U.S.-Japan Joint Research on Productivity of Graduate Education

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We conducted an ethonographic study on how research training are carried out in the fields of engineering, physics, economics, and history. We visited several graduate schools for each study field throughout Japan, and had interviews with professors and graduate students. The focal topics are recruitment and selection of graduate students, choice of topic for the master's thesis and the doctoral dissertation, and pattern of interaction between advisors and graduate students. The series of intervews reveals much more disciplinary differences than institutional ones. Training system of advancced students in the fields of engineering and physics are more "structured" than in the fields of economics and history.