Ehrenberg

The Cornell Higher Education Research Institute (CHERI) will present a two-day conference, "Doctoral Education and the Faculty of the Future," starting at 1 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 8, and ending midafternoon, Monday, Oct. 9, in Ives Hall on campus.

The conference will bring together researchers, academic administrators and policy-makers to address issues relating to doctoral education and creating the faculty of the future. Sessions will address improving Ph.D. study; attracting more undergraduates and minorities to Ph.D. study; increasing the representation of women in science and engineering; and issues regarding international Ph.D. students.

All events, with the exception of a talk by Shirley Ann Jackson, president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, are free and open to the public. For a full agenda, see http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/cheri/.

"American colleges and universities are simultaneously facing a large number of faculty retirements and expanding enrollments," said Ronald Ehrenberg, CHERI director and the Irving M. Ives Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations and Economics at Cornell. "While budget constraints, especially those in public higher education, have led colleges and universities to substitute part-time and full-time nontenure-track faculty for tenure-track faculty, and this substitution will reduce the demand for new faculty, the demand for new faculty will likely be high in the future."

The increased demand comes at a time when the share of American college graduates pursuing doctoral study is far below its historical high, said Ehrenberg.

For more information about the conference, contact Darrlyn O'Connell at dss7@cornell.edu, or (607) 255-4424.