The most dramatic improvements at the University since the beginning of the implementation of President Ruth Simmons' Plan for Academic Enrichment have arguably been at the Graduate School. Still many more changes are planned.
Things could look dramatically different for the Graduate School in 25 years, with administrators looking to capitalize on Brown's potential as a major research institution. But even as that happens, things are changing on a more local level, too, with administrators and faculty members working to integrate a multidisciplinary experience that's becoming more prevalent throughout higher education.
The Plan for Academic Enrichment renews Brown's commitment to "excellence in graduate education" and to "attract and support the best graduate students."
Applications to the Graduate School have increased 46 percent since 2001, making the school as selective as the undergraduate college. The increase comes at the same time as a number of improvements to the school, including a larger faculty, the construction of new space, the creation of new programs and increased stipends for graduate students.
Historically, Brown has been known for its attention to undergraduate students, but a strong graduate program will serve the University far into the future, administrators agree, ensuring Brown's capacity to be a major research university and enabling the University to be a leader in addressing complicated world issues.
"Without question, that's the message from the senior administration, that's the direction they want to go," said Sheila Blumstein, currently a professor of cognitive and linguistic sciences who served as interim president in 2000-2001 and has also served as provost and dean of the college. "I think that's absolutely fantastic, as long as it doesn't happen at the expense of the undergraduates. There's a fine line, a real balance. I think most people think of faculty sitting in offices reading books or writing. But the amount of time we spend with our students, and teaching, and so on - there's only so many hours in the day.
"The idea isn't to shift that focus (from undergraduates to graduates), but to broaden it," said outgoing Dean of the Graduate School Karen Newman. "Without a strong graduate program, we can't attract the best faculty."
Administrators hope that attracting world-class researchers will bring increased revenues in the form of grant money, which in turn will enable the Graduate School to expand.
"As institutions want to grow, they need money, and where are you going to get money? Part of it is from the generosity of donors, but faculty generate a lot of money by getting grants, and that requires top-notch research in very highly competitive environments," Blumstein said.
Advances in technology will affect more mundane aspects of the Graduate School as well. Newman pointed to the prevalence of electronic record-keeping for the future of graduate education: though three years ago applications to the Graduate School were entirely paper-based, today 95 percent of them are submitted electronically.
Global political factors will also influence the future development of the Graduate School at Brown and at other graduate schools in the United States. More stringent visa policies could make it harder for international graduate students to come to the United States, and graduate students' work is often funded through research grants that come largely from the government and are at risk of being reduced.
Though more foreign students come to the United States than any other country, U.S. visa policies and the rise in the quality of research universities across the world are already changing the makeup of American graduate student body.
"If the government starts undercutting research it is going to be academically foolish, and on a more pragmatic level it's going to hurt the United States competitively, academically and economically, from what it is today," said Catharine Stimpson, dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at New York University, who spoke at Brown in March about reform movements and trends in graduate education.
"As a humanist I'm concerned not only (for the future of) my own area but also the sciences, because of recent events and crackdowns and limits placed on foreign students," said Meera Viswanathan, professor of comparative literature. "When I think about what happening in terms of staffing labs, fundamental research, we're in a dire situation. ... The brightest students are going elsewhere in the world."
As for overall trends in graduate education, enrollment in master's degree programs is increasing, and so is the average time it takes to earn a Ph.D. Administrators agree that the University needs to address these trends.
Stimpson and Newman both point to the growing trend in master's degrees, which are being pursued - at least in terms of enrollment - at a rate that is increasing 3 percent every year.
"I think increasingly (students) want some additional training to help them succeed in the workplace, in order to be positioned to get the best job," Newman said.
Provost Robert Zimmer called the increasing amount of time required for a Ph.D. "unsustainable."
"I think it's going to be very important if we're going to continue to attract the best people into doctoral education, particularly in the humanities and humanistic social sciences, where it takes even longer, that the time to degree be shorter," he said.
"I think there's going to be an increasing demand for training that is more specialized and deeper than one traditionally gets in the B.A., and yet it's not as, shall we say, all-consuming, as what a current dissertation involves. And if the current master's degree serves all these purposes, I think will be a question that will be (addressed) over time as well," Zimmer said.
"Faculty need graduate students for their research. They need them for working in their labs; they need them for developing their own scholarly and research programs. And undergraduates benefit from having a strong graduate school as well: in the case of the sciences, we really couldn't have lab science without graduate students. It's really a triangulated relation, not just the dyad (of undergraduates and faculty) that is often presented," Newman said.
An important part of the Graduate School's growth will be its capacity for collaboration across disciplines.
"One of the big questions facing Brown and other universities is how to absorb multidisciplinarity into graduate education," Zimmer said. "(How do) you ensure that people simultaneously have the rich and rigorous training that comes within a discipline combined with the capacity to apply this on multidisciplinary problems and work in multidisciplinary teams?" he said, adding that he thinks Brown could be a leader in addressing that question.
"I think Brown has taken a course over the last 30 years that, in retrospect, has been exactly the right course to take in higher education," Blumstein said. "Where you now see lots of schools beginning to start interdisciplinary programs or majors, ours have been in existence for many, many years. And it's been easy to do it in part because of Brown's culture, which has been, 'Try something new. Think differently. Push the boundaries. Interact with each other. Don't make departments silos, but have communication between and among the faculty and students.'"
Like Blumstein, Newman believes Brown is well positioned to take on multidisciplinarity.
"That's what it's about, the production of knowledge," she said. "Because of (the Graduate School's) small size and because of our commitment to an open curriculum, the barriers between departments and programs are very low, and our students have a sort of style or culture of taking courses across areas and taking advantage of offerings in a lot of different programs and disciplines to make up their (educations), just the way the undergraduate college works as well."
"I think the Graduate School will evolve along the lines that it has already started to become a very integral part of the fabric of the intellectual life on campus. One might find that some of the boundaries between undergraduate and graduate education get blurrier as more students may take a fifth-year masters program over time, or think about further training, whether they do it at Brown or elsewhere," Zimmer said.
But is undergraduate versus graduate a valid question to ask? "Absolutely," Blumstein said. "At major research universities, the undergraduates are not being taught by faculty, and they're not happy campers. So all of a sudden, they've invented the fact that 'Gee, the faculty should teach.' And that's what I've loved about Brown, is that the culture is, 'You are going to teach undergraduates, and you're going to enjoy it.' And we are going to enjoy it, because the quality of (the students) is fantastic."
