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January 09, 2007
Help Grad Students: Rank Faculty Crotchetiness?
This article attracted my attention this morning, and I thought it might be of interest to some of you as well.
CAN YOU RANK CROTCHETINESS?
If you can't, what do would-be graduate students really need to
know about their potential professors and departments?
http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/01/09/grad
The article described a presentation by Timothy Burke to the American History Association, and the subsequent vigorous discussion by both faculty and grad students in the audience. Here are just a couple highlights from the article.
"Burke wasn’t entirely serious about personality rankings, but his point — and one greeted with nods by the graduate students in the audience — was that individual characteristics of professors may be far more important to a graduate student’s success than a department’s stellar reputation or a university’s lavish resources."
Information that was recommended to be gathered and provided to new students includes this:
* Faculty advisor completion and dropout rates, time to degree, and specific jobs earned by new Ph.D.s they advised.
* Relevant tenure clocks, retirements or possible moves on the part of advising faculty.
* Graduate student funding — how much money, sources of funds, how long money lasts (for duration of degree or shorter).
* Average time for Ph.D. completion in a department.
* The exact process — both official and unofficial — of how graduate students are evaluated.
* The true scholarly strengths of a department.
"But in a sign that the crotchetiness factor is very much alive in graduate programs, several graduate students approached about being quoted in this article offered variations of: “I work with Professor X. Are you crazy?”"
Posted by pfa at January 9, 2007 08:42 AM