Educating Scholars

Ronald G. Ehrenberg is the Irving M. Ives Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations and Economics at Cornell University and director of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute. Harriet Zuckerman is senior vice president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and professor emerita of sociology at Columbia University. Jeffrey A. Groen is a research economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Sharon M. Brucker is a project coordinator at the Survey Research Center of Princeton University.

"Administrators and faculty in doctoral programs in the humanities would do well to read this book. Likely many of the conversations they have had regarding improving their own doctoral programs will be represented in the pages. But the book's utility goes beyond the humanities. . . . Educating Scholars can help departments and doctoral programs of all stripes reconsider what is known about graduate education and provide important context for the conversation around improving the experience for all involved."---Jeffery Bieber, Journal of Higher Education --- "In covering a wide spectrum of important practical aspects of degree completion, this book is valuable for all those who are involved in doctoral programs either as supervisors or as decision-makers and administrators. More broadly, it comprises extremely useful material for those affected by, interested in, or aspiring to effect change in postgraduate studies in the humanities."---Marianna Papastephanou, European Legacy --- "The future of Renaissance scholarship . . . depends upon the recruitment and training of graduate students in an improved and efficient system. The Mellon Foundation invested in that admirable and necessary business and the results, harder to achieve than was at first expected, are produced and honestly analyzed in [Educating Scholars] . . . essential reading for all involved in the enterprise." --- "The lessons Ehrenberg and his colleagues draw from the successes of the program seem like common sense until one considers how many departments fail to follow them."---Steven Brint, American Journal of Sociology --- "The right combination of money and policies can make real progress in reducing the time to degree for earning humanities doctorates, but the six-year humanities Ph.D. is probably not in the cards. Those are among the key findings of one of the most ambitious efforts ever to reform the humanities Ph.D., as discussed in one of the most thorough (and frank) evaluations of such an effort. . . . [Educating Scholars] closes by noting that 'intensive critical attention' to graduate education has been shown to make a difference in completion and time to degree. And the book notes just how formative graduate education can be: 'The education scholars receive stays with them; its influence flows into their teaching and research and finally to the successive generations of their students.'"---Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed