Two Views on Grad Student Attrition Article
Brian Ault, Rodeny C. Roberts, Cary Nelson
To the Editor:This morning I stumbled across the online version of the November–December issue of Academe and the excellent piece by Barbara Lovitts and Cary Nelson titled "The Hidden Crisis in Graduate Education." Amen and hallelujah! In 1996 I published an essay in American Sociologist called "The Structure of Graduate Student Failure: A View from Within." It was based on my own graduate experience, and I said many of the same things that Lovitts and Nelson said, but in much less eloquent fashion. I ended the essay by asking for sociology faculty to pick up the dialogue on this issue and to engage in rigorous self-study, which seemed to me a moral imperative given the wasteland of sociology graduate "failures." The good news is that I did finish my Ph.D. in 1997 at the University of Minnesota, but I may have committed career suicide by voicing my displeasure. The academic job market was none too kind to me, yet life goes on in full abundance! Thank you, thank you, for your hard work and for championing the cause.
Brian Ault
Office of Institutional Research
University of Maryland Baltimore County
To the Editor:
Some important questions arise regarding minority graduate students in "The Hidden Crisis in Graduate Education: Attrition from Ph.D. Programs," which I fear may be overlooked by many readers of Academe.
First, since "some fellowship recipients are so unconnected with academic culture that they violate university regulations and secretly take an outside job while receiving their fellowship checks," and since minority students "are more likely to receive full fellowship support," minority students are therefore more likely to take an outside job than students who are members of the dominant culture. Have Lovitts and Nelson considered that, since minority students are more likely to be in the greatest financial need, they take jobs as a matter of economic survival? Indeed, I found that the greatest benefit of being on fellowship while a graduate student was that it allowed me to hold three jobs during the academic year rather than the two I typically held when I had a teaching assistantship.
Second, Lovitts and Nelson tell us that "[t]he number of minority students in the survey was small, but their rate of attrition was high." These results "sound a warning: giving minority students full fellowships is no guarantee that they will complete Ph.D.’s and substantially increase minority representation on the faculty." Has an argument been advanced that concludes that giving minority students full fellowships guarantees the completion of their Ph.D.’s? Moreover, how is it that an admittedly insufficient sample ("the survey results need to be supplemented by further study") is sufficient to "sound a warning"?
Lovitts and Nelson may be correct in claiming that "[b]roadly speaking, it is a lack of integration into the departmental community that contributes most heavily to the departure of graduate students." Their treatment of minority graduate students in this article, however, leaves much to be desired.
Rodeny C. Roberts
(Philosophy)
University of Hawaii at Manoa
Cary Nelson Responds:
I am glad that Rodney Roberts has written to Academe, since he raises issues of importance. First let me say that both Barbara Lovitts and I are strong advocates of increasing minority representation on the faculty. I have been saying so in print for fifteen years. The question is how to achieve that critical goal. The same Academe issue in which our essay appears also includes Tom Mortensen’s denunciation of our general failure to extend higher education to poor and minority students; I solicited his essay for the issue.
Our data suggest that fellowship recipients often become alienated from their departments. Our modest recommendation is that all fellowship students not working in a lab be asked to teach one course a year to help draw them into the community. The effects of institutionalized racism may make minority students especially likely to feel alienated.
Roberts is quite correct to say that economic pressures are worse for students from families less well off financially. That is one of the reasons I have been a fierce and relentless advocate for better financial support for graduate students. Both fellowship students and those working for compensation must receive a living wage appropriate to the area, as well as full health care for themselves and their dependents. In other words, universities must eliminate the need to take additional jobs while in graduate school. Taking additional jobs too often draws students away from the academic community and impedes progress toward the degree.
Although our study data for minority students were limited, I did follow-up interviews at both schools included in the study for students in the 1990s cohorts. Moreover, our data are supported by studies others have conducted. Let me emphasize again, however, that nowhere do we criticize student behavior. We find fault with institutions, not students. We must especially do better by minority students if we expect to correct the historical imbalances in higher education.
Cary Nelson
(English)
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaig
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