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OCR for page 364
364 THE LIFE SCIENCES
U_
NIVERSITY ~ DUCATION
The Setting
Instruction in the life sciences occurs in a wide variety of settings. In some
universities, the elements of biology are drawn together under a depart-
ment bearing that name; in others, there are separate departments of botany
and zoology; and, in perhaps the largest number, an even greater array of
separate structures exist.
The traditional departmental fragmentation that prevails in the biological
sciences at many American universities, and at the land-grant institutions
in particular, is the consequence of a peculiar historical development.
Zoology departments, charged with the responsibility of training premedical
students, become incorporated into colleges of arts and sciences. Botany,
as a rule developed independently of zoology, often derives a major part
of its support from schools of agriculture. As various other subdisciplines
achieved strength of their own, separate administrative units were erected
to accommodate their interests.
This trend to fragmentation, once initiated, has been reversed only with
difficulty; individual departments tend to persist unchanged, even when
the disciplines they represent can no longer flourish in isolation. Biology
and the training of biologists have suffered as a result. For example, many
departments, even those dealing with the more specialized biological dis-
ciplines, offer undergraduate as well as graduate degrees. The requirements
for the major are frequently an overdose of specialized courses, taken at
the expense of more fundamental subjects of a broadly encompassing
nature. The outlook of the student is restricted, and he may be ill prepared
for subsequent graduate work. The tendency is to train disciples rather
than pioneers.
Fortunately, there appears to be a growing realization that early training
must be broadened. To require some advanced mathematics of a student
in systematics is no longer considered unusual, nor is the idea that a bio-
chemist may be expected to master evolutionary principles. Such recogni-
tion of the common needs of their students is forcing many departments to
reconsider the validity of the boundaries that separate them.
Similarly, there is an overabundance of highly specialized undergraduate
courses demanding replacement with broader substitutes. Comparative
anatomy, as traditionally taught, is the evolutionary history of vertebrates;
ignoring both invertebrates and plants. Embryology is usually almost
strictly a zoological course; developmental botany, if taught at all, is rarely
integrated with its animal counterpart. Traditional courses, moreover, are
OCR for page 365
EDUCATION IN BIOLOGY
sometimes retained even after there is no longer a demand for their un-
altered continuance: Few medical schools now require comparative anatomy
or embryology for admission, yet these courses, once designed for the pre-
medical students, persist unchanged at many institutions.
How basic biology may be reorganized, and how its relation to the
"applied" life sciences may be most fruitfully redefined, is a matter of
concern to institutions that are now reappraising their biology-department
structures. The curriculum needs simplification rather than diversification
to reflect the growing intellectual unity of biology. Courses are needed that
bind the different subdisciplines, rather than additional courses that deal
with subspecialties. Experimentation with curricula is necessary if only
because, on campus, the life sciences have been so extraordinarily frag-
mented.
Undergraduate Curricula
Despite this fragmentation, an increasing number of undergraduate majors
in the life sciences, perhaps a majority, proceed through an undergraduate
curriculum that embraces most major aspects of biology, or at least most
of botany or zoology. Together with other pressures, this has had the
laudable result of encouraging integrated curriculum planning for students
in the life sciences, often drawing autonomous departments together.
There seems to be agreement that there exists, in the intellectual content
of biology, a common core of material that should form the basis for an
undergraduate major, appropriate regardless of subsequent fields of speciali-
zation. Thus, the same set of courses can serve for the premedical student
and for the student who intends a research career. But there remain unique
problems in the training of prospective secondary school teachers and of
"terminal" majors.
Several institutions have independently designed new core curricula after
departmental reexamination of teaching objectives. An independent
curriculum-study group, the Commission on Undergraduate Education in
the Biological Sciences, has begun work on the problem of encouraging and
assisting curriculum reform and other improvements in the teaching of
biology to undergraduates. Financed almost entirely by the National
Science Foundation, this Commission consists of 25 professional biologists
who form a steering committee, a small executive staff, and a dozen panels
drawn largely from outside the Commission.
One Commission panel has compared the new core curricula installed
in different universities. Among four quite diverse institutions, the simi-
larity in content and in distribution of time among major topics is remark-
ably high, reinforcing the conclusion that the trend is toward uniformity
365
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366 THE LIFE SCIENCES
in what is taught.
The content of these curricula differs in several
important ways from that of their more classical predecessors. In
general, more cognate courses in the physical sciences and mathematics
are required, often as prerequisites, often actually reducing the num
ber of hours in biology required to complete the major. The core cur
riculum has a much heavier emphasis on biochemistry, genetics, and
cell biology, largely at the expense of systematic and comparative mor
phology. At many institutions, the courses themselves are structured and
labeled by "levels of organization" (i.e., molecular, cellular, organismic,
population biology) rather than by taxonomic group or functional system.
Thus they resemble somewhat the organization of the life sciences proposed
and used in the present study (see Chapters 3 through 5), a trend we
warmly endorse. It is not fair, however, to characterize the new curricula
as being merely "more biochemical"; they simply reflect more accurately
current biological understanding. Neurophysiology, endocrinology, and
several other subjects are also better represented than they were before.
These changes have enlivened the undergraduate major in biology in only
a few institutions and are not yet well disseminated nationally. One of the
major efforts of the Commission is to provide a medium through which
information about curricular experimentation can be swiftly propagated
and to supply competent help to institutions desiring to make changes.
