July 11, 2008

New Faculty Members Say Graduate School Left Them Underprepared

Many young faculty members fresh out of graduate school who have been teaching for less than five years feel their graduate educations left them underprepared for faculty positions, according to a recently released survey.

Of those surveyed, no more than one-third said they believed their graduate education had prepared them to work effectively in areas such as student advising, serving on faculty committees, conducting research, and writing grant applications.

After a few years on the job, those numbers rose significantly, the survey found. Generally, about 50 percent of faculty members early in their careers said they were now working “very effectively,” but many still reported a lack of confidence.

The survey, conducted online last summer and released last month by the TIAA-CREF Institute, the pension company’s research arm, questioned faculty members and others at 20 institutions in the Associated New American Colleges, which consists of medium-size private master’s-level colleges.

Only about 30 percent of those surveyed reported that their graduate educations had very effectively prepared them to teach undergraduates or conduct research. About 90 percent did not believe they had been very effectively prepared to serve on committees, advise undergraduates, or obtain grants.

After an average of two to four years on the job, three-quarters of those faculty members reported that they were very effective in teaching undergraduates. Nearly half said they were very effectively serving on committees or advising undergraduates.

Less than half reported satisfaction with their salaries, and about 70 percent said their institution “could be more helpful in setting faculty priorities.” One out of three said their institution lacked an effective orientation program for new faculty members. —Allie Grasgreen

Comments

1. Hate to be a stick-in-the -mud, but graduate school is not supposed to be the training ground for future faculty. It is a place to learn how to do research and contribute to a body of knowledge. But, if you are lucky and make good decisions, you can learn lots more.

   It is curious that conducting research and writing grants was not learned in grad school since those ARE part of graduate education – at least it is in the sciences.

   It is in the best interest of every graduate school to provide opportunities for its students to learn about careers after graduate school – one of which is teaching at a college or university. It is in the best interest of the graduate student to take those opportunities. A graduate student who learns to teach, manage a lab, order supplies, plan budgets, work in teams on projects and mentor an undergrad’s independent study project will be well-prepared for teaching.

   I had a brilliant mentor, Fleur Strand at NYU, who encouraged all her graduate students to get involved the life of the university and beyond- in committee work, teaching, clubs, working with undergrads, collaborating outside of the lab group, community service, etc. When I got my first teaching job at TierOneUniversity, I had no problem adjusting. I became the director of a program within two years and the head of the curriculum committee in four years – roles that most grads cannot assume so quickly. I am not so special; everyone in my lab group did very well immediately upon graduation. Credit goes to the wonderful mentoring I had in graduate school.

   — DrFunZ    Jul 11, 02:15 PM    #

2. Same experience here, DrFunZ. Grad schools do have a responsibility as you say, but grad students cannot expect everything to be served up on a platter. What a bunch of whiners!

   — Alabama    Jul 11, 02:41 PM    #

3. I concur with the above from DrFunZ. My mentors—Fernando Opere, Donald Shaw—during my doctoral studies in Spanish were extremely candid about life after graduation. However, grad school is not designed to prepare you for how to advise or for how to be a productive committee member. In my opinion, greater effort should be spent (in the humanities) preparing grad students who pursue a career in academe for the heartbreak that ensues. The majority of them will only know adjunct and visiting professor positions. Sadly, and I speak from years of experience, graduates of these programs will never be faculty. If this is indeed the case, perhaps How The University Works by Marc Bousquet should be required reading.

   — Darren Aversa    Jul 11, 02:43 PM    #

4. Jeopardy Answer: Graduate school.

   Jeopardy Question: What does graduate school prepare you for?

   — Thomas Lawrence Long    Jul 11, 03:36 PM    #

5. How arrogant and condescending! Institutions of higher learning have an obligation to students in ALL academic programs to transform them into an educated person AND prepare them to succeed in their career. This obligation extends to graduate programs. As a long time Dean, my attitude regarding hiring green Ph.D.s is identical to that of any employer — I wand to hire people who can do the job without having to be coached for years.

   Doctoral programs that focus only on research with no consideration for the students’ career and their future employers should be terminated.

