Dalhousie’s first Master’s degree was awarded as early as 1869, but the Faculty of Graduate Studies dates back to a Senate decision in November 1948, and the appointment of Dr. J.H.L. Johnstone as the first Dean in 1949. The first PhD program (in the biological sciences) was established in 1955 and the first PhD graduated in 1959. Since that time, Dalhousie’s graduate programs have seen a remarkable and continued growth.
The Faculty of Graduate Studies is responsible for graduate admissions (shared with the Registrar’s Office), the administration of student programs, scholarships and financial awards, convocation audits, and relations with external agencies awarding scholarships to graduate students, including the national granting councils and the Killam Trust. It monitors and enhances quality by means of admission standards, regular internal and external academic reviews of existing and proposed new programs, student program and progress reports, and by setting standards for thesis presentation and arranging for the external examination of PhD theses. Since last year, the Faculty of Graduate Studies is also responsible for postdoctoral fellows and associates.
The regulations involved in the administration of these responsibilities are by necessity fairly complex as well as extensive, having to cover the many different situations that may be encountered in such a varied environment. The individual sections in the Dalhousie University Graduate Studies Calendar cover admissions, registration, degree requirements etc. These are the formal regulations governing the relation between the university and graduate students and, since most recently, postdoctoral fellows and associates. However, in addition there have to be policies and regulations covering governance of financial awards of various kinds, student administration, and program review. With the ever increasing introduction of new programs and modification of existing programs, changes in administrative processes, web-based administrative procedures, increased demands on the university by external granting agencies, increased demands to offer graduate degree programs that prepare students for professional careers and service, i.e., increased demands for professional development for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows and associates, etc., the tasks of the Faculty of Graduate Studies are getting more complex and labor-intensive at an alarming rate, especially if one considers that there still is the need for quality assurance at each step of accommodating the various demands.
And yet, ever since I came to Dalhousie in 1990, I’m acutely aware of the sentiment by some academic units and faculties that the graduate education mission of the university would be better served by reverting the responsibilities of the Faculty of Graduate Studies back to individual academic units. Now, here we have an interesting hypothetical scenario. DEREGULATION, despite the fact that individual academic units and faculties (may?) have an intrinsic conflict of interest, when it comes to program reviews, graduate student funding issues and scholarship allocations, admission standards, supervision requirements, etc. A simple minded analogy to this scenario would be to have a soccer World Cup final, a hockey Stanley Cup or a baseball World Series without referees. On reflection, there is an even better analogy that currently affects us all, the current worldwide state of the economy. Didn’t Mr. Greenspan, the ex-US Federal Reserve chief and, according to The Globe and Mail, a libertarian thinker who believed in the right of individuals to live entirely for their own interests, wrongly assume that the self-interest of banks would mitigate risk. In the October 24, 2008 edition of The Globe and Mail, Mr. Greenspan is quoted of telling a US congressional committee exploring the role of regulators in the financial crisis that “he made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms.” He, according to the same article, also stated that “the best minds at the Federal Reserve – including his own – could not have foreseen the explosion of subprime lending or the historic meltdown of the real estate market.”
I abstain from commenting on the quality of minds at the US Federal Reserve. However, in closing, I want to take this analogy back full circle to the role of Faculties of Graduate Studies within Universities and how this role is perceived by individual academic units and faculties by sharing an observation, which apparently applies to any regulatory organization. Paraphrasing Sunny, such organizations are perceived by some (or many?) as cumbersome until something goes terribly wrong.
The Faculty of Graduate Studies is responsible for graduate admissions (shared with the Registrar’s Office), the administration of student programs, scholarships and financial awards, convocation audits, and relations with external agencies awarding scholarships to graduate students, including the national granting councils and the Killam Trust. It monitors and enhances quality by means of admission standards, regular internal and external academic reviews of existing and proposed new programs, student program and progress reports, and by setting standards for thesis presentation and arranging for the external examination of PhD theses. Since last year, the Faculty of Graduate Studies is also responsible for postdoctoral fellows and associates.
The regulations involved in the administration of these responsibilities are by necessity fairly complex as well as extensive, having to cover the many different situations that may be encountered in such a varied environment. The individual sections in the Dalhousie University Graduate Studies Calendar cover admissions, registration, degree requirements etc. These are the formal regulations governing the relation between the university and graduate students and, since most recently, postdoctoral fellows and associates. However, in addition there have to be policies and regulations covering governance of financial awards of various kinds, student administration, and program review. With the ever increasing introduction of new programs and modification of existing programs, changes in administrative processes, web-based administrative procedures, increased demands on the university by external granting agencies, increased demands to offer graduate degree programs that prepare students for professional careers and service, i.e., increased demands for professional development for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows and associates, etc., the tasks of the Faculty of Graduate Studies are getting more complex and labor-intensive at an alarming rate, especially if one considers that there still is the need for quality assurance at each step of accommodating the various demands.
And yet, ever since I came to Dalhousie in 1990, I’m acutely aware of the sentiment by some academic units and faculties that the graduate education mission of the university would be better served by reverting the responsibilities of the Faculty of Graduate Studies back to individual academic units. Now, here we have an interesting hypothetical scenario. DEREGULATION, despite the fact that individual academic units and faculties (may?) have an intrinsic conflict of interest, when it comes to program reviews, graduate student funding issues and scholarship allocations, admission standards, supervision requirements, etc. A simple minded analogy to this scenario would be to have a soccer World Cup final, a hockey Stanley Cup or a baseball World Series without referees. On reflection, there is an even better analogy that currently affects us all, the current worldwide state of the economy. Didn’t Mr. Greenspan, the ex-US Federal Reserve chief and, according to The Globe and Mail, a libertarian thinker who believed in the right of individuals to live entirely for their own interests, wrongly assume that the self-interest of banks would mitigate risk. In the October 24, 2008 edition of The Globe and Mail, Mr. Greenspan is quoted of telling a US congressional committee exploring the role of regulators in the financial crisis that “he made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms.” He, according to the same article, also stated that “the best minds at the Federal Reserve – including his own – could not have foreseen the explosion of subprime lending or the historic meltdown of the real estate market.”
I abstain from commenting on the quality of minds at the US Federal Reserve. However, in closing, I want to take this analogy back full circle to the role of Faculties of Graduate Studies within Universities and how this role is perceived by individual academic units and faculties by sharing an observation, which apparently applies to any regulatory organization. Paraphrasing Sunny, such organizations are perceived by some (or many?) as cumbersome until something goes terribly wrong.
Have a good Halloween weekend.
Dieter