The diversity of the life sciences is a critical consideration in the design
of undergraduate curricula. While the trend has been toward unification
of biology departments and standardization of major curricula, the quite
different requirements of different life science subspecialties will always
pose special problems. Thus, although some departments have installed
successful programs that prepare undergraduates regardless of their pro
fessional intentions, many others feel it necessary to provide optional
"tracks." The appropriateness of any one solution probably depends upon
the inclination and taste of the faculty involved, and the resulting diversity
is likely to be useful. Often, the options provided are concerned more with
cognate courses than with the biology program per se. In the training of
molecular biologists, for example, as much course work in chemistry as in
biology may be desirable, and the departmental program should allow
ample time for the appropriate courses. For evolutionary biologists, on
the other hand, more work in biology as well as in such outside areas as
mathematics and statistics may be desirable. To the extent that stan
dardized "core" curricula provide broader exposure to all areas of biology
for all biologists, then, they are desirable; but they should not create a
lockstep in which the unique needs of particular groups or individuals can
not be fulfilled.
Even where the capabilities and temper of the faculty allow such changes
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EDUCATION IN BIOLOGY 367
in curricular structure, vexing problems hamper completion of the transi-
tion. It has long been assumed that first-hand laboratory experience is a
critical part of undergraduate education in any scientific discipline. Typi-
cally, courses of the traditional biology curriculum included one to two
afternoons a week of laboratory work-usually dissection, light microscopy,
and some rather simple experiments. Even wealthier institutions now find
themselves organized to teach laboratory work with rooms designed
only for simple "sit-down" work. They possess large inventories of medium-
quality compound microscopes and modest supplies of balances, kymo-
graphs, and perhaps such devices as electronic stimulators, but they usually
lack the more elaborate equipment and facilities to conduct more sophisti-
cated biochemical, physiological, or genetic experiments. The typical
biology undergraduate uses instruments in the laboratory that he will never
again encounter except in a museum! Even in the better institutions? he is
unlikely to have the opportunity to work directly, in a formal laboratory
course, with a cathode-ray oscilloscope or a polygraph, with counting
equipment, a good centrifuge, an electron microscope, or even a phase-
cor~trast microscope. Even if the latter were available for research pur-
poses, few students could have useful access to them in most circumstances.
The high cost of research instruments raises an important practical
question: Is it realistic to strive to make expensive instruments available
to all students as part of their undergraduate education? For example, in
1900 the optical microscope was used at the very frontier of research; at a
university of that day most biology students had ready access to a fairly
good one. Today, work at some segments of the frontier requires an elec-
tron microscope. Shall we strive to provide access to an electron microscope
for each student, at a cost increase of perhaps 100-fold?
Granting that, ideally, electron microscopes and a variety of other costly
instruments should be available to all students, economic considerations
force us to consider alternatives. Is it really essential that a student handle
an expensive instrument in order to understand its uses and limitations?
Or can he gain sufficient knowledge by other means? The economic neces-
sity now being faced in science has previously been met in other fields of
education. Consider, for example, the young man who wants to become
a conductor of a symphony orchestra. Desirable though it might be to
provide him with an orchestra for practice, the fact that rehearsal time for
a full orchestra may cost in excess of $500 an hour compels the nature of
the decision and, for many years, the young musician must be trained with
various inexpensive surrogates. Without actual contact with the real "in-
strument" (the orchestra), he must somehow be trained in the principles
of its control. We must consider the development of equivalent surrogates
for expensive instruments in the training of scientists.
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368
THE LIFE SCIENCES
Meanwhile, lacking direct or surrogate experiences with such instru-
ments, the interested student can observe the contrast between activities in
his professor's research laboratory and his own student experience. All too
often he performs repetitions of old experiments, because nothing else can
be done to "introduce him to the laboratory," a process usually initiated
with the explanation that the purpose is to establish verisimilitude. Such
programs tend to defeat rather than nourish the scholarly urge.
This is first a problem in educational philosophy and only secondarily
one of fiscal inadequacy. Laboratory work even with simple, inexpensive
materials can be made exciting if it is really explorative and demands
thoughtful initiative of the student rather than mere following of "recipes."
Over-reliance on "recipes" produces students who are unable to attack
novel problems with experimental tools and with the confidence that they
can provide solutions.
Nevertheless, whole areas of significant modern biology will remain
closed to undergraduate experience unless laboratories can be re-equipped.
Even without those major instruments for which we may have to provide
only indirect experience, the conversion will be costly; apart from the
building costs of new and adequate laboratory space, a large institution that
graduates about 100 majors each year would require at least $250,000 to
convert to a modern laboratory program for the core courses in its major
curriculum alone. By this estimate, the national equipment deficit for under-
graduate instruction in 1,200 institutions of higher education is currently
$50 million to $100 million. Federal sources for such funds are now
totally inadequate; the undergraduate instructional equipment program at
the National Science Foundation is woefully underbudgeted and cannot
make grants of the size required. The total national bill may be reduced
by "sharing" programs between smaller institutions and part-time use of
research equipment. Even without such reduction, we consider the cost
small indeed in terms of our national scientific effort and urge that a pro-
gram of adequate scale be mounted either at the National Science Founda-
tion or the Office of Education of the Department of Health, Education,
and Welfare.
The Teaching of Biology
TEACHING AS AN ACTIVITY
Most of the nation's professional biologists are teachers of one sort or
another, at least part of the time. Moreover, the nature of teaching today is
one of the determinants of the direction the research enterprise will take
in the next generation. It is disturbing, then, that college and university
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EDUCATION IN BIOLOGY
teaching has received relatively little "scientific" scrutiny and that profes-
sional scientists who are also teachers quickly discover that their efforts to
improve teaching are less productive of prestige and professional advance-
ment than their research efforts. These two problems contribute enormously
to the difficulties in the way of improvement of education in the life sciences.