   — Grouchy Old Dean    Jul 11, 03:37 PM    #

6. The requirements for the Ph.D. have been systematically reduced for the last 30-40 years. It is little wonder that graduates feel underprepared. Without casting too many aspersions I must also say that the current generation of students has the expectation that ‘everything should be mapped out for them’. They desire a highly structured environment in which expectations, requirements, grading systems, etc. are spelled out to the nth degree. They are not comfortable with an environment in which one must deal with new experiences, unforeseen contingencies, and, in general, learning on the job. That is unfortunate, since the world in which we now live rewards the entrepreneurial, the flexible and the self-reliant. On the one hand these individuals are concerned that they were not systematically prepared for every aspect of the job they eventually secured. At the same time, the ‘world’ is saying to them, ‘Be prepared to hold many jobs in the course of your life, to, in effect, have multiple careers.’ We have a disjunction here.

   — BeenThereDoneThat    Jul 11, 03:42 PM    #

7. As to what a graduate student can expect out of a graduate program, I couldn’t disagree with you more. While you had an excellent mentor, the survey accurately reflects that graduate students across the country are not receiving the leadership and guidance you did.

   To insert one extra class that teaches a graduate student the rudimentary elements associated with student advising and serving on faculty committees is not unreasonable. Granted, graduate school is not the school of education cranking out teachers; however, professional, career guidance in a formal classroom setting is, at the least, a requirement graduate school faculty and administrators should gladly embrace.

   My graduate school experience included rigorous training in research methods that led to the creation and expansion of ideas within my field of study, not, mind you, grant writing. Anyone who has ever written a grant understands that it is more than filling out the blanks, sending in to the grant-approving authority, and preparing to receive the funds. Grant writing is a discipline unto itself, and not to give it even a cursory glance in graduate school is like asking a soldier to figure out how to dig a fox hole when he arrives at the scene of the battle. Some do; many flounder and die.

   Finally, community colleges, where many of our colleagues will find employment, demand that prospective faculty members be able to work effectively in areas such as advising students, serving on faculty committees, conducting research, and writing grants. They will not keep their jobs if they can’t accomplish a high degree of success in all four of those endeavors.

   So, to suggest that graduate students obtain this knowledge on their own or to learn it on the job, and then to belittle them as “whiners” because they are ignorant of something they were never taught, well, this strikes me as extremely naïve.

   — Paul Empyrean    Jul 11, 03:55 PM    #

8. I think most new Assistant Professor are ill-equipped for the tenure process. (I have seen too many crack under the pressure of the probationary period.) Graduate schools are about placement, not necessarily about job retention. I could not see it any other way.

   — Amy    Jul 11, 03:56 PM    #

9. A search committee will look for the essential skills required in the advertised job and more importantly at the potential for growth that a candidate has. But no matter how good the candidate is – he/she will also need to understand the culture of the institution. Some colleges have a year long orientation program for new faculty through which they learn not only about the mission, history and culture of the institution but also about student advising, the tenure process. shared governance etc. In one institution that I know the new faculty actually are given one course release time in their first semester so that they can attend the orientation workshops. It is a very worthy practice and I hope many institutions adopt this program.

   — Pan Papacosta    Jul 11, 04:00 PM    #

10. Hate to break it to you older profs out there, but the world has changed quite a bit since you secured a job. Many faculty, especially in the sciences and engineering, were hired during a time of unbridled growth and development in the wake of WWII as money was invested to keep America on top as a world innovator. This system was structured to crank out PhD’s to fill opening positions in many emerging fields. Sadly, this system is no longer viable and funding to support basic science especially is drying up, leaving many new PhD’s today without the same job prospects older faculty may have had. I’m not saying it was necessarily easier to get a job in the past, but the competition today is much more intense and there have been plenty of studies done to back that up.
    I do agree that grad students shouldn’t expect to have everything handed to them, but what do we expect when young people today receive such structured educations based on accumulation of facts and not critical analysis? We are seeing the long-term effects of a crumbling educational infrastructure.
    Universities and graduate programs need to adapt to meet this new challenge and not simply resort to name-calling.

    — Lone Grad Student    Jul 11, 04:06 PM    #

11. Have just read the 22 page survey report, and I concur with the first commentator and the preponderance of the others — Grouchy Old Dean (of what?) excepted. It is particularly not the job of graduate schools to taylor their training to the peculiar desires or needs of some twenty-odd — odd indeed — colleges and “universities” which by their own admission are neither quite fish nor fowl.

