Submission to the Review of Higher Education Financing and Policy
Peter Chesson
- Australian PhD graduates are too narrow in their training. In general they do not understand science broadly at the advanced level.
- Australian PhDs in general are less appreciative of the frontiers of science than PhDs from competitor countries and are therefore less able to lead.
- Restoring PhD funding to a baseline of four years;
- Introducing comprehensive advanced course work in the first year of the PhD;
- Introducing graduate seminars on the US model in the second and later years of the PhD program;
- Encouraging PhD students to study at an institution different from the one in which they received their bachelor’s degree by offering higher stipends to students who change institutions.
As measured by citation impact, Australia science is in decline compared with other countries. Australian companies spend notoriously little on research and development and seem unable to recognise how to profit from good ideas coming from Australian scientists and inventors. I think a major contributor to these two problems stems from serious deficiencies in the education of Australian scientists at the highest level, the PhD level.
I am currently an academic in Australia, but I have a lot of experience in the USA. After my PhD at the University of Adelaide I went to the USA and stayed there for 15 years. It was there (University of California, Santa Barbara) that I found out what science is all about. In particular, during my postdoctoral training I also participated in part of the graduate program designed for PhD students. I was later assistant and associate professor at Ohio State University, and visiting professor at the University of Arizona and Idaho State University. I trained several PhDs in the USA, and I am now training PhDs at ANU (Senior Fellow, Research School of Biological Sciences). I was Convener of the Graduate Program in Ecology for several years at ANU.
Graduate school in the USA is far more intellectually stimulating than it is in Australia. It is a much more scholarly atmosphere made possible by the fact that people studying for their PhDs learn more broadly at an advanced level, and are familiar with the boundary of knowledge on a broad front. Our PhD students meet the boundary in narrow areas and sometimes in such a parochial way that people outside Australia would not regard them as making a significant contribution to knowledge.
US graduate students learn their field broadly and thoroughly because they teach and take high level courses. They spend longer in graduate school, and are much more accustomed to broad debate. They are much more confident about their field than Australian students, and they have a solid base of knowledge for that confidence. Moreover, they are enthusiastic participants in debate. In contrast, I have been greatly disappointed since I have been back in Australia to find PhD students at ANU and elsewhere incapable of having an informed discussion of even the most general review articles in their fields. They do not know the key people in their fields and they do not know what the exciting research is. It is not any wonder to me in this rapidly moving world that Australian science is lagging behind.
Australia should be seriously addressing the problems with PhD training. I believe significant progress could be made if a year of advanced course work were added to the beginning of the PhD, followed by three years for the research project. Some course work could also be done during the last three years of PhD study. Formal discussion courses, that go under the title of "graduate seminar" in the USA, should be a feature of the entire four years of the PhD course. Three years plus honours is not enough formal learning for today’s complex multifaceted disciplines. It is not any wonder that our PhD students are so lacking.
It is important also that students mostly study for their PhD at a different institution from the one where they received their bachelor’s degree. This way they learn different perspectives and are encouraged to think broadly.
When I discuss these ideas with others, the common response is, "yes graduate seminars are a good idea, why don’t we introduce them?" In my experience seminars alone are not solution. Students have to learn something before they can discuss it, and they have to learn broadly enough that their advanced knowledge overlaps with that of a reasonable number of others. Advanced courses followed by time to discuss and extend the material learnt, and to apply it through research, is essential.
The changes that I suggest could be brought in relatively easily. Academics would likely welcome teaching advanced courses if it meant they would not have to teach as many undergraduate courses. More government funding would be needed for this and for the extra scholarship year. Some of the funding could come about by reducing the number of PhD students. A twenty five percent cut in the number of scholarships would allow them to run for an extra year (not factoring in the cost of extensions to scholarships, which would alter that figure downward a little). I have not attempted to cost the extra lecturing, but it would not be great. The reduction in the number of PhDs trained in Australia would be made up for by the major increase in the quality of the PhD training.
Students could be encouraged to change institutions to do their PhD by the award of higher stipends to students who move.
I believe that changes of this magnitude are essential if there is to be any hope of improving the sorry state of PhD training in Australia and addressing the declining international significance of Australian science. I believe also that changes of this sort might help address the problems that Australian industry has in taking a lead rather than merely following overseas developments. If the most advanced formal training we offer leaves people with a very narrow knowledge base at the advanced level, is it any wonder that Australian companies do not have the confidence to lead?