Evaluation of teaching is difficult. Although a number of universities
have attempted to involve students and other faculty members in the evalu-
ation process, no method seems free of the potential criticisms that student
judgments are flawed by recency or uncritical enthusiasm and that col-
leagues' judgments can be obtained only by objectionable monitoring. The
latter concern is both serious and perplexing. Many a university teacher
regards his classroom as quasi-sacred and what he says to his students as
privileged communication. Anything that suggests an evaluation of his
teaching arouses intense, sometimes irrational, defense mechanisms. With
corrective feedback thus prevented, the lack of progress in teaching is
easily understood. Nor have we confidence that the organized rating sys-
tems of undergraduate bodies will suffice to upgrade the general quality
of undergraduate teaching.
The same faculty member may run his research laboratory in a com-
pletely different manner. The conspicuously successful trainer of research
students typically maintains an extremely open atmosphere in the labora-
tory; the hopes, plans, frustrations, failures, and successes are all visible
and shared.
Unfortunately, this atmosphere is not to be found in teaching; hence the
largely nonprogressive character of teaching. Teaching, good or bad, is
typically unmonitored by knowledgeable individuals; unproductive of ade-
quate feedback, it may fall far short of its potentialities. Significantly
improved teaching could occur in teaching "laboratories" in which a
sufficient number of experimenters interested in the process of teaching
conduct their work in the open way that characterizes the best research
laboratories. Only in an atmosphere in which monitoring is so much the
Rule that it is not recognized as such will satisfactory progress in teaching
be made. An especially useful--and unobjectionable-form of mutual
monitoring takes place in the increasing number of departments in which
small groups of faculty members cooperate in the teaching of a course and
attend one another's lectures. This usually results in improved perfor-
mance, and in helpful cross-evaluation of materials and techniques.
REWARDS FOR TEACHING
Although some institutions and a few national foundations recognize
and reward good teaching, these efforts have not yet had enough weight
369
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370
THE LIFE SCIENCES
collectively to make educational activity at all comparable with research
activity in generating recognition and reward. This is especially unfortu-
nate in view of the fact that many teaching activities are essentially
scholarly themselves: the writing of a really superior textbook, the design
and execution of new means of instruction, or the preparation of a new
and exciting course. Such activities, with evaluations of their success,
deserve dissemination and reward much as do other kinds of scholarly
activity.
NEW METHODS OF TEACHING
The rising demand for teachers-and widespread dissatisfaction with the
effectiveness of current educational methods has forced life scientists,
as it has teachers in other disciplines, to consider new methods of instruc-
tion. Efforts in this direction are bearing fruit at such a pace that we now
find ourselves amidst a rapidly expanding technology of new ways of
teaching. Among the most prominent innovations are the use of "pro-
grammed" instructional material; the use of television in lecture and smaller
group teaching; the use of "audiotutorial" laboratory teaching, in which
the student is able to make use of stored audio and visual instructions for
the conduct of laboratory work; the use of computers in assisting instruc-
tion; and the use of film loops and other audiovisual materials. Fewer than
20 biology courses in the country now make use of television, and only a
dozen use audiotutorial laboratory methods. Among this small number the
overwhelming majority use these methods for freshman courses; to our
knowledge only two advanced course programs in the country employ them.
Adoption of new methods often requires heavy capital expenditures,
which planners expect to be amortized by only slightly decreased costs of
instruction. In many cases, however, the net result is actually an increase
in cost, and a redistribution, rather than a saving, in staff time. But new
instructional methods should be undertaken not as an economy but as
improvements of the quality of instruction. As student enrollments stretch
the system, only such new methods can effectively multiply the effectiveness
of truly accomplished teachers. Misconceptions about the new methods
have frequently hindered their adoption. Among the prevalent myths are
the notion that televised teaching is necessarily impersonal, the idea that
programmed materials are essentially boring, useful only for the establish-
ment of the cut-and-dried factual base of a discipline, and the view that
audiotutorial and similar methods are useful primarily for spoon-feedirlg
slow students. Studies of situations in which these methods have been effec-
tively used show that they can achieve results in student performance and
attitudes that are at least comparable with those from traditional pro
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EDUCATION IN BIOLOGY
cedures. At a time when the shortage of really effective teachers grows
steadily more critical, these ways of multiplying the especially good teacher
deserve careful study and experimental development.
THE TRAINING AND RETRAINING OF TEACHERS
A variety of programs are available for improving the quality of training of
teachers at secondary school and college levels and for providing those
already in service with ways of keeping up to date or alleviating inadequacies
in their own backgrounds. The National Science Foundation has sponsored
academic-year programs as well as summer and in-service programs. Those
for secondary school teachers have engaged a surprising fraction of the
teacher population; summer institutes in the mid-1960's had in attendance
in any given year about 20 percent of the nation's high school teachers of
science. However, to a considerable degree, this was a "repeating" fraction:
more than half of all teachers had no exposure to such experience; only
1 percent have had a full academic year. Among college teachers the record
is substantially poorer. Only about 1 percent of this population has ever
attended a summer institute, and only an infinitesimal percentage has taken
a full year for the sole purpose of retraining. It might be thought that college
teachers would not require training of this sort, but they do. The Com-
mission on Undergraduate Education in the Biological Sciences regards
1,000 of our 2,400 institutions of higher education as being entirely inade-
quately staked to teach a modern program in the life sciences. The 4,000-
5,000 full-time life sciences faculty members in these institutions would
all benefit from exposure to a program of retraining.
Thus one of the most vexing problems confronting education in biology
is improvement of the existing situation at both secondary school and col-
lege levels. Several approaches to this problem may warrant consideration.