    And college is NOT grades 13 – 16 of high school, despite all the “K – 16” and “best practices” prattle from the pedagogy crowd these days. So graduate school in the liberal arts, sciences, or the professions and professional trades should never become primarily an educatiionist dominated enterprise. More worrisome is the finding that quite a number felt unprepared to do research. The survey does not tell us whence — or even what kinds/levels of graduate schools the surveyed faculty have their doctorates. That might be a rather significant bit of information — a crucial piece missing. Evaluation of research is a good deal of what education at the MA/MS level is about and doing research is what doctoral education in the arts and sciences is about. Maybe Grouchy Old Dean (of what?) is right — some of those doctoral programs should be terminated — but for reasons opposite those he has in mind.

    — Joseph F Foster    Jul 11, 04:07 PM    #

12. This is news? We’ve all known this since, well, forever. I’m surprised TIAA CREF thought it was a good use of resources to ask a question the answer to which is so well known!

    — pablo    Jul 11, 05:06 PM    #

13. I just decided to leave a tenure track position at an R1 despite that I was very successful at the research-teaching-service enchilada. What I found very interesting was that as I reached out to my networks for advice I quickly discovered that many of my most talented classmates/colleagues have also chosen to depart academia, or they sidestepped it altogether. Far from “whiners” these are the superstars from the nation’s best program in my field. I think that to understand the frustration of Jr. Profs./potential Jr. Profs with academia this conversation needs to be recast to consider the larger questions about the way that faculty work is organized and how universities are governed. There are many newbies who are far from “unprepared” and do not “crack,” but opt out of academia b/c it is unsatisfying. For me, for one, I found that life on the tenure track was, frankly brutish and nasty … and thus short. “Collegiality” was nil, the joy of hard work was in short supply among a generation readying for retirement, and those tenured faculty in their middle years bowed to administration’s demands for grant money by warping their research agendas. I may not have been prepared for this reality, but wouldn’t have wanted to be prepared for it.

    — Left Academia    Jul 11, 06:02 PM    #

14. I have to agree with #12….The fact that PhD’s have not been taught how to teach and advise has been well known since before quite a few of these posters have been hired. The research part perturbs me though since if a PhD doesn’t know how to teach or conduct research, then should they really be a PhD?

    I do wonder what the ramifications would be if institutions of higher education stopped hiring their educational professionals from a pool of people who know little about conducting education other than that they have been clients in an educational system for 20+ years. Right now the model is the equivalent of hiring psychologists based on the number of years of psychological treatment they have undergone.

    Here’s my “if I were king” idea: If you want to do research, write a grant and fund a research institute. If you want to teach, then learn how to teach and apply for a position in an educational institution. Teaching and research should not be mutually exclusive, but the ability to do one effectively should not be assumed to qualify one to do the other effectively as well.

    — JS    Jul 11, 06:09 PM    #

15. I’m with the Grouch. Whatever about the natural sciences, the principal reason graduate schools exist in the arts and social sciences is to prepare their doctoral students for careers in the academy. It’s not a question of an “entitlement mentality” on the part of postgraduates: if anybody was short-changed by the yawning gaps in my preparation to do all the things a university teacher is expected to do, it was my students and colleagues while I grappled with the near-vertical learning curve that confronted me during my first years of employment. Training postgraduates how to accomplish the principal tasks that will be required of them in the workplace isn’t mollycoddling; it’s common sense.

    — Gustave    Jul 11, 06:14 PM    #

16. this entire thread is the equivalent of ‘college basketball doesn’t prepare you to play in the NBA” …Daaaah, you’re kidding; and it never will except with some coaches at some places.

    — vinnie    Jul 11, 06:22 PM    #

17. Disagree, #16. Both are basketball. This is more like college basketball not preparing you to play in the NBA, NFL, and MLB equally well but with basketball being first among equals.

    Just a suggestion… if you are a doctoral student who wants a competitive leg up in the search or acclimation process, check out the university catalog to see if your U has a higher education program (academe as the subject of study). You can probably take an elective or two that focuses on college teaching, the nature/history of universities and their administrations, community colleges, the faculty, or professional academic advising. If nothing else, it will help you to understand the rules of the larger enterprise, and might make you more adept at navigating the world outside your individual academic department.

    — HIED doc    Jul 11, 06:41 PM    #

18. I hate to point out the obvious but teachning is contributing knowlege with a larger audience than most journal articles that are rarely read.

    — A Tamar    Jul 11, 06:43 PM    #

19. Yes, but this article is not about the relative value of teaching versus research, but about whether or not new faculty have the skills to do each of them well. (No matter how much we talk about them being interrelated, I think most of us agree that it’s fairly rare to find someone who is so naturally gifted at both that disciplined skill-building is unnecessary.)

