RECEPTORES A MOTOR

Context

The United States has a population of around 317 million, with an increase of around 2.25 million between 2013 and 2014, and is the third most populous country, behind China and India. As in other countries, such as England and India, urban populations are growing and rural populations declining, with around 80% of people now thought to live in urban areas. Accreditation and oversight of universities is a federal responsibility, but approval of accreditation agencies is at national level, through the US Department of Education, which maintains a list of currently accredited institutions and programmes, updated three-monthly²⁴.

The United States have long been considered world leaders in postgraduate education with regard to both numbers and quality (Agarwal, 2009; Wildavsky, 2010; Gumport in Altbach et al, 2011; The Economist, 2012; National Science Foundation2014). Its postgraduates often emerge as leaders of international corporations, have global mobility after graduating, and progress to senior positions in academia and beyond.

US institutions consistently dominate the top 100 in global university league tables (Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 2013; THE 2014) and in the latest results, the US has 52 and 45 universities respectively in the top 100 of these tables, compared with the UK’s nine/11, Australia’s five (both rankings), Germany’s four/five and Norway’s one (see also Table 25 in Annex H). The Association of American Universities (AAU), a group of 62 research universities, suggests that the US’s graduate programmes are ‘an international magnet for talented students’ (AAU, 2014).

The United States are also widely estimated to spend a larger proportion of their GDP on higher education than any other country, yet have ‘only the 15^th largest proportion of young people with a university education’ (The Economist, 2012), the implication being that there is a gap in expectations between the high level of funding and what it achieves.

The US is known for its long tradition of liberal arts undergraduate education which is characterised by small class sizes and a teaching-centred approach and, despite its title, includes STEM (BS) as well as arts, humanities and social sciences (BA) subjects. A US liberal arts degree typically lasts for four years and focuses on breadth as well as depth of study. Thus, those entering graduate programmes (in the US the term ‘graduate’ rather than ‘postgraduate’ is used) in the US or elsewhere have often studied a broader range of subjects at undergraduate level than in many countries as well as having had the opportunity of an extra year to deepen their understanding, giving them an advantage when applying for graduate programmes overseas.

Recent developments in doctoral education have included a five-year project for ‘transforming doctoral programs’, the Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate (CID), (Walker et al, 2008). This work was taking place at the same time as the Bologna Process incorporated ‘third cycle’ (doctoral) degrees (2003) and when in the UK Roberts funding was being used to introduce professional skills training in doctoral programmes. The Carnegie Initiative supports cohort models of doctoral training, the development of a range of professional skills and also inter-disciplinarity. In parallel, it advocates flexibility to take account of individual and discipline-specific needs and recognises the diversity of

24 US Department of Education (2014) Database of Accredited Postsecondary Institutions and Programs:

http://ope.ed.gov/accreditation/

153 backgrounds of doctoral candidates. As with the 10-year assessment of research doctorates (see below), the CID regards doctoral researchers as integral to a university’s research effort.

The US graduate funding environment and incentivising high quality research

Another distinctive feature of US higher education is its funding model: federal grants are available to undergraduates and postgraduates at different levels in a variety of categories, but the funding of universities is principally a state responsibility, with the federal government retaining the obligation to provide research funding. Over half of the US’s ‘basic’ scientific research (primarily aimed at increasing ‘fundamental knowledge and understanding’) is said to be carried out in universities (Gumport, in Altbach et al, 2011; AAU, 2014) and is funded by the federal government through organisations such as the National Institutes of Health (the largest funders), the National Science Foundation, NASA, and the Defense and Energy Departments.

The most highly esteemed US universities globally and nationally are able to secure millions of dollars through endowments which adds to their standing and capability to sustain critical mass of staff and students. A National Science Foundation study found that 10 out of 896 eligible institutions received approximately 20% of federal research and development grants in 2011, with Johns

Hopkins being granted more than twice as much as any other university (Weigley and Hess, 2013), (acknowledging that universities with medical schools such as Johns Hopkins receive significant research funding from the National Institutes of Health). All but one of these 10 institutions feature in the most recent top 20 of one or both of the two global ranking lists summarised in Annex H, showing that as in some other countries’ higher education systems it is often easier to obtain funding if you are already successful and financially secure.

