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• 12 March 2024

Bring PhD assessment into the twenty-first century

You have full access to this article via your institution.

Innovation in PhD education has not reached how doctoral degrees are assessed. Credit: Dan Dunkley/Science Photo Library

Research and teaching in today’s universities are unrecognizable compared with what they were in the early nineteenth century, when Germany and later France gave the world the modern research doctorate. And yet significant aspects of the process of acquiring and assessing a doctorate have remained remarkably constant. A minimum of three years of independent study mentored by a single individual culminates in the production of the doctoral thesis — often a magisterial, book-length piece of work that is assessed in an oral examination by a few senior academic researchers. In an age in which there is much research-informed innovation in teaching and learning, the assessment of the doctoral thesis represents a curious throwback that is seemingly impervious to meaningful reform.

But reform is needed. Some doctoral candidates perceive the current assessment system to lack transparency, and examiners report concerns of falling standards ( G. Houston A Study of the PhD Examination: Process, Attributes and Outcomes . PhD thesis, Oxford Univ.; 2018 ). Making the qualification more structured would help — and, equally importantly, would bring the assessment of PhD education in line with education across the board. PhD candidates with experience of modern assessment methods will become better researchers, wherever they work. Indeed, most will not be working in universities: the majority of PhD holders find employment outside academia.

Collection: Career resources for PhD students

It’s not that PhD training is completely stuck in the nineteenth century. Today’s doctoral candidates can choose from a range of pathways. Professional doctorates, often used in engineering, are jointly supervised by an employer and an academic, and are aimed at solving industry-based problems. Another innovation is PhD by publication, in which, instead of a final thesis on one or more research questions, the criterion for an award is a minimum number of papers published or accepted for publication. In some countries, doctoral students are increasingly being trained in cohorts, with the aim of providing a less isolating experience than that offered by the conventional supervisor–student relationship. PhD candidates are also encouraged to acquire transferable skills — for example, in data analysis, public engagement, project management or business, economics and finance. The value of such training would be even greater if these skills were to be formally assessed alongside a dissertation rather than seen as optional.

And yet, most PhDs are still assessed after the production of a final dissertation, according to a format that, at its core, has not changed for at least half a century, as speakers and delegates noted at an event in London last month on PhD assessment, organized by the Society for Research in Higher Educatio n. Innovations in assessment that are common at other levels of education are struggling to find their way into the conventional doctoral programme.

Take the concept of learning objectives. Intended to aid consistency, fairness and transparency, learning objectives are a summary of what a student is expected to know and how they will be assessed, and are given at the start of a course of study. Part of the ambition is also to help tutors to keep track of their students’ learning and take remedial action before it is too late.

PhD training is no longer fit for purpose — it needs reform now

Formative assessment is another practice that has yet to find its way into PhD assessment consistently. Here, a tutor evaluates a student’s progress at the mid-point of a course and gives feedback or guidance on what students need to do to improve ahead of their final, or summative, assessment. It is not that these methods are absent from modern PhDs; a conscientious supervisor will not leave candidates to sink or swim until the last day. But at many institutions, such approaches are not required of PhD supervisors.

Part of the difficulty is that PhD training is carried out in research departments by people who do not need to have teaching qualifications or awareness of innovations based on education research. Supervisors shouldn’t just be experts in their field, they should also know how best to convey that subject knowledge — along with knowledge of research methods — to their students.

It is probably not possible for universities to require all doctoral supervisors to have teaching qualifications. But there are smaller changes that can be made. At a minimum, doctoral supervisors should take the time to engage with the research that exists in the field of PhD education, and how it can apply to their interactions with students.

There can be no one-size-fits-all solution to improving how a PhD is assessed, because different subjects often have bespoke needs and practices ( P. Denicolo Qual. Assur. Educ. 11 , 84–91; 2003 ). But supervisors and representatives of individual subject communities must continue to discuss what is most appropriate for their disciplines.

All things considered, there is benefit to adopting a more structured approach to PhD assessment. It is high time that PhD education caught up with changes that are now mainstream at most other levels of education. That must start with a closer partnership between education researchers, PhD supervisors and organizers of doctoral-training programmes in universities. This partnership will benefit everyone — PhD supervisors and doctoral students coming into the research workforce, whether in universities or elsewhere.

