of an issue for them because grad students don't do much teaching and even as TAs they aren't that vital. Usually the places that really rely on grad student labor are state schools with bigger programs.

[Hibush]

Again, it's perfectly possible to run a large graduate program having terrible placement, especially in anything that can look like STEM.  As long as your stipend meets the low threshold for F1 visas, the supply of international students who want a degree and hence 3 years of OPT status is endless.  They might not be any good, might not really in your eyes deserve the degrees they're getting, and their TAing might be terrible, but you just need a cheap warm body to stand in front of undergraduates who don't care whether they learn much as long as they get a degree anyway.

Moral: None of this is very hard as long as you accept a drift towards DIPLOMA MILL status.

This approach would be a fundamentally different business model and cater to a completely different student base. I suppose part of the economic separation. The diploma-mill PhDs would not be competitive for faculty positions outside their own sphere if the strong schools are supplying enough qualified graduates. Perhaps that group is ok for national graduate education, in that it doesn't hurt the strong grad programs. There would not be much action in the middle.

RatGuy gives a good example of where they are down to one student in the graduate cohort. That is well below the minimum for an effective program that provides the full experience. The situation is unsustainable, and in the squeeze that would result for many programs.

[quasihumanist]

Again, it's perfectly possible to run a large graduate program having terrible placement, especially in anything that can look like STEM.  As long as your stipend meets the low threshold for F1 visas, the supply of international students who want a degree and hence 3 years of OPT status is endless.  They might not be any good, might not really in your eyes deserve the degrees they're getting, and their TAing might be terrible, but you just need a cheap warm body to stand in front of undergraduates who don't care whether they learn much as long as they get a degree anyway.

Moral: None of this is very hard as long as you accept a drift towards DIPLOMA MILL status.

This approach would be a fundamentally different business model and cater to a completely different student base. I suppose part of the economic separation. The diploma-mill PhDs would not be competitive for faculty positions outside their own sphere if the strong schools are supplying enough qualified graduates. Perhaps that group is ok for national graduate education, in that it doesn't hurt the strong grad programs. There would not be much action in the middle.

RatGuy gives a good example of where they are down to one student in the graduate cohort. That is well below the minimum for an effective program that provides the full experience. The situation is unsustainable, and in the squeeze that would result for many programs.

In mathematics, or at least theoretical mathematics, a place like UCR is placing only an occasional unicorn (maybe one student every several years) into a position (either directly or after a series of full time temporary positions) that expects significant research (say more than two papers for tenure).

[mleok]

Again, it's perfectly possible to run a large graduate program having terrible placement, especially in anything that can look like STEM.  As long as your stipend meets the low threshold for F1 visas, the supply of international students who want a degree and hence 3 years of OPT status is endless.  They might not be any good, might not really in your eyes deserve the degrees they're getting, and their TAing might be terrible, but you just need a cheap warm body to stand in front of undergraduates who don't care whether they learn much as long as they get a degree anyway.

Speaking as an applied mathematician, unless you're at a top 5 program, it has long been the case that the international students are typically more highly qualified than the domestic students, so I'm not sure you would even need to significantly compromise quality of research in order to do that. You'll probably spend more time proofreading their papers though.

[mleok]

The point I raised with regards to the increased stipends demanded by graduate students in the UC system is precisely that it would price them higher than lecturers and postdocs, who produce more teaching and research, respectively, than the 50% GTA or GRA appointments would result in. Indeed, we are anticipating a significant cut in GTA positions in the upcoming years as a consequence of the increased stipends that they have secured from the strike.

[quasihumanist]

Again, it's perfectly possible to run a large graduate program having terrible placement, especially in anything that can look like STEM.  As long as your stipend meets the low threshold for F1 visas, the supply of international students who want a degree and hence 3 years of OPT status is endless.  They might not be any good, might not really in your eyes deserve the degrees they're getting, and their TAing might be terrible, but you just need a cheap warm body to stand in front of undergraduates who don't care whether they learn much as long as they get a degree anyway.

Speaking as an applied mathematician, unless you're at a top 5 program, it has long been the case that the international students are typically more highly qualified than the domestic students, so I'm not sure you would even need to significantly compromise quality of research in order to do that. You'll probably spend more time proofreading their papers though.

Take this to an extreme, and you get no domestic students and not very qualified international students.

That being said, we have recently admitted some graduate students from South Asia, and unfortunately the tradition of rote learning in South Asia means that we have gotten students who appear to have learned all kinds of advanced topics but actually understand none of what they appear to have learned.  This is however based on a small sample, and it may be because we haven't really learned to read applications properly.

[mleok]

Again, it's perfectly possible to run a large graduate program having terrible placement, especially in anything that can look like STEM.  As long as your stipend meets the low threshold for F1 visas, the supply of international students who want a degree and hence 3 years of OPT status is endless.  They might not be any good, might not really in your eyes deserve the degrees they're getting, and their TAing might be terrible, but you just need a cheap warm body to stand in front of undergraduates who don't care whether they learn much as long as they get a degree anyway.

Speaking as an applied mathematician, unless you're at a top 5 program, it has long been the case that the international students are typically more highly qualified than the domestic students, so I'm not sure you would even need to significantly compromise quality of research in order to do that. You'll probably spend more time proofreading their papers though.

Take this to an extreme, and you get no domestic students and not very qualified international students.

That being said, we have recently admitted some graduate students from South Asia, and unfortunately the tradition of rote learning in South Asia means that we have gotten students who appear to have learned all kinds of advanced topics but actually understand none of what they appear to have learned.  This is however based on a small sample, and it may be because we haven't really learned to read applications properly.

I mean there's a limit to how low you can set graduate student stipends, but with the recently negotiated increases, I don't think that's the limiting factor in the quality of international students we can attract in the UC system. Arguably, given that we can now only afford to admit a smaller cohort, the average quality will likely increase.