The View From Kalamazoo

At Cross Purposes: What the experiences of todayÂ’s doctoral students reveal about doctoral education (A survey initiated by the Pew Charitable Trusts)

Read it (it’s not really terribly long), but for the sake of brevity here, these are their findings:

“What we learned may not be entirely surprising because our findings confirm many of the concerns that have been raised in the last 10 years. However, our data provide detailed, confirmatory evidence of particular tension points.

We found that:

• The training doctoral students receive is not what they want, nor does it prepare them for the jobs they take.
• Many students do not clearly understand what doctoral study entails, how the process works and how to navigate it effectively.”

Niiiice. Maybe I am lucky, after all…although that advice to never borrow money to go to grad school? I didn’t follow it (for my M.A.) and am up to not only my eyeballs in debt, but the eyeballs of people sigificantly taller. And my decision to not borrow any more evah (and no means to do this on my infinite personal wealth, haha) is why I’m in Kalamazoo instead of Lexington right now.