Education and training in research has entered many secondary schools, along with undergraduate teaching, which is a good thing. In the spirit of mutual learning, research doctoral supervisors, too, will benefit by going back to school.

Nature 627 , 244 (2024)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-00718-0

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Gse undergraduate programs highlight benefits of studying education.

When Neel Kishnani, ’21, MS ’23, started as a software engineer at one of Silicon Valley’s biggest tech companies, he found himself in a bit of an identity crisis.

He had excelled at his computer science classes at Stanford and was a teaching assistant while pursuing his master’s degree — a position where students came to him for help. Now he was working with colleagues with more experience, and suddenly he was the person in the room without all of the answers.

What has helped him adapt to his new environment is embracing opportunities to learn and, when he can, teach — practices he says he honed while pursuing the education minor through Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE).

“In my job I need to communicate with iPhone users about how to utilize their machines, so distilling the technical knowledge I have and teaching only what’s necessary is a useful skill,” said Kishnani, who works at Apple. “The end goal is for them to be able to problem solve and learn the material.”

Neel Kishnani (left) receives his honor cord for completing a minor of education with the GSE. (Photo: Ryan Zhang)

Kishnani is one of dozens of students each year who participate in undergraduate programs at the GSE (informally abbreviated UP@GSE). The programs introduce students to the field of education through research, theory, and practice while they pursue their bachelor’s degrees in other subjects.

Choose your own adventure

UP@GSE has two degree programs: the education minor, which is led by Senior Lecturer Jennifer Wolf , and the undergraduate honors program, headed by Professor Ari Kelman . Between the two, about 136 minor and honors degrees have been conferred to undergraduate students at Stanford.

“Every once in a while we would get an undergraduate who would go around knocking on doors in the GSE until someone answered, to express their interest in education and the desire to know more,” said Wolf, who originally proposed the minor to Stanford’s faculty senate committee. “Our thinking was that if we offered a minor, students could begin to explore an interest in education, then decide if they want to be a teacher, or pursue education further, or use their study in education to enhance whatever their major field of study was.”

To complete the minor, students are required to take a minimum of six education courses, which include options such as Introduction to Teaching and Learning, Educational Neuroscience, and History of Education in the United States, among others. Over the past 14 years, more than 200 students have graduated with the minor.

Jennifer Wolf (left) and Ari Kelman (right) at the 2023 UP@GSE honor cord ceremony. (Photo: Ryan Zhang)

Alternately, the honors program, which has been around since 1982, requires that students take a minimum of three courses, study their own research question, and submit a thesis in order to complete the research degree.

“Our honors program attracts students who are really interested in their research question, whatever it is,” said Kelman, who has led the program for the past five years. “For most students, the honors research is the first time in the course of their career as students where they’re answering their own questions about their own topic.”

Christian Sanchez , who will graduate with a bachelor’s degree in English this year, centered his education honors research on examining student experiences with the transfer credit evaluation process, as a direct result of his own experiences.

“As a nontraditional student who went through community college, I saw things I wanted to change and ways I wanted to make the process better for older adult learners,” said Sanchez, who would eventually like to serve as a community college president.

“I’ve really enjoyed my experience in my higher ed courses,” he said. “And while it’s a little intimidating to be in a room with students who are at a perceived higher academic level than you are, the experience has been really validating for me in that I feel confident in my own next steps after graduation.”

A symbiotic relationship

The GSE is the only graduate professional school at Stanford that offers a minor, bolstering the school’s connection to the undergraduate class.

“It’s an invaluable way to have fresh perspectives in our graduate-level courses and labs,” said GSE Professor Anne Charity Hudley, who is also the associate dean of educational affairs at the GSE. “Our graduate students are learning from undergrads as they work with them in the class, and our faculty get to connect with students coming in with a different lens.”

UP@GSE also works as a liaison between undergraduate students looking to learn more about education and curriculum, outside of the minor and honors program. An increasing number of majors and departments across the university cross-list or request to use GSE courses for degree completion.

