Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Paradigm Devolution: The Twilight of Traditional Doctoral Education

2009; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 20; Issue: 3-4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1177/104515950902000311

2162-4070

Wendy Jean Sonstrom,

Doctoral Education Challenges and Solutions

My mentor throws out the phrase devolution at least once a semester with the examples of Christianity and Marxism, and brave graduate students counter with examples of their own. For this reflection, I propose that doctoral education itself is currently undergoing paradigm devolution. My perspective is that of a doctoral student, specifically a full-time graduate student working towards a Ph. D. in adult education. This fall semester marks my last of coursework, and I find myself searching to make meaning of the experience. I function in the universe of my university in an elliptical orbit. At the risk of swelling faculty egos, I face a gravitational pull towards a center of faculty with the light and heat of their reputations, training, experiences, and publications. My peers could be separated into orbits that differ by distance: the lifers, the vampires, and the who's. The Lifers This is the orbit of full-time graduate students who most likely are also simultaneously employed with some sort of graduate assistantship (or are independently wealthy). This orbital path is one of lifers because by our presence on campus for work and classes, this path consumes us; it is our life. Our physical presence within a department can be seen as an advantage, from discovering a professor with similar interests to our own to being able to walk into a university office before 5:00 p.m. This allows us to know our professors better than graduate students in other orbits, from knowing when they are most likely to go to Starbucks in the afternoon to what is their favorite Lean Cuisine meal to zap in the department's microwave. This knowledge extends beyond food and beverage preferences to work habits, research interests, and relationships with other faculty. All of this information is tucked into any unoccupied nook and cranny of the graduate student's brain. Data collection is bi-directional, with faculty knowing the personalities and proclivities of their full-time graduate students, witnessing what feels like a visible disintegration in the final weeks of a semester as we struggle to balance our graduate courses with the work of supporting professors. The comfort and familiarity of the life of a lifer graduate student can be a detriment in progress to degree. I know of graduate assistants who appear to be lifers, spending years on campus after finishing coursework with ABD status and dissertation topics explored, rejected, and no date for a proposal defense on the horizon. They serve as a reminder to keep my experience as a doctoral student, and the scope of my dissertation, finite. There are other disadvantages to this orbit. Sometimes the gravitational pull is too strong and as graduate students we feel burned. I had my own Icarus experience recently, and I truly struggled with returning for a third year of being a doctoral student. Feeling unable to communicate the degree of angst to my advisor (and he was not the cause), I told him I felt like the Russell Crowe character at the end of the movie Gladiator. In this, my last semester of coursework, I am being raised into the Coliseum one more time. The Vampires A vampire is a part-time doctoral student who lives within commuting distance and by attending classes after work, cannot come onto campus unless the sun has gone down. Vampires tend to be 'out of the loop' of university happenings and will suck class time peppering instructors with questions that could be answered by spending quality time on the university's website. Some vampires choose courses based on availability rather than prerequisites, and they suck precious class time with questions that are remedial or ignorant for a graduate student who, by the nature of their admission into a program, should have a certain degree of familiarity with terms, names, and trends in the field. Vampires have also been known to suck on lifers for intelligence. …