One would be to expand the opportunity available for retraining by the
provision of a massively supported plan for financing full-year sabbatical
leaves for teachers who need retraining. Most of those who have taught in
academic-year and summer institutes feel that the full-year program is
much more desirable than a larger number of shorter periods. A second
proposal is to enable college departments to achieve major curriculum
revisions. This would involve supplying funds on a 3-to-5-year basis for
particular departments, allowing them to release the time of one or more
members to plan and organize new programs. A third approach would
aim at alleviation of some of the major problems of relatively small insti-
tutions of higher education that lack research facilities and adequate re-
search programs. Such a plan could include funds to facilitate exchanges
between larger and smaller institutions in an area, to apprentice under
371
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THE LIFE SCIENCES
graduate students in small institutions to research enterprises in larger
ones, to permit faculty in smaller institutions to spend summers in research
activity in major universities or other laboratories, or to have postdoctoral
fellows at large universities "extern" as teachers in relatively nearby smaller
institutions.
Several general observations may be made in conclusion. The scientific
community, in general, fails to project a positive attitude toward teaching
at any level as a career, and, predictably, this prejudice rubs off on stu-
dents. Students engaged in the intensive research-oriented training for the
doctorate must be shown by example that teaching is a significant and
creative aspect of their future careers. Federal and other funding arrange-
ments for the support of graduate education should include proper pro-
visions for structured teaching experience. We view this as an intrinsic
part of graduate work and suggest that a well-thought-out program of this
kind may well be a preferable alternative to the adoption of a special
"teaching degree" as a means of training college teachers. Finally, to deal
with present inadequacies in the teaching of the life sciences at secondary
school and college levels, programs for retraining and for maintaining
contact with recent advances are increasingly necessary.
BIOLOGY AND LIBERAL EDUCATION
The pattern of the introductory collegiate course in biology for the future
professional biologist becomes increasingly clear: it must assume a con-
siderable expertise in elementary chemistry' physics, and mathematics.
As an incidental consequence, these prerequisites often require that the
beginning biology course be postponed until the sophomore year. More
importantly, the prerequisites for the beginning course for future profes-
sionals make this course increasingly unsuitable for students with other
major interests. What should be done for them?
We reject the suggestion that biologists should abandon the attempt to
educate the general college student in biology. Knowledge of the principles
and facts of biology is required to make intelligent decisions in innumerable
matters of social and political importance: air and water pollution, radia-
tion hazards, biological warfare, agricultural policies, voluntary and com-
pulsory quality control of food and drugs, and population control, to name
only a few. Biologists cannot expect public understanding or acceptance
of their advice on public issues unless the college-educated segment of the
community is biologically literate.
What sort of a college course in biology should be given non-biology
majors? Attempts to meet the need for such a course by "watering down"
the major course have met with uniform failure for two generations. Be
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EDUCATION IN BIOLOGY
cause the non-major course cannot be strongly couched in chemical and
mathematical language, it is more elementary than the major course. But
^ ~~ student require that the course addressed to
the interests of the general
them emphasize certain advanced topics that the major student will not study
until some years later: ecology, population genetics, and human genetics,
for example. These topics must be treated thoroughly enough that students
majoring in sociology, anthropology, psychology, political science, or the
humanities see the overwhelming relevance of biology to their problems.
Only a few courses that do this job well are being taught. There is a crying
need for this type of biology course, and for its distinctness from the major
course, if the profession is to build the broad base of educated understand-
ing needed for the future support of biological research.
There is yet one more type of course to which biologists would be well
advised to turn their attention-a course that might be thought of as "Ele-
mentary Biology from an Advanced Standpoint." The intended audience
would be undergraduate majors in chemistry, physics, mathematics, or
engineering. They would take this course as juniors, seniors, or even as
graduate students. Since the level of their sophistication in the physical
sciences would be very high, this select group of students would very
ranidlv be brought to a deen understanding of the fundamentals of biolo~v.
1 ~ ~ 1 ~ ~ -
~ . ~ ~ ~ . . ~ . ~
Such a course would serve several purposes: to present biology as a
cultural subject to physical scientists; to prepare physical scientists for
collaborative research with biologists; and to proselytize from this group,
which has furnished so many excellent investigators in biology in the recent
past. Though enjoyable, it would be a difficult course to give, but it should
be possible to present it at increasing numbers of institutions as the pioneer
teachers develop the textbooks for such an advanced treatment of ele-
mentary biology.
Research Training: Graduate Ecincation in the Life Sciences
THE INSTITUTIONAL SYSTEM: FUNCTIONS AND DIVERSITY
The system for educating life scientists at the graduate level is as complex
and diversified as the roles biologists serve in society, but since this com-
plexity largely reflects historical accident, it invites scrutiny.
In the main, appropriate graduate training is needed for: (1) school-
teachers at elementary and secondary levels, (2) college and university
teachers, and (3) research workers. For the latter two categories, speciali-
zation ranges through the applied fields (themselves internally very diverse)
of medicine, agriculture, and forestry to the equally varied disciplines of
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THE LIFE SCIENCES
academic biology. The training of a teacher or investigator in molecular
biology, systematics, or embryology necessarily is very different.
The complexity of the institutional system serving the total enterprise
is reflected in the fact that almost 40 subdisciplines in the biological sciences
offer separate masters or doctoral programs and have sought traineeship
support from the National Science Foundation. The departmental cate-
gories were found among 876 individual departments in colleges of arts
and sciences, colleges of agriculture and forestry, and colleges of medicine.
Of all graduate students, 53 percent are in Ph.D.-granting programs in the
biological sciences in the professional schools (agriculture and medicine).
THE STUDENT POPULATION: SIZE, ATTRITION, LOCATION
Approximately 7,500 students enter the system each year, largely from the
approximately 25,000 students who annually receive baccalaureate degrees
in the biological sciences. Although the academic fields of biology are
attracting an increasing number of students with bachelor's training in
physics or chemistry, the absolute number of these is probably still very
small. Immigration from the physical sciences is probably greatest at the
postdoctoral level.
