Report Suggests Improvements to Graduate STEM Education

As highlighted in a February 2018 Feature article in BioScience, “Biology Graduate Programs Educating Students for Life Beyond Academia: Broadening Horizons for Young Scientists (https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/bix152), students and institutions are taking fresh looks at graduate education programs. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) has just offered additional perspectives to this on-going discussion with a new report, “Graduate STEM Education for the 21st Century.” The report offers recommendations for improving U.S. graduate education in STEM. “Bringing the report’s vision of graduate STEM education to fruition will require shifting the current system, which focuses primarily on the needs of institutions of higher learning and those of the research enterprise itself, to one that is more student-centered,” the report says. According to the report, the current graduate education system rewards faculty primarily for research output. The report calls for higher education institutions to prioritize teaching and mentoring by rewarding faculty members for demonstrating “high-quality teaching and inclusive mentoring for graduate students.” This requires a cultural shift, with federal and state funding agencies realigning their grant award criteria to increase rewards for effective teaching, mentoring, and advising rather than relying on a reward system based on number of publications or future scie...
Source: Public Policy Reports - Category: Biology Authors: Source Type: news