Having just completed a rather lengthy graduate school program, I am mystified that the Educational Testing Services — the company that administers the GRE and other standardized tests, including the SAT and TOEFL – is offering a new test to determine whether students have the “personality” for graduate school (reported in the Chicago Tribune by Larry Gordon).
Because nearly half of all students who start doctorate programs don’t finish, educators have long wondered how best to judge applicants to graduate schools and reduce that attrition rate.
Now, the Educational Testing Service says it has just the thing. The ETS, which runs the Graduate Record Examinations, will soon offer a supplemental assessment of graduate-school applicants on those personal characteristics that could help students tackle advanced studies.
Now, going to graduate school does require some personal characteristics. So does medical school, but no one is suggesting adding a section to the MCAT where potential future doctors watch gory surgeries to see whether they can stomach the sight of blood. And it’s unclear what this Personal Potential Index will add something that graduate schools cannot find in applicants’ CVs and letters of recommendation.
But the idea underlying this test is what’s really disturbing — that not finishing graduate school is a personal failing rather than a systemic problem. In other words, if there were just better ways of choosing the students admitted to graduate school, there would be a higher graduation rate.
What’s missing here is an understanding of how graduate school works, and what graduate students do for universities, and what the academic job market looks like.
Graduate students are in a strange situation. On entering a graduate program, they take classes and feel like students. As time goes on, they transition into an apprentice-like situation where they learn, teach undergraduate students, conduct original research, present papers at conferences, publish, etc. While they are still referred to as “graduate students” there is an acknowledgment that their role has changed (which is often indicated by calling them “advanced graduate students,” “ABDs [All But Dissertation],” etc.). They perform work for the university, both by teaching undergraduates (as teaching assistants or instructors) and adding to its prestige as a research institution.
Marc Bousquet’s book How the University Works shows that many people working on PhDs cannot expect to have high-paying jobs on graduation. (I am limiting my comments here to those in graduate school who intend to work in academia, not those doing degrees in law, business, or medicine.) The reality is that there are far fewer jobs in academia than full-time positions. Students who realize that a 8-12 year program may not pay off financially (in terms of tuition costs or opportunity costs) are not leaving graduate school because of their “personality,” but due to their economic situation.
Unlike undergrads — who enter and largely leave school unmarried and without children — graduate students start families, care for aging parents, hold other jobs, move for a spouse’s career, buy homes, etc. In short, they are adults. Is it surprising that sometimes they make adult decisions, such as concluding that “Graduate school no longer seems to be the best use of my time and resources” or “The cost of attending graduate school will never pay off in this field” or “This job, that I took just to pay the bills, is turning out to be more stable and profitable than staying in school” ?
Now, to some extent this situation this may be a case of “When one has a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” The ETS creates standardized tests; they are not in a position to reform academia. A background paper on the new test notes that “expressed concern about the continued problem of graduate school attrition and time-to-degree, which they suggested may at least partly be accounted for by noncognitive factors” (emphasis added). The use of the term “partly” is an implicit acknowledgment that personality is not the only factor in graduate school success.
Everyone prefers to have collegial, helpful colleagues, and these characteristics go far in academia and everywhere else. But academic success in graduate school is not just a matter of merit or personality, but luck and, yes, money. But I guess the ETS can’t test for that — I hope.
