Reflections on the Graduate Student Experience: An Overview

Abstract

In studying the doctoral experience, there is no substitute for on-site, interv i e w, or observation-based data collection. Surveys, however, offer an opport u n i t y to collect information on a broad scale to examine patterns of experience and p a rticularly to investigate the prevalence of certain experiences that people normally associate with graduate school largely because of the stories they hear. The doctoral-student surveys of the Acadia Institute' s Project on Pro f e s s i o n a l Values and Ethical Issues in the Graduate Education of Scientists and Engin e e r s 1 included a range of questions about students' experiences in their graduate program. They addressed students' reasons for going to graduate school, their graduate work and evaluation of that work, the organizational climate of their graduate department, their affective responses to the demands of graduate study, and students' assessments of the graduate experience and their p rospective care e r. These questions are the basis for this analysis of the doctoral experience.We sent the surveys to 2,000 doctoral students in the fall of 1989. We selected the students randomly from ninety-nine departments in chemistry, civil engineering, micro b i o l o g y, and sociology at major re s e a rch universities in the United States. The response rate was 72 percent. Further details about the s u rvey and related re s e a rch results appear in previous Acadia Graduate Education Project publications. These include articles on academic misconduct

Voices from the Desks: Exploring Student Experiences in Counselor Education

“…Department climate, including environmental safety, and developing a culture of caring and respect, has been linked to doctoral student satisfaction (Anderson & Swazey, 1998;Brus, 2006;Protivnak & Foss, 2009;Veilleux, January, Vanderveen, Reddy, & Klonoff, 2012). It is possible that master's students' reduced time spent within a department could shield them from broader aspects of the department that can be problematic.…”

“…Research has suggested that the student perspective is vital to exploring dynamics underlying student success (Anderson & Swazey, 1998;Nesheimet et al, 2006;Tinto, 1993), and that student satisfaction can predict achievement and retention (Haworth, 1996;Nerad & Miller, 1996). A majority of the existing research in this area explores the experience of doctoral students and fails to address master's students, particularly in counselor education (Golde & Dore, 2001;Protivnak & Foss, 2009).…”

A Longitudinal Assessment of Graduate Student Research Behavior and the Impact of Attending a Library Literature Review Workshop

“…8 Only half of the 1,500 graduate students Melissa Anderson and Judith Swazey surveyed said that faculty were explicit in their expectations of graduate student performance and requirements. 9 In discussing the relationships that faculty build with their students, Lovitts reports that faculty feel that the responsibility for establishing and maintaining a relationship with graduate students lies primarily with the graduate students themselves. Faculty will not go out of their way to establish this relationship.…”

Learning Non-technical Skills from Pedagogical Training: Investigating IGERT Graduate Student Perceptions

“…Many scholars have stressed the importance of graduate education as a method for socializing graduate students into the norms, mentalities, and expectations for their future careers as experts in their field 1,2,[3][4][5][6][7][8] . In academia, the apprenticeship system of graduate school is designed to help students acculturate to the expectations of their advisors, eventually taking on more authentic, useful, and original tasks, including teaching requirements, grant writing, and mentorship of younger students.…”