This annual input of students suffers substantial attrition; we can make
a rough measurement from data reported in the questionnaire sent to de-
partment chairmen by this Survey Committee.
In the academic year 1966-1967, there were 23,287 graduate students
in the responding life science departments; of these, 15,755 were Ph.D.
candidates. These candidates were distributed among 876 departments, of
which 560 awarded 2,332 Ph.D.'s in 1966-1967. These data allow some
estimate of the "efficiency" of graduate education, or, at least, of Ph.D.
production. Sixteen thousand doctoral candidates, under the ideal cir-
cumstances of a four-year Ph.D. without attrition, should produce 4,000
Ph.D.'s a year. In fact, the "pool" represented by our sample produced a
little over half that number. This efficiency figure may actually be even
lower than it appears, since the ratio should actually be determined by the
number of candidates that enter during a period of time, rather than the
number enrolled at a given instant. Also, some graduate programs define
Ph.D. candidates as those who have completed a master's degree or passed
a qualifying examination. This practice will reduce the apparent pool of
active candidates, and thus inflate efficiency figures.
Another way of measuring efficiency (which is subject to the same
reservations) is to use only those departments that awarded Ph.D. degrees
during 1966-1967 and calculate the ratio of candidates to degrees awarded
in those departments. Such calculations yield an average ratio of 6.0, which
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EDUCATION IN BIOLOGY 375
would translate to an efficiency figure of roughly 75 percent. There is some
variation between types of departments; smaller ones, even though they
may be less productive, tend to have lower attrition.
careers of students who fail to complete the doctoral program are largely
unknown and merit future investigation, along with the causes of their
"failure." Women are only half as likely as men to finish their doctoral
degrees an aspect of the general failure of our society to take advantage
of the creative resources of its female population.
An entirely different measure of the effectiveness of a graduate program
is the production of Ph.D.'s relative to the numbers of individual faculty
members who train them. Fifty-five percent of the faculty members repre-
sented in our sample teach in Ph.D.-granting departments, and 73 percent
are located in departments in which there are Ph.D. candidates. On the
average, in those departments that produced Ph.D.'s in 1966-1967, there
were four faculty members per Ph.D. produced. In departments with
Ph.D. candidates, there was 0.8 faculty member per candidate. These
~. 1 ~l_ ~ =--^-~^~` `^ ^~^~^- For
The fates of the
1~ ~ ~^~4 ~ ^~ ~ examples
departments of biochemistry averaged 0.5 faculty member per candidate
and in 1967 produced a Ph.D. for every 2.5 faculty members. Anatomy
departments, by contrast, had 1.3 faculty members per candidate and pro-
duced only one doctorate for every eight faculty members.
ticYllr^c arm term and. Icing at ~.n~I=~.nT TO aDOlReE
FINANCIAL SUPPORT OF THE GRADUATE STUDENT AND HIS EDUCATION
The cost of educating graduate students in biology, as in other sciences,
is rarely met by the student directly; his training is subsidized in a variety
of ways. Half of the graduate students in the life sciences are supported
federally: 42 percent enjoy federal fellowships and traineeships, 38 percent
have nonfederal (institutional) support, 13 percent are paid from faculty
research grants (most of which are federal), and 8 percent are supported
by other means, including their own resources.
The pattern of federal support differs strikingly by type of school and
department. Sixty-eight percent of the graduate students In SChOOlS O!
medicine are supported by federal traineeships and fellowships, compared
with 40 percent of students in graduate schools of arts and sciences and
22 percent of those in schools of agriculture and forestry. Federal support
is provided for 66 percent of the students in departments of biophysics and
52 percent of those in departments of biochemistry, whereas only 20 percent
of graduate students of botany receive such stipend support.
These discrepancies arise from the sources of these federal funds. Train-
ing grants support over half of the federally financed Ph.D. candidates.
Only about 20 percent of the students hold national fellowships, and insti
. . .
_
1 , · _ i_ _ ~ 1 _ _ ~
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THE LI FE SCIENCES
tutional grants take care of another 20 percent. Since the traineeship funds
come very largely from the National Institutes of Health, the criterion of
health-relatedness markedly affects their distribution. Accordingly, stu-
dents in departments of botany and schools of agriculture and forestry
must seek other means of support.
Competitive national fellowships, which support about 10 percent of the
nation's doctoral candidates in the life sciences, establish stipend and
prestige standards. Such fellowships are twice as important in private arts
and sciences graduate schools as they are in the overall support picture
because a relatively small number of high-prestige graduate schools attract
a disproportionate share of the students able to compete successfully for
these fellowships. Hence, competitive national fellowships loom larger in
the support picture in the Northeast and on the Pacific Coast-concentration
points for such institutions.
Of nonfederally supported students, most (75 percent) hold university
teaching assistantships. Only a trifling number are supported by university
fellowship funds.
The importance of graduate student support is reflected in department
chairmen's statements of the relative priority of different types of funds
needed to "improve the department's research endeavor." Increasing pre-
doctoral stipend funds were repeatedly cited as a prime need in those
departments that currently train graduate students; it was mentioned by a
fourth of all the departments as their first priority and by over half as one
of the three most important funding categories.
These data have led us to several conclusions:
Stipend Levels Stipend levels, previously adequate, are no longer so
(1970-19711. For six years, national fellowship and traineeship stipends
have been set at a 12-monch standard of $2,400 for first-year students,
$2,600 for intermediate-level students, and $2,800 for terminal Ph.D. can-
didates, with an allowance of $500 for each dependent. In the meantime,
the cost-of-living index has been rising at a rate of over 4 percent per year.
Especially in the more expensive areas of the country, graduate students-
even those without dependents are in serious economic straits. The avail-
ability of stipends for summer work unrelated to thesis research tends to
prolong the total period of graduate work for many students.
