Efforts to reduce attrition rates in doctoral programs as well as the time taken to complete doctorates have so far been just "modest," agreed participants at a two-day conference at Cornell on doctoral education, Oct. 8-9.

The conference, "Doctoral Education and the Faculty of the Future," was hosted by the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute (CHERI) at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations. It brought together about 60 faculty members, policy-makers and members of such organizations as the National Research Council, the Educational Testing Service and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. They gathered to discuss research from various government, academic and privately funded institutions regarding improvements in doctoral education.

The CHERI conference grew out a project evaluating the effectiveness of a Mellon Foundation-funded project, Graduate Education Initiative (GEI), which set out to improve the structure and organization of Ph.D. programs in the humanities and social sciences. Nearly $80 million was spent by the foundation supporting these programs and collecting and analyzing data to see if GEI was effective.

"The outcome [of GEI] suggests that there is room for substantial improvement," admitted Ronald Ehrenberg, the Irving M. Ives Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations and Economics and director of CHERI.

The health of the faculty of the future is dependent on the success of doctoral programs, particularly those at such "level one" research universities as Cornell. These institutions produce almost 60 percent of university faculty, conference participants said.

A preliminary report on the Council of Graduate School's Ph.D. Completion Project found that degree completion rates are higher for doctoral students in the humanities and social sciences than in engineering and life sciences, presenters said. The fact that the completion project is funded by the Ford Foundation and Pfizer Inc. indicates that private institutions also see a need to invest in the Ph.D.s of the future.

Discussants also emphasized a strong need to systematically evaluate national programs that address concerns for women and minorities. Cheryl Leggon, from the School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology, for example, said that although such longitudinal analyses are expensive, they are needed to understand which mechanisms are effective for increasing the participation of minorities in the science and math fields.

The American Economics Association Summer Program at Duke University and Tufts University School of Engineering were among two popular programs identified as being successful in recruiting minorities and women into faculty positions. Although quantitative assessment of these programs is still in progress, it was suggested that its analysis might help identify useful factors for improving doctoral completion rates.

Papers from the conference can be found at http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/cheri.

Graduate student Sandra Holley is a writer intern at the Cornell Chronicle.