In 2012 funding cuts for public universities at state level caused a flurry of concern, with some claiming that, based on trends between 1980 and 2011, ‘average state fiscal support for higher education will reach zero by 2059’, with the caveat that this situation could arise sooner in some states than others (Mortensen, 2012). The source of this calculation was the National Income and Product Accounts of the United States, which considered expenditure by state and local

governments on higher education and based the prediction on an extrapolation of percentage expenditure decreases between 1980 and 2011. Two states bucked the trend: Wyoming (up by 2.3%

since 1980) and North Dakota (up by almost 1%).

Mortensen claims that as a result of cuts, public universities are ‘enrolling a shrinking share of students from lower-income families and competing most aggressively for the students that can afford to pay higher tuitions with institutional discounts’. This situation is explored further in the Fair Access section below. Other senior figures in graduate education spoke about the limits on doctoral recruitment as a result of funding constraints and the lack of academic jobs available for PhD graduates (Gumport in Altbach et al, 2011). And in 2012, concern was expressed that funding cuts announced by the federal government in 2011 resulting in increases in tuition fees would only exacerbate trends such as declining literacy in college graduates (The Economist, 2012).

According to one of our interviewees, the significant decrease in federal funding is likely to lead to a reduction in the number of graduate, and in particular, masters programmes available which, combined with greater levels of debt in those considering applying to postgraduate programmes, may reduce the numbers of masters and doctoral graduates in future. In this interviewee’s opinion, however, this situation is most likely to affect institutions ‘at the margins’, with elite universities managing to sustain current levels. Another view is that, despite the reduction in federal funding and the possibility of debt inhibiting growth, masters education could flourish, because of its increasing popularity and perceived value in employment (particularly in vocational subjects, see below), and

154 that some institutions will be able to expand masters programmes thereby increasing tuition fee revenue.

Incentivising universities and schools to improve research quality

One of our contributors spoke about funding models, rewarding excellence and the need to grow critical mass in high quality research. It is common practice in Australia, the US and the UK for most public financial support for research to be distributed to those who are already excellent and this model also prevails within institutions, with already successful departments and schools able to generate more income. The alternative view put forward by our interviewee is that there is no automatic relationship between quality and the need for support and that to increase excellence overall, funding should be allocated to departments or schools in universities thought to have the most potential to improve, because top-ranked departments may not continue to advance the more funding they receive (although they do need support to maintain their performance). In other words, funding should also be awarded where it will make the most difference, for example, to enable a new head of school to make changes that will lead to higher quality research and perhaps the ability to generate more external research funding. In a more fine-grained funding environment, there might be a threshold below which a department would not be permitted to admit research students. Our contributor recognised the challenges of identifying departments that might benefit from additional funding but this would be one way of growing critical mass within an institution, whereas incentivising those who are already at the top may lead to over-concentration and shrinkage.

Institutional diversity

With such a large number of higher education institutions, it is unsurprising that US universities are categorised with regard to their postgraduate education capacity using the Carnegie classifications.

Separate classification groups have been developed for undergraduate and postgraduate

institutions, the latter being the Graduate Instructional Program Classification (Carnegie Foundation, 2014). This contains 18 categories of postgraduate education and provides a clear indication of an institution’s capacity in either masters or doctoral education, or both. Figure 23 shows two

flowcharts giving details about the various classifications and the numbers of US institutions in each category. Part 1 summarises institutions without doctoral programmes, Part 2 institutions with doctoral programmes. These classifications make it clear what programmes each institution is accredited to provide, ranging from one or more masters programmes in a single field, e.g.

education or business, to multiple subject masters and doctoral programmes, including those in STEM subjects. In the main all institutions who offer doctorates also offer masters programmes.

155 Figure 23: Carnegie Foundation Programme Classifications (Carnegie Foundation, 2014)

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