Diversity of Sources of Support The diversity of sources of support is
intrinsically desirable. The federal agencies responsible for science gen-
erally (National Science Foundation ), health (National Institutes of
Health), and education (U.S. Office of Education), all make contributions
directed at different segments of the total enterprise. We note and deplore
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EDUCATION IN BIOLOGY 377
the absence of any significant contribution from the Department of
culture, them
Energy Commission, and the Department of Defense, because, until the
National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the
Office of Education acquire broader mandates or more adequate appro-
priations, agencies that use substantial numbers of Ph.D.'s in basic sciences
should contribute to the cost of their training. Diversity of sources of
support is intrinsically desirable, and relieves the non-mission-oriented
sources (National Science Foundation, Office of Education), making them
freer to ensure adequate support for the least mission-oriented programs
Agr~-
National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Atomic
and institutions.
In this connection, we note that, until recently, the National Institutes
of Health has, for the most part, been reasonably broad in its interpretation
of the "health-related sciences" it is charged with supporting. It has cor-
rectly recognized that biology is "all of a piece," and that it is inherently
impossible and historically fallacious to identify some aspects as related
to health and others as unrelated. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine any
biological problem of major importance that is without relevance to human
welfare. Nonetheless, we ought to be cognizant of the danger inherent in
the dependence of so large a fraction of the biological educational enter-
prise upon an agency that has an applied-science mission. Although we
hope that mission will always be broadly viewed, it is clear that our judg-
ment as scientists is not wholly shared by those entrusted with the establish-
ment of federal policy. If the National Institutes of Health were to adopt
a more restricted interpretation of its mission, a process currently in prog-
ress, the present pattern of dependence on the Institutes for research and
training support could result in catastrophe for education in some areas
of the life sciences. For this as well as other reasons, it would be unfortu-
nate if the National Science Foundation and the Office of Education were
to reduce their responsibilities to biology on the basis of past availability
of funds from the National Institutes of Health. At the same time it is
most strongly urged that the National Institutes of Health particularly the
National Institute for General Medical Sciences continue to mount a
vigorous, broad program of support for research training in the biological
sciences.
Federal Support An analysis is required to ascertain the wisest combina-
tion of national competitive fellowships and traineeships available for
allocation by departments.
National competitive fellowships enable the successful outstanding stu-
dent to choose freely among the institutions that offer him admission and
to choose his sponsor and course of study without the constraints that some
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THE LIFE SCIENCES
times accompany local support, and their distribution affords some useful
measure of the attractiveness and the quality of departments. The program
of fellowships and traineeships as currently operated fails to provide ade-
quate support to the host institutions; the $2,500 cost-of-education allow-
ance that accompanies National Science Foundation and National Institutes
of Health predoctoral fellowships (and National Science Foundation trainee-
ships) barely covers the nominal tuition fee in many of the private
institutions, and such fees cover less than half of the real costs of education.
The National Institutes of Health training-grant system is more wisely
constructed in this important respect. Awarded to a department or multi-
departmental group, training grants frequently provide an amount (deter-
mined by negotiation and the justification offered in the initial proposal)
for equipment and other needs of the training program concerned. The
annual cost to the agency of a National Science Foundation fellowship or
traineeship or a National Institutes of Health fellowship is $5,000; on the
other hand, the average cost to the National Institutes of Health of a
student on a training grant is $8,000, which is much closer to the real
costs of his education.
In our view, ultimately federal agencies should utilize the traineeship
and training-grant system for all but a rather small fraction of graduate
student support. Training grants offer virtually all the freedom of choice
of institution and of research mentor available with the fellowship device
and, by their geographical distribution, assure the continual strengthening
of graduate education across the country. As long as the grants are awarded
on the basis of periodic peer review, there is little chance of misleading
prospective graduate students while matching the training capability of
each departmental unit to the actual magnitude of its training support.
Cost of Education The cost of education for graduate student biologists
merits separate and special notice. This cost is continuously increasing as
the space requirements increase and the equipment needed becomes more
sophisticated; to this extent it imposes on the universities an increasing
burden that they are less able to bear as time passes. The unrealistic pro-
vision for these costs in the $2,500 allowed per student has two conse-
quences: it has not alleviated the generally inadequate state of training
facilities across the country, and it permits the training process to remain
too strongly dependent upon funds allocated primarily for faculty research.
Few of the electron microscopes, spectrophotometers, and ultracentrifuges
that are indispensable in the education of a graduate student today were
purchased for that purpose. Thus, access to them is not easy for the stu-
dent: the faculty member has a responsibility to his research and its sponsor
for their maintenance in first-class research order. A conspicuous and
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EDUCATION IN BIOLOGY
urgent need in most graduate departments is adequate curricular provision
for training in the great diversity of laboratory techniques required for
effective research in modern biology. The lack of such forestal training
stems almost exclusively from the lack of funds for acquisition of equip-
ment. The typical graduate student learns a sophisticated technique only
if his dissertation work demands it i.e., if it is an important element in
his faculty sponsor's research. That very fact can serve as an inhibitor
to the imaginative approach to research problems in his subsequent career.
THE GRADUATE PROGRAM
The M.A. The M.A., as a terminal degree, has been steadily declining in
importance; a doctorate is an indispensable qualification for all university
teaching and for the vast majority of college openings. Terminal M.A.'s
find their principal academic opportunities in the secondary schools or
junior colleges, but many school biology teachers take other routes, such
as the Master of Arts in Teaching. To the extent that it survives as a dis-
tinct program, the M.A. usually consists primarily of the same formal
course work that is a major element in the training of the "precandidacy"
doctoral student.
Doctoral Training The Ph.D. level is, then, the goal of virtually all grad-
uate education in biology, and that fact itself has important consequences.
