How I Would Remake Grad School if I Was King for a Day

Lately, I have been doing a lot of reading and thinking about alternative methods of learning and teaching. Additionally, I have been reflecting about what I have liked about school and what I have not, as well as thinking about how I like to learn and how I typically learn best. Is there a way to improve the traditional grad program? I think it can.

First, let’s start with the end product. What does the university want out of its graduate students when they graduate? Ideally, they would like to turn out professors who publish. Yet in my experience, the university has kept me from that role, leaving me unprepared to take it on. This is where I believe the program can change.

While in the Air Force, the leaders encouraged us to train as we would fight. They assessed us through countless inspections on how we would perform during wartime. Thus, the Air Force expected us to train and work until it became a daily habit. I believe the graduate program could benefit from a part of this model. If they want to develop professors who publish, then the students should do more teaching and more publication writing.

Luckily, I completed most of my grad work through online courses. I believe I learned more in online courses than in instructor-led lecture courses. In most online courses, we had weekly discussions where we focused on an issue and had to bring our thoughts and opinions to the thread. In typical lecture courses, instructors usually provided information directly rather than applying effective adult learning theories and utilizing the class’s experience. The best face-to-face classes have included lively discussions or debates. The lecture courses have been rather forgettable.

If I were to remake the graduate program, these are things I would do:

Assign a mentor

First, I would assign a mentor or adviser on the first day of entering the program. The student and mentor would regularly discuss the student’s progress to ensure they moved forward and learned what the program required. When I say regular, I am thinking about every two weeks. These discussions would focus on readings, projects, and other tasks necessary to develop the skills and knowledge to one day become a professor.

Change curriculum to one of objective mastery

I would change the curriculum to a list of tasks that the student needed to demonstrate mastery prior to program completion. Sign off on objectives would be through discussion and performance demonstration to an adviser.

In the Air Force, we had a document called a Career Field Education and Training Plan (CFETP). Here is an example of my past career field. Essentially, the task listing would list the requirement along with recommended resources. Students would demonstrate task mastery through projects from papers submitted to journals to presentations given at symposiums and conferences, all under the guidance of their adviser. The adviser would also recommend books to read and discuss based on where the student was in the program.

No classes

Instead of having classes scheduled regularly, students guided by their advisers would be required to present on subjects regularly according to their training plan. Anyone who wished to attend could join these discussions and presentations. This would mean the student would first have to learn how to teach or present effectively. These presentations would take the form of frequent student research symposiums to brief on their most current research. It could take the form of weekly book discussions either face-to-face or online. Wouldn’t it be great to have a regularly scheduled meeting to discuss the great books? Or to talk about Dewey and Lindeman? If you were a student, you would certainly want to become well versed on the subject before leading a discussion.

More student projects for publication

Since the goal is to create students who can or should be able to be published, they should start on day one of entering the program. The student adviser should be able to help students get published by co-writing with them, reviewing their writing, or pairing them with a faculty member within that area of specialization. Again, I believed I had learned more while working with my adviser on a publication than in many of the classes I had taken. As I am now working on my dissertation, I am again gaining more than many classes I took. It is this process that I believe helps a person learn. The process has to be active and social.

I believe challenging students to write for publication will strengthen them more than the countless papers they write that will never see the light of day.

Naturally, this idea challenges what we take for granted in formal education. However, since a majority of people learn the most through informal learning, perhaps we can change the system to leverage the strengths of informal learning. The idea is objective mastery. Who really cares how you mastered the task, only that you mastered it. The process will certainly strengthen the relationship between the student and adviser. As it should.