Graduate Enrolment Growth in Ontario and Canada

A new report has been released by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario, "Expanding Opportunities for Graduate Studies: The Recent Experience of Ontario."
This report sheds light on graduate program enrolment trends in Ontario and how these compare to patterns established at the national level, and can be read here.

Steps Forward in Graduate Education

The Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) has released a new document entitled "Steps Taken on the Path Forward", which reviews the impact of "The Path Forward: The Future of Graduate Education in the United States", a report released in April 2010 that addresses issues and challenges of graduate education. The Path Forward was developed by the Commission on the Future of Graduate Education, a joint initiative of the CGS and Educational Testing Services (ETS) and drew a connection between the country's "need for a highly trained workforce to drive innovation and competitiveness" and the strengthening of the current graduate education system. That system is struggling, much like the Canadian system, with changing demographics, poor degree completion rates, and competition in the higher education sector. Two initiatives were proposed to support graduate education: a COMPETES doctoral traineeship program that would provide financial support to students in areas "of national need"; and a grant program to provide partial funding for the creation of new, and revision of existing, master's degree programs.

This new document outlines outcomes and impacts of the report to three stakeholders: higher education, policymakers, and business leaders. Perspectives were shared at the CGS Legislative Forum. According to the news release, the report has been responsible for a number of advances, such as the following:
• Influenced critical decision processes by helping to shape institutional strategic plans and goals for graduate
education programs;
• Changed institutional priorities by highlighting the importance of graduate education, the report resulted in
making graduate fellowships the top priority for one institution’s fundraising;
• Created new communication channels, such as catalyzing new online discussions between deans and faculty about
graduate education issues and development of a video aimed at clarifying career pathways for students;
• Shaped evaluation metrics and affirming the commitment of graduate deans to developing and using outcome
measures and offering more information to prospective and current students;
• Introduced new programs, particularly professional development programs for graduate students.

While the Canadian system of higher education is quite different from that of its neighbours to the south, it is not immune to the problems identified in these reports; what is concerning is that these current and potential issues are not generating the same sort of discussions that they should be.

Canadian Graduate School Enrolments Continue to Rise, but Women Still Lag Behind at Doctoral Level

A recent article in The Gateway, the official student newspaper at the University of Manitoba, discusses gender equality at the highest levels of education, noting the fact that women still lag behind men in doctoral enrolments. At U of M, women outnumber men in doctoral programs in a number of disciplines, including medicine and architecture. It is a very different picture if we look at engineering and the hard sciences, however, where women are least represented. The article makes reference to a recent report released by Statistics Canada, which examines trends in doctoral program enrolment, earned doctorates, and university faculty, with a focus on gender.

According to that report, women accounted for 58% of undergraduate and 56% of master’s program enrolments in 2008/2009, while accounting for 47% of doctoral enrolments. Women also accounted for 44% of doctoral degrees granted in 2008. Female doctoral graduates represented the majority of earned doctorates in four fields: education; social and behavioural sciences, and law; health, parks, recreation and fitness; business, management and public administration. Women are least represented in architecture, engineering and related technologies; and mathematics, computer and information sciences, accounting for less than 30% of earned doctorates in each of these two fields.

According to data made available from Statistics Canada that is complied yearly and included in the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) Almanac of Post-Secondary Education in Canada, women accounted for 50.2% of full-time doctoral enrolments in the 2005-2006 academic year; this is the only time that women have outnumbered men in enrolments at this level. Full-time doctoral enrolments have risen by roughly three-quarters in the last ten years, but the enrolment of women in doctoral programs has only risen by a little less than 3% over this period; in fact enrolment has decreased in the last three years by 3% from the 50.2% accounted for in 2005 to 47% reported in 2008. Meanwhile, women’s full-time master’s program enrolments have exceeded the enrolment of men for quite some time; have steadily risen by a little over 3% since 1998.

So an E-Thesis It Will Be

By the time I get ready to defend my own doctoral thesis in a few years (if all goes according to plan!), the e-thesis will be mandatory at all Canadian universities, and e-defenses will be common here on Memorial’s campus. The School of Graduate Studies (SGS) is leading the way in utilizing technology to the fullest degree, changing theses from paper-based to electronic; increasing the number of e-defenses. The switch to e-theses will cut down on printing and shipping costs, and also get research into the public domain a lot faster, according to C. Dean Barnes, programs coordinator with SGS. E-thesis development is to start in the fall of this year, and go live in winter 2012. By 2014, e-theses will be mandatory at all Canadian universities. It is also expected that by May 2011, the majority of oral defenses will be conducted via webcast, with examiners off campus being able to e-attend as opposed to being flown in from out-of-province. More information on these initiatives can be found here.

Sociologists Find Fault with NRC’s Doctoral Rankings

According to an article on today’s Inside Higher Ed, sociologists are not happy with the National Research Council’s (NRC) doctoral rankings. Six months ago, the NRC released it’s much-anticipated and much delayed doctoral rankings report (see an earlier post here), but critique quickly followed suit. Much of the criticism pertained to the methodology and/or the data. Now the American Sociological Association (ASA) has released an analysis of the assessment. Among a number of concerns that were raised, fault was found with issues such as the exclusion of books and book citations as methods for evaluating faculty productivity in the social sciences, disregard for the quality of journal article publications, the lack of distinction between single-authored and co-authored papers, and the judging of admissions quality by GRE scores alone, ignoring verbal scores, which are a significant measure for American sociology departments. There is a concern that these rankings could have a negative influence on people’s perceptions of departments ranked lower than their actual quality and may lead to pressure to change programs to improve their rankings. The ASA’s report can be found here.

Doctoral Student Satisfaction

A recent article, entitled "Doctoral Student Satisfaction: An Examination of Disciplinary, Enrollment, and Institutional Differences", published in the journal, Research in Higher Education, examines data from the 2000 National Doctoral Program Survey (NDPS) to gain insight into the differences in satisfaction levels of doctoral students across academic disciplines and institutional types. Interestingly, no significant differences were found in the overall satisfaction of students across disciplines or institutional types (research extensive and intensive universities). Students were less satisfied with the support they received to pursue careers outside of academia, as well as the amount of information (or lack thereof) they received at the start of their program on time-to-degree and post-graduation placement assistance. Education and humanities students in particular were less satisfied than expected with regards to issues related to financial resources, support, and information; students at research intensive universities were less satisfied than expected with training preparation or guidance for academic careers. Not surprisingly, former students were generally less satisfied with their advisor and doctoral experience; students who had been formerly enrolled in humanities, physical science, social sciences, and life sciences programs were even more dissatisfied.

The findings of this study emphasizes the importance of institutional and departmental support for doctoral students, the need for graduate program assessments, further research into the factors that contribute to doctoral student attrition, and the experiences of students enrolled at less prestigious institutions.

Aldrich Interdisciplinary Conference

Next week (Feb.21-23) the Graduate Student's Union of Memorial University will be holding the Aldrich Interdisciplinary Conference. Presentations will be centered around the following themes: socio-economic impact of research, pedagogy, and sustainability. For the first time, this year's conference will be open to student and faculty at a national level. More information about the conference can be found here.