Ostensibly, the same degree is the required entry for teachers at all levels
above the secondary school ~ junior colleges, colleges, and graduate schools ),
and for research scholars. In biology as in other disciplines this leads to
national confusion concerning standards, curricula, and duration of study
for the doctorate.
The overwhelming majority of Ph.D.'s are awarded in research-oriented
departments supported by substantial federal funding. Nearly 90 percent
of Ph.D. candidates are being trained in departments that have already
produced doctorates. Graduate education has always been concentrated
in a relatively small number of departments in "prestige" universities, and
this feature shows little tendency to change. Seventy-seven percent of Ph.D.
candidates are in departments that also have postdoctoral fellows.
As to type of institutions, 46 percent of the candidates are in graduate
schools of arts and sciences, 29 percent are in schools of forestry and/or
agriculture, and 25 percent are in medical schools. Three times as many
candidates are found in public as in private institutions. This distribution
contrasts with that of the departments that train graduate students: 28 per-
cent of the departments that have awarded Ph.D.'s are in arts and sciences,
29 percent in agriculture and forestry, and 40 percent in medical schools.
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THE LIFE SCIENCES
In short, departments in arts and sciences graduate schools have larger
numbers of students and accomplish more doctoral training than either of
the other two kinds of institution; but the smaller departments found in
schools of medicine have been expanding their capacity most rapidly.
It is perhaps more meaningful to ask about the kinds of departments in
which doctoral candidates are trained. Although 29 percent are found in
schools of agriculture and forestry, only 14 percent are receiving degrees
in the agricultural sciences; the difference is accounted for by students in
basic life sciences departments in these professional colleges. Eighty-six
percent of the candidates are in biological sciences departments, 14 percent
of them in biochemistry, 18 percent in biology-ecology, 20 percent in
zoology-entomology, and 5 percent in physiology. The remainder are
scattered among smaller, more specialized disciplinary units.
Geographically, the large land-grant institutions of the midwestern states
are the largest producers of doctorates. Only in the Northeast does private
surpass public education in Ph.D. production, and here medical schools
play a prominent role. Graduate education in the life sciences is charac-
terized by great regional asymmetries: over a third of the states produce
fewer Ph.D.'s than a single medium-sized private institution, and both the
South and the Rocky Mountain region are producing relatively few doc-
torates.
Finally, one may ask how the distribution of doctoral-degree candidates
is correlated with the distribution of research funds. Not surprisingly, the
correlation is high: If one eliminates the departments of clinical medicine,
which are a special case in this regard, then 75 percent of the total federal
allocation for research in the life sciences goes to those departments that
have actually granted Ph.D. degrees.
THE FUTURE OF GRADUATE PROGRAMS
Increasing Ph.D. Production In view of the frequently expressed need for
increased numbers of research workers and teachers who have doctoral
degrees, it is important to estimate the "elasticity" of the training system-
i.e., how much more training it is capable of. Department chairmen queried
by the Committee were surprisingly optimistic about their ability to expand
enrollments even without additional space and faculty. Seventy percent
of the responding departments claimed that they could grow without these
usual prerequisites; in the aggregate, they assert that they can increase
their graduate school enrollment by about 25 percent.
All departments combined predicted an expansion from 17,172 to 23,370
faculty members by 1970-1971. This projected increase is largest in the
departments of basic medical sciences. Nearly 40 percent of this expansion
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EDUCATION IN BIOLOGY
was stated to represent the filling of already-budgeted positions. Those
departments already producing Ph.D.'s anticipated an increase in space of
approximately 40 percent, two thirds of which was already under con-
struction.
In summary, the system seems to have a built-in expansion capacity that
amounts to approximately 25 percent of its present production. By 1970-
1971, it is predicted that it will expand by about 50 percent from 1966-
1967 figures; this expansion will be accommodated by increasing space
(by 40 percent) and faculty (by about 25 percent). These predictions
do not appear realistic, even though half the projected expansion in space
and faculty was thought to be underwritten at the time it was made. No
more realistic is the prediction made by department chairmen of their own
capacity to produce Ph.D.'s. In 1964-1965, the departments in our sample
produced 2,000 Ph.D.'s; in 1966-1967, 2,330. For 1969-1970, the num-
ber of new Ph.D.'s projected by these departments was 4,300. If efficiency
is maintained at its present level, Ph.D. production should lag behind in-
creases in graduate enrollment by about two years. The maximum increase
likely, even ignoring effects of the draft and reduced federal funding, is
perhaps 10 percent a year, somewhat more than the 7 percent annual incre-
ment that has been characteristic of the sciences for many years.
Duration of the Doctoral Program Since the training system has a limited
capacity for expansion, and since present funding limitations are curtailing
its operation drastically, it becomes even more important to improve the
quality and efficiency of the enterprise. In particular, both attrition and
the time required to obtain the doctorate should be curtailed. The national
average for the time elapsing between the B.A. and Ph.D. degrees in all
fields is still an alarming 8.5 years, although in many leading institutions,
where sufficient support and supervision are provided, four to five years is
now established as adequate. The tendency has been, and will continue to
be, a general curtailment of the duration of study, with four to five years
becoming a universal norm. Its attainment demands a more prescribed and
carefully organized graduate curriculum than has prevailed in many insti-
tutions; freedom from excessive burdens of teaching and from research
assistantships that are not directly related to the thesis; and continuation of
the trend, now more common in science than in the humanities, to pre-
scribe appropriately modest research goals for the dissertation.
The trend is thus to establish as well-regulated a program for the doc-
torate as for the bachelor's degree, converting it from an ill-defined entry
into the world of independent scholarship to a well-defined level of educa-
tion. That level should be set realistically, at a point that will just satisfy
the purposes of the doctorate. Students contemplating research careers
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382 THE LIFE SCIENCES
now have the opportunity of postdoctoral education; the doctoral program
is not the end of formal training.
