Graduate Studies Office

The American Association of Universities, an association of the top North American research universities with only two Canadian members (McGill and University of Toronto), has produced a series of recommendations for graduate programs. The following is a list of them with brief notes concerning how McGill is addressing them.

Items concerning program and curricular viability need to be addressed by University- wide program reviews. We also need more fellowship money and