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Decades of Excellence: Graduate Education at Berkeley
An excerpt from Promoting Excellence in a Climate of Change: Graduate Division Report, 1985-1997
"When in January 1900, five university presidents-Charles William Eliot of Harvard, William Rainey Harper of Chicago, Benjamin Ide Wheeler of California, Seth Low of Columbia, and Daniel Coit Gilman of Johns Hopkins-invited nine other United States university presidents to meet in the following month in Chicago for the purpose of forming a permanent organization devoted to 'matters of common interest relating to graduate study,' none of them guessed that graduate education would become a major enterprise in the United States. Spearheaded by President Wheeler, this group of fourteen created the Association of American Universities (AAU) and set out to unify and improve the standards for the award of higher degrees at American universities," writes Maresi Nerad, former Director of Graduate Research, in the introduction to an anthology on graduate education.¹
Their
purpose, says Nerad, was to reverse the American trend of
pursuing graduate studies abroad, primarily in Germany. Not
only did they succeed in attracting graduate students from
the United States, they drew scores of international students,
including Germans, to American universities.
From the beginning, graduate education was part of the plan
for Berkeley. The first Berkeley Ph.D. was earned by John
Maxson Stillman, a member of the second entering class of
the University of California in 1870. After graduating in
1874, he studied chemistry for two years in Germany at Würzburg
and Strasbourg, returning to be an instructor in chemistry.
He received his Ph.D. from Berkeley in 1885 and eventually
became the first head of the chemistry department at Stanford.
The first woman to receive a Ph.D. from the University of California was Millicent Washburn Shinn, who received her degree in education (or educational psychology) in 1898 with a dissertation in the new field of child study; her Ph.D. was the tenth awarded by the campus.
Peer
Review
When the 1995 National Research Council Report on Quality
in Ph.D. Education in the U.S. ranked Berkeley as the nation's
best graduate institution overall, Chancellor Chang-Lin Tien
called the report "a tribute to our faculty and students,"
and said, "Berkeley continues to provide top quality
education and to hold a commanding position in research."
The New York Times was quick to point out that Berkeley achieved
the top spot despite an 11 percent budget reduction from 1990
to 1993.
"We are proud that Berkeley's faculty and Ph.D. programs have again received top ratings in such a respected survey. About 8,000 of our faculty peers across the country did the rankings, and they know where the best work is being done," said Joseph Cerny, who served as Dean of the Graduate Division from 1985 to 2000.
Almost 60 years earlier, Monroe E. Deutsch, then Vice President and Provost of the University, wrote an article, "The Scholarly Standing of the University," that asked: "What is the standing of the University of California in comparison with that of other universities and colleges of the country? This is indeed a matter of critical importance, especially to young men and women who are attempting to choose a college, and to their parents, who cooperate with them in making a choice."²
The answer to Deutsch's question was provided by the first objective comparison between our nation's universities, a survey begun in 1934 and completed three years later by the American Council on Education (ACE). Two thousand scholars in the United States were asked to classify graduate schools, with reference to their own fields, as distinguished, adequate, or inadequate. Harvard captured first place with 23 distinguished departments, and California, Chicago, and Columbia tied for second place, with 21 distinguished departments each.
The 1937 report confirmed Berkeley's reputation as one of the finest universities in the country, further dispelling the myth that our nation's intellectual community extended no farther west than Chicago.
In 1966, ACE issued another comparative study of graduate schools. This time, Berkeley topped Harvard and all others surveyed as the "best balanced distinguished university in the country."
In 1982, a national study conducted by four academic organizations once again proclaimed Berkeley as the strongest graduate institution across the board.
The NRC study is recognized by academics, higher education policymakers, and research foundations as the most reliable and comprehensive measure of university doctoral programs in the United States. The latest report, prepared by the Council's Committee for the Study of Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States, is 740 pages long; it compared 3,634 areas of study in 41 fields at 274 universities, public and private. The study considered the views of nearly 8,000 distinguished faculty members nationwide and used multiple criteria to assess the quality of doctoral programs. Faculty achievements, research, and publications were evaluated, for example, as well as each institution's effectiveness in educating future scholars and scientists.
Overall, 97 percent of Berkeley's graduate programs evaluated in the study made its "Top 10" list.
¹ Nerad, Maresi, with Raymond June and Debra Sands Miller. "The
Cyclical Problems of Graduate Education: Institutional Responses
in the 1990s." In Graduate Education in the United States,
edited by Maresi Nerad, from the book series Contemporary
Higher Education: Selections from the Literature, edited by
Philip G. Altbach. New York and London: Garland Publishing,
Inc., 1997.
² Deutsch, Monroe. "The Scholarly Standing of the University."
In The Golden Book of California, edited by Robert Sibley.
Berkeley: California Alumni Association, 1937.