    — HIED doc    Jul 11, 07:10 PM    #

20. I agree with the first comment. If a student wishes to teach, he or she should secure a teaching assistantship; and likewise with the research angle: try to secure a research assistanceship. With regards to grant writing: it’s hard to believe that an individual who completes a thesis or dissertation finds it hard to write a proposal to argue or convince a reader(s) to fund their project. Articulate a good, strong, logical argument and keep in mind the foundation or funding organization’s mission and language.

    Some of us are here to answer questions and contribute to a/the (?) body of knowledge that humans have tried to objectively understand, appreciate, and critique since the symposium. Graduate school isn’t solely a training ground for teachers.

    — magdalyn guzzo    Jul 12, 12:21 AM    #

21. With most undergraduate degrees it is expected that the workplace with do on the job training, (or have a student teaching experience) etc. to help new employees know how to use the knowledge that they have on their new job. In many respects we do not do this for PhD’s. We expect that this information is somehow going to magically appear in their heads, that learning by doing without help is going to make good teachers… and then we punish those who can’t figure it out on their own. There are some good advisors out there but may are not and the PhD student is left to fend for themselves. It is not surprising that the outcome then is uneven. It is not a good model to follow and violates most teaching theories and most business (new employee, retention, training…) theories. That the PhD program most places doesn’t prepare students for the work world either needs to be addressed by the work world or by the PhD program.

    — anon    Jul 12, 10:30 AM    #

22. Heck, I see doctoral students that can’t operate a computer or compose a meaningful thesis. And they graduate.

    — david    Jul 12, 12:12 PM    #

23. I have to agree with #20. I think it is up to the graduate student to seek out the training and experiences that will prepare them for their future roles. I can say that I have done this and at least feel somewhat prepared for my first year on the job. I do not think phD programs can always specifically tailor themselves to all the needs of students. Even if we need to seek experience outside of the university and through community organizations and neighboring institutions (for teaching experience) we should do so.

    — grad student    Jul 13, 12:38 AM    #

24. What scared me the most when I began teaching college over 30 years ago was how to set up and maintain a grade book (esp. with 5 courses that 1st semester!) create activities, & evaluate tests . . . THE VERY NUTS & BOLTS OF TEACHING!

    In contrast to K-12 teachers, who must take many education courses, college teachers have never been required to take even one. Granted that some of those courses may live up to their uncharitable monicker as “Mickey Mouse,” we college teachers pay the price for having no training at all.

    “Sink or swim” is a fine motto for the individual teacher, but during the 2-4 years it takes to become seasoned on the job, what about the poor students?

    And whatever happened to the applied teaching movements in many of the professional organizations — certainly psych. and soc. — to help take up some of the slack? Did these worthy efforts fall into the cracks?

    — PKChatsworth    Jul 13, 02:53 AM    #

25. I agree with post #26. During my 30 years + in higher ed I have read with amazement so much of the research in cognitive psychology and educational pedagogy that reveals with so much greater depth just how human beings learn. We know that it is not just a matter of the accumulation of facts or information, any more than it is just about a process. We know that it requires active participation that is fostered by active and engaging thinking about big questions and big ideas. (AKA, teaching at its best.)

    So, how about we stop all the “when I was in grad school and when I started out” garbage, as well as the canard that graduate school is just for the benefit of basic research. Instead let’s think about just how to improve the preparation of that cadre of graduate students whose primary role in life will be teaching. If we do that, perhaps higher ed as we know it might continue rather than succumb to the alternative challenges from on-line shysters, etc.

    — A long time observer    Jul 13, 10:58 AM    #

26. Well, if graduate schools aren’t about preparing the professoriate, who does this? A lot of graduate schools certainly claim in their literature that they prepare future professors for colleges and universities. If they claim that as part of their purpose, then they need to start thinking about how they can carry out that part of their role more effectively. If graduate schools don’t prepare faculty and most of us admit that colleges themselves are ill equipped for this “training” role, then who will do this? Let me suggest it doesn’t just happen. No wonder so many people are harping on how poorly college graduates perform. Do we have faculty who can teach, not just research? This is something the academy needs to address and do so pretty soon.