 “It’s our mission to reach out to students, invite them into the world of what we do, and prepare them to be citizens of our educational democracy,” Wolf said. “Having these programs encourages not just undergrads but all the other departments to learn about teaching, learning, and education.”

A connection to community through public service

In addition to coursework and research, students who pursue UP@GSE often participate in public service initiatives through the Haas Center for Public Service.

“There’s a real synergistic relationship between the Haas Center and the GSE in that we do a lot of work supporting undergraduates to connect with youth-based programming here at the Haas Center,” said Paitra Houts, director of community engaged learning, focused on education, at the Haas Center.

Opportunities for students to engage with the Haas Center as part of their minor or honors program include Preschool Counts, a service-learning program in which Stanford students help children from East Palo Alto develop their math skills; Ravenswood Reads, where Stanford students tutor children in kindergarten through second grade in reading and language; and summer fellowships, where students intern for local and national organizations to learn more about the fields that they want to enter.

“This public service component is integral, because education is messy,” Houts said. “Theories are amazing, and they create a really incredible foundation, but when you actually go and get out into schools and nonprofits, I think you’re just much more prepared to go into the world and support the change that you learned about, that you want to be driving forward.”

Foster Cournoyer Hogan , who graduated from Stanford in 2021 with a bachelor’s in Native American Studies, said that his summer fellowship connected him to his current job as an operations manager for a Lakota Immersion school in his hometown.

“I realized that, with the combination of my degree and minor, I’d be able to work with this initiative after the fellowship and apply what I learned to continue the momentum that was already going,” Cournoyer Hogan said. 

Students who participate in UP@GSE learn skills that extend outside of the education space, such as how to form a convincing argument and how to improve their own learning.

“I think one of the big things that I walked away with as a result of the minor was a certain amount of respect and reverence for the profession of teaching,” Kishnani said. “And that a good learning outcome is only possible with the help of good teachers. It doesn’t just happen by chance.”

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Nvidia’s Jensen Huang: The incredible future of AI

Jensen Huang, the CEO of tech titan Nvidia, has a message for the world about artificial intelligence: You ain’t seen nothing yet.

Speaking to a standing room-only audience at the 2024 SIEPR Economic Summit, Huang predicted that in as little as five years AI will be able to pass every test a human takes — not just the legal bar exams that it can complete today, but also highly specialized medical licensing exams.

In about 10 years, he said, the computational capabilities of AI systems will be a million times bigger than they are today. Systems synthetically generating data will have greater capacity to continuously learn, infer, and imagine. Instead of only instantly answering questions, forthcoming AI systems will also have the ability to think critically through problems over longer periods of time.

“In the future, the way you interact with AI will be very different” from what can be done with ChatGPT and other AI models today, said Huang in a keynote question-and-answer session led by John Shoven , a SIEPR senior fellow, emeritus; and the Charles R. Schwab Professor of Economics, emeritus, in Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences.

But does this mean AI technology will be able to mimic the human mind? Huang said he wasn’t sure. There needs to be a consensus about what it means to say AI has achieved human intelligence.

In order to have true artificial general intelligence, he said, “you need to know what the definition of success is.”

The gift of pain and suffering

Having co-founded Nvidia more than 30 years ago, Huang now finds himself at the center of the tech universe. His company, whose market value hit $2 trillion last month (after reaching $1 trillion the previous June), has rocketed thanks to its sophisticated and hugely expensive semiconductor chips and its estimated market share of more than 80 percent in AI chips.

“We sell the world’s first quarter-million-dollar chip,” Huang noted, referring to Nvidia’s powerful graphical processing unit system that weighs 70 pounds, consists of 35,000 parts and has the computing capacity of a data center.

During his Summit appearance, Huang regaled attendees with his insights and now-familiar deadpan humor. Asked about his signature outfit of black leather jacket, black shirt, and black pants, Huang said they are among the few pieces of clothing that don’t make him itch.

When asked his advice for Stanford students aspiring to be successful entrepreneurs, Huang talked about the importance of low expectations and high resilience. Greatness, he said, comes from smart people who have suffered from setbacks. This is why, at Nvidia, he talks openly about pain and suffering “with great glee.”

“For all of you Stanford students,” he said, “I wish upon you ample doses of pain and suffering.”

Watch the full discussion.

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