Reforming Graduate Science Education: Start in the Classroom

In his New York Times op-ed, Mark Taylor makes some radical suggestions for reforming graduate education. Taylor’s suggestions include a restructuring of the graduate and undergraduate curricula to make it “cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural,” “abolish[ing] permanent departments ... and creat[ing] problem-focused programs,” “expand[ing] the range of professional options for graduate students,” and imposing mandatory retirement and abolishing tenure in order to retain researchers and teachers who “continue to evolve and remain productive.” All of these reforms require one key element to make them work: high quality and creative teaching. Unfortunately, great teaching is not a top priority in many graduate science programs, where the emphasis is instead on topnotch research and the big grant funding that it brings in. Before dismantling departments and completely restructuring curricula, we need to make sure that we have great teachers and mentors who can engage, excite, and inspire students. So I present a different set of proposals from Taylor’s.