    — Amazed College Administrator    Jul 13, 02:31 PM    #

27. I agree with the folks from Posts 28 and 29. We all (regardless of generation) must let go of “Back in my day, I walked uphill to school – both ways.” That is mere whining and does not offer a solution to immediate issues in higher education, namely the declining quality of undergraduate education and the lack of engagement of undergraduates in the learning process. Perhaps this trend is part of the reason some current graduate students expect things to be “mapped out for them”, as an earlier commenter observed. A vicious cycle, I’d say. “The way it’s always been done” is NOT necessarily the most effective way…rather, it belies an academic selfishness that fails to consider – of all people – our students. There is no question that knowing our subject matter, the literature, the critics, etc well is crucial if we graduate students are to become effective professors. However, at least a modicum of formal training in those responsibilities outside the classroom could only prepare us better as we serve our students and colleagues at the university.

    — Arnold    Jul 14, 09:04 AM    #

28. Why don’t the education departments at institutions develop a seminar of topics – assessment, advising, tenure, governance, learning style, higher ed finances, etc. that prospective students could take as a part of their personal development plan?

    — KJK    Jul 14, 10:22 AM    #

29. Thank you, poster #27, for agreeing with me (as #26) . . . but I do hope your comment “the alternative challenges from on-line shysters, etc.” wasn’t directed toward online education. I couldn’t quite tell from the context.

    But the mere mention of online education brings up the sharp uptick in that format these days and the accompanying need for teachers to have even additional pedagogical preparation to handle it. The teacher faces additional challenges beyond face-to-face instruction. I love teaching online, but I think it’s best to become seasoned by teaching in the traditional classroom first before doing it at a distance.

    — PKChatsworth    Jul 14, 11:21 AM    #

30. I agree with #13. A significant portion of my frustrations is due to the mindless interference of inept administrators and the do-nothing attitude of senior professors who are just killing time until retirement.

    — TRB    Jul 14, 12:18 PM    #

31. PKCHatsworth (Post 27) – I stand corrected.

    To gain some first-hand experience I completed an on-line course about 4 years ago and walked away thoroughly disappointed, so that tinged my response. Obviously, I overgeneralized from a single experience, my apologies. So, I amend my first comment by removing the adjective “on-line”.

    Clearly, the main issue (preparation to teach well) is the same whether it is in a traditional classroom or on-line.

    — A long time observer    Jul 14, 03:52 PM    #

32. If a grad program is not preparing you for academic research, then it is not doing a good job. Most programs don’t do much to prepare teaching, and I think they should do more. But committee work? Come on. First of all, it is incredibly easy to get yourself on committees and get that experience if you want it in graduate school. Secondly, unless you’re a complete moron it is pretty easy to pick up committee skills without experience. Advising undergraduates is also something you can do as a graduate student even if it is not an official requirement of the program. Teaching is the one thing that you are unlikely to get around to doing unless the program requires it or you need to do it for funding. It is a huge commitment and even if you were willing to do it unpaid, usually you aren’t allowed unless you’re officially hired. So I think that schools could do more to foster teaching skills. Some students don’t teach at all in grad school, yet they still want to be professors.

    — grad student    Jul 14, 04:01 PM    #

33. In the American Sociological Assn. there is a section called “Section on Teaching & Learning in Sociology” (http://www2.asanet.org/sectionteach/). Its overall aim is “to provide a professional outlet for improving the teaching of sociology from the high school through graduate level. It encourages and facilitates innovative and effective pedagogy and research.”

    The mission statement goes a little further: “to facilitate within the discipline of sociology a culture and a method that pursues, values, and rewards excellence in teaching and which promotes student learning and the scholarship of teaching at the undergraduate, graduate, and secondary levels.”

    This group is just one such within the professional associations teachers usually belong to. Many of you in different disciplines must know of other such groups. I wonder, though, what we know of their work with graduate schools, specifically in helping prepare future teachers?

    — PKChatsworth    Jul 15, 06:15 AM    #

34. #30, the USA are generally regarded as having among the best and by some the very best higher education system in the world. They are NOT generally regarded as having among the best primary~secondary systems in the world. Why do you want to let the Colleges of Education who gave us a mediocre primary/secondary system take over our higher education system? The move to turn college into dumbed down dingdong school is already rampant enough.

    — Joseph F Foster    Jul 15, 01:24 PM    #

35. This is genuinely inane. Why can’t people figure out the committee work part on the job? How hard could it be? Why can’t people just focus on getting tenure for themselves by furthering their research, being friendly to students (that IS a substitute for good teaching and requires no preparation) and paraphrasing everyone’s arguments at a faculty meeting (which makes you look like the good guy)?

    — BA    Jul 17, 03:53 AM    #

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