The growth of postdoctoral education nationally has, in fact, developed
hand in hand with this trend in the doctoral program. At the same time,
there are plans to revitalize (or merely to rename, as M.Phil.) the M.A.
degree to accommodate some of the functions now assigned to the doctorate.
The prestige of the doctorate is such that even the smaller colleges are
unlikely to be relieved of the pressure "to count their Ph.D.'s" and thus to
render such subdoctoral degrees unacceptable. The regularization of doc-
toral programs to a four-year norm and the evolution of a carefully admin-
istered postdoctoral program seem, therefore, to constitute the more
desirable policy. The postdoctoral student is not actually "postponing"
his entry into the teaching system. He is, to be sure, free to benefit from a
unique research experience unhampered by either a thesis deadline or the
heavy burden of developing his own courses; but, in his daily contacts with
graduate students in the same laboratory, he is discharging one of the most
important and valuable teaching functions in the university while prepar-
ing for a life dedicated to research.
The Relation between Student and Faculty Sponsor The core of the doc-
toral program remains the dissertation, and the goal of a four-year Ph.D.
makes some form of apprenticeship almost inevitable in performing thesis
research. That apprenticeship can, of course, degenerate into menial re-
search assistance for a prescribed fraction of the sponsor's own research
program, but this abuse is rare. There is little doubt that the intimate
personal relationship between a student and his thesis supervisor is the
most important formative element in his training as a scientist. Misuse of
the apprenticeship system may be fostered by the prevalent dependence of
student research opportunities on the faculty's research funds. Departmental
funds are needed for student equipment and facilities, for research as well
as for formal course work in those not infrequent cases in which an able
student's own research goals do not coincide fully with those of his sponsor.
For the same reasons, continued growth of fellowships and traineeships is
desirable because it relieves departments of the necessity of funding students
via the research-assistantship route.
Formal Training and "Curriculum" Examination Decades ago, the Ph.D.
general examination could pretend to test or demand-detailed knowl-
edge not only of a subdiscipline but even of the entire field of biology.
That time, if ever it really existed, is past; re-evaluation of the function
and nature of the general, or qualifying, examination has thus become a
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EDUCATION IN BIOLOGY
preoccupation of faculties, and it is rarely satisfactorily defined. The
diversity of the biological sciences makes the problem more acute than in
the physical sciences. At the other extreme, the inclination to be "realistic"
about such examinations has too often resulted in an examination and
hence a whole curriculum orientation" that is unnecessarily specialized.
It is clear that the diversity inherent in the biological sciences, and the
need for specialists ranging from economic entomologists to molecular
biologists, will continue to demand a wide range of specialty-oriented grad-
uate departments. But this hardly explains the extreme diversity of pro-
grams that have in fact evolved. The total biological enterprise in one of
our leading graduate schools is fractionated into over 20 departments, each
administering its own doctoral program. In fact, there is little excuse for
persistence of even the traditional botany-zoology cleavage. Biology has
undergone a century of maturation capped by two decades of extremely
rapid advance. There is a central core of empirical generalization and
theory whose existence every biological specialization must recognize, and
doctoral programs should no longer be based on selection from the a la
carte menu of courses that a department happens to offer.
We are impressed by the fact that major national efforts have been
devoted to the development of curricula in biology at the high school and
undergraduate levels, but insufficient thought has been given to the develop-
ment of a core curriculum at the graduate level. Graduate students in
biology, unlike those in physics, come to the university with widely dis-
parate undergraduate backgrounds. Those who were biology majors often
have an inadequate background in mathematics and the physical sciences,
and even within biology present a preparation that is too unpredictable and
disorganized to constitute a secure basis for advanced work. The slowly
increasing number who enter from the physical sciences, on the other hand,
have had virtually no exposure to the "classical" areas of biology. The
majority of graduate departments fail to remedy this deficiency as they
succumb to the twin pressures for a "realistic" four- to five-year program
and adequate coverage of advanced work.
There is no reason why graduate departments cannot, with appropriate
curriculum planning, overcome the problems posed by the welcome diversity
of their entering students. These problems cannot be expected to disappear;
increasing numbers of students with primary preparation in the physical
sciences will continue to undertake graduate study in the life sciences, and
the trend toward more uniform preparation within biology itself will move
slowly. Because there is a fundamental unity in biology, it is desirable for
the graduate program to provide basic competence in the fundamentals of
genetics, evolutionary theory ~ and the major outlines of the history of
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life), physiology and biochemistry of cell and organism, developmental
biology, and population biology. Our concern is, moreover, not just that
the students have some adequate course preparation in these five areas,
but that their interrelations in contributing to a truly general science of
life be fully developed.
There is no doubt, in our view, that a student with an exclusively physical
science background could be given this proper overview of the central
core in biology within a year, yet we know of no single department that
has seized the challenge of developing a general biology at the graduate
level. Nor is its utility to be thought of as limited to those with physical
science training. It is a compelling irony that the last time most biological
scientists even attempted to see the subject in perspective was before they
knew it as freshman or sophomore undergraduates!
Beyond this point, the graduate experience will properly take a series
of separate paths, depending upon the special requirements of the discipline
for which the student is preparing. But it should not be supposed that, for
most research workers in the life sciences, this special training can simply
be laid over an appropriate background in physics and chemistry without
an understanding that extends across the whole of biology. There is a
genuine general biology today that is more than a shotgun marriage of
subdisciplines; its focus is the organization of living things, and it recog-
nizes that the analysis and understanding of cellular and organismic organi-
zation is the goal that characterizes or defines the enterprise of the biologist
as against that of the purely physical scientist.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
graduate student
