[ Contents | Next | Previous | Up ]
From: Bob Quesal
Date: 10/10/01
Time: 5:13:51 PM
Remote Name: 143.43.201.169
Hi Bill and Kevin:
Sorry to respond to two posts in one message, but yesterday was "one of those days" and I am just now catching up.
You both make excellent points. On the one hand, a lack of doctoral programs probably does play a role in the current state of affairs as Bill points out. But the dearth of doctoral *students* is not necessarily related to the dearth of programs. Instead, I believe it is due to the fact that a lot of people no longer see the inherent value in things, but instead see value represented in "reimbursement" (as Kevin pointed out). I think the whole doctoral shortage issue is symptomatic of the move away from doing things because they have inherent value toward doing things because of monetary reward. I have said (although I probably heard it from someone else) that what we need to increase the pool of doctoral candidates is a good recession. :-)>
It seems that people look at working in higher ed and see the negatives - years of work, college loans going on forever, and relatively low pay once you are done. The intangibles - a relatively flexible schedule, the ability to help people, to nurture students, to (at least attempt to) generate new knowledge , pretty good vacations, etc. - are not seen as having value. I think that is more of a "a social attitude" thing. Even if the money was there for doctoral programs, we have to have :”butts in seats” and fluency is not the only area having problems attracting doctoral students.
This gets to one of the points I made in my paper - if the mentors are no longer at the universities, then there is no one to instill the passion in students. Luckily, we do have folks like Kevin - who will be a great Ph.D. - but we did an informal study at the Special Interest Division 4 Leadership Conference in Toronto in May and there are fewer and fewer “fluency specialists” on faculties at major research institutions. As Kevin points out, many retiring “fluency”faculty are not being replaced by faculty with expertise in that area.
One of the things I hope to accomplish during my term on the SID-4 Steering Committee is to make this a priority and make ASHA more aware of what the ramifications of this are. Whether I will succeed is anyone’s guess (I’ll probably succeed in getting kicked out of ASHA), but I wish I had been more vocal in 1993 and the years following. Hindsight, unfortunately, is 20-20.
Thanks, Bill and Kevin, for your posts.
Bob Q.