Planning Meeting on Indicators of Doctoral Education

美国国家科学院国家研究委员会(NRC)将举行一次规划会议，讨论建立一个收集和传播研究型博士教育信息的计划。参与者将包括研究生研究项目、高等教育协会、提供博士项目比较信息的组织的代表，以及其他拥有相关知识和专业知识的人。本次会议将审议目前可获得的关于博士教育的数据范围，以及可通过常规数据收集计划获得的额外数据的潜在用途。会议还将考虑此类计划的几个实际方面，包括大学参与的意愿和NRC可能发挥的作用。计划会议的目标是确定是否对正在进行的指标计划有足够的兴趣和预期价值，以保证进一步的开发工作。NRC之前曾对研究型博士计划进行过三次临时研究，报告分别发表在1982年、1995年和2010年。规划会议将考虑这些先前研究的结果，以深入了解正在进行的指标计划中可能包括的数据类型、构建这些不同类型的数据所面临的技术挑战以及提供此类数据对领域的潜在价值。特别是，规划会议将考虑声誉排名的使用和项目排名的产生，这两项都在NRC之前的研究中受到了批评。此外，规划会议将考虑正在进行的计划的设计的影响，该计划提供关于最近获得的新信息源的研究博士教育的信息，包括商业努力，提供关于博士项目的出版和引文数据的比较信息。更广泛的影响。一套博士指标可能会为研究生教育界带来许多好处，包括机构自我改进的基准、高等教育研究的数据以及为政策制定者和潜在学生提供的比较信息。因此，正在进行的指标项目可以帮助推动研究博士项目质量的大幅提高。

The National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academy of Sciences will hold a planning meeting to discuss the creation of a program to collect and disseminate information about research doctoral education. Participants will include representatives of graduate research programs, higher education associations, organizations that provide comparative information on doctoral programs, and others with relevant knowledge and expertise. This meeting will consider the range of data currently available about doctoral education and the potential uses of additional data that could be obtained with a regular program of data collection. The meeting will also consider several practical aspects of such a program, including the willingness of universities to participate and the possible role of the NRC. The goal of the planning meeting is to determine if there is enough interest in and expected value from an ongoing indicators program to warrant further development work.The NRC has conducted three prior studies of research doctorate programs that were carried out on an ad hoc basis, with reports published in 1982, 1995, and 2010. The planning meeting will consider the results of these prior studies for insights about the types of data that might be included in an ongoing indicators program, the technical challenges in constructing these different types of data, and the potential value to the field of making such data available. In particular, the planning meeting will consider the use of reputational rankings and the production of program rankings, both of which were criticized in the prior NRC studies. In addition the planning meeting will consider the implications for the design of an ongoing program to provide information about research doctoral education of new information sources that have recently become available, including commercial efforts to provide comparative information on publication and citation data across doctoral programs. Broader Impacts. A set of doctoral indicators could potentially provide the graduate education community with a number of benefits, including benchmarks for institutional self-improvement, data for higher education research, and comparative information for policymakers and prospective students. As a result, an ongoing indicator program could help drive substantial increases in the quality of research doctoral programs.