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Professional skills for graduate students
“The university is responsible for providing graduate students with the best possible preparation for their future roles whether within academia or in other sectors. This responsibility extends to developing professional skills.” (CAGS 2008, p.2)
When’s the last time you heard something like that come out of the mouth of a graduate dean?
This revolutionary statement is from a an important document currently posted on the website of the Canadian Association of Graduate Studies, entitled Professional Skills Development for Graduate Students.
This document takes as given that graduates of Master’s and doctoral level programs have important roles to play in society, not just in universities. It states that,
“… funding agencies, universities, employers of highly qualified people, researchers, and graduates themselves recognize the importance of professional skills that complement their disciplinary expertise. To be competitive then, graduate students increasingly need to engage in ongoing development of their skills in areas that complement their academic programs and enhance their employability. The knowledge economy demands a high level of professional skills from all of its participants if they are going to increase the economic and social benefits for Canadians and for society in general.”(p.2)
Focusing on the broad categories of academic, private, public, or not-for-profit sectors, the paper identifies four areas of skills development that are considered to have a ‘likelihood of success in implementation in the university context: communication, management, teaching, and ethics.” (p. 6)
It goes on to define these areas and implementation principles for ensuring that all graduate students are provided equal opportunity not only to acquire disciplinary expertise but also these complementary, professional skills. The hope is this document will provide a catalyst for universities across Canada to develop a core set of professional skills that all graduate students will be able to master as they complete their studies in any field.
I want to highlight a point made in the report, that most, if not all the skills inherent in the categories listed above, are those usually acquired during the course of many graduate programs. What is revolutionary here is that not only are university administrators are being called to normalize the diversity of post graduate careers paths. They are being asked, to an extent, to accept a degree of responsibility in ensuring their graduates have educational experiences that can be explicitly applied to nonacademic contexts.
In Carolyn Watters’ Dean’s podcast, she discusses this paper with the outgoing president of CAGS, Martin Kreiswirth. At one point during the interview, they express concern that funding may well prove to be the deal breaker that prevents the professional skills concept from being adapted.
I think that in this case, ‘funding’ could a red herring diverting attention away from what is likely to be the real obstacle to the implementation of the professional skills initiative – a fear that this will open the door for graduate programs to become nothing more than advanced workplace training programs. This is a real and present danger – but not a new one, and not one that will be exacerbated if these principles are followed. Market pressures realized through changes in what research is funded has a far greater influence on the structure of graduate education than this program will ever have.
Imagine, if you will, being able to get professional presentation coaching, not only for academic conferences and job talks, but also for job interviews in a range of sectors as a normal part of graduate level education. Or what if we followed the suggestion made in another podcast by Dan Russell, the Google guru, that universities begin to routinely do post-mortems at the conclusion of team research projects to identify more explicitly what worked and what didn’t. That knowledge is critical both inside and outside academe, and would fit relatively seamlessly within many current academic practices. Shifts like these would only improve the quality of graduate education, and maybe even the career transitions of its graduates.
Right now the CAGS paper may be just a good idea, but it has the potential to be a revolutionary one, and boy, could we could use a revolution in our universities right about now.
What about you? Take a look at the paper (it’s only 9 pages) and let us know what you think.
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I agree that funding is likely a red herring. Your suggestions are excellent. Another is encouraging students to arrange internships during the graduate school years. These could be short and need not take a lot of time away from their studies but could provide valuable insight and experience in careers outside academe. (This idea was put forward by Lexi Lord in the US who runs the website Beyond Academe, but it is worth repeating.)
There’s little doubt that CAGS has helped to highlight a very important issue, by publishing the paper on Professional Skills on its website. The Association suggests that the paper is a “springboard” for discussion, and so it is. It synthesizes some of the discussion by the Tri-Council, STLHE and other organizations, and offers CAGS members a framework for moving forward in supporting graduate students.
However, the focus on skills training that is evident in some new publications, and on the websites of many prestigious universities may, in fact, be a step in the wrong direction. Skills training is very effective in specific situations — learning to fix a car, use a piece of software, play soccer, toss a pancake… It is hardly sufficient, though, to help grad students self-actualize and develop into future global and community leaders.
A model which I’m researching is competency-based learning. NPEC and others have defined competencies a “bundles” of skill, knowledges, attitudes, behaviours etc. (e.g., http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2002/2002159.pdf). I’d suggest that a narrow focus on skills training for grad students is problematic for many reasons, including the one that you identify about the possibility it will morph into job training. I hope that others will be argue, along with me, that identifying competencies and helping grad students develop them, is a much better strategy,