Group suggests doctoral changes
As a part of a five-year initiative, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation published a report containing suggestions on improving educational programs across the nation.
The report, “The Responsive Ph.D.: Innovations in U.S. Doctoral Education,” contains recommendations for universities, such as promoting public scholarships that apply academic expertise to social challenges, broadening and reinvigorating efforts to open the doctorate to new populations, particularly from underrepresented minority groups, strengthening the authority and administrative capacity of graduate deans, fostering frequent dialogue among doctoral programs and illuminating paths to alternative careers outside the research university.
The study was compiled by a consortium of colleges, including UCLA and UC Irvine, and concluded that expressing concrete expectations about doctoral graduate programs to students once they begin pursuing their Ph.D. is integral to class retention. In addition, the report stated that universities have an urgent need to develop better mentoring services for their programs to increase diversity.
The colleges also recommended goals for the near future, including emphasizing K-12 education in order to increase diversity, seeking new ways to apply academic knowledge to social challenges, promoting public scholarship, strengthening doctoral education internationally and improving professional development of doctoral students in a full range of careers.
Public colleges see steep price hikes
Between 2001-02 and 2004-05, the costs of attending public four-year universities grew 22 percent, according to a U.S. Department of Education report released late last month.
The annual data, issued by the department’s National Center for Education Statistics, also found that fees and tuition costs for in-state students at those institutions grew by 33 percent. The cost of tuition and fees at private four-year universities have not increased as sharply as public four-year universities, which currently average a total of $4,920. At private four-year for-profit profit college, the jump of tuitions and fees was only 22 percent since 2001-02. All numbers were adjusted for inflation.
While the total cost of four-year public universities is still less expensive than private four-year colleges, the inflation at public colleges has been larger. In 2001-02, students who attended in-state public colleges paid an average total of $11,700 a year, while current students pay an average of $14,320, an increase of 22 percent. The total cost of attendance at private four-year, for-profit colleges was $23,192 in 2001-02, but currently stands at $27,852, a 20 percent jump.
The report also found that the amount of women who received degrees increased less than 1 percent since last year while the rate of men receiving degrees stayed the same.
FDA approves UCSD depression device
Faculty at UCSD Medical Center have made another option for people affected by major depressive disorders, according to a university press release.
Psychiatrists and neurosurgeons at the center partnered in the effort to create an implant that can treat patients who are resistant to typical depression treatments.
The device, which expedites a process called vagus nerve stimulation, was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in July for use as “an adjunctive long-term treatment for chronic or recurrent depression in patients 18 years of age and older who are experiencing a major depressive episode that has not responded adequately to four or more antidepressant treatments,” according to the release.
VNS is delivered thr ough the device, which is about two inches in diameter, when it is surgically implanted in the patient’s chest. The apparatus then sends electrical signals through a nerve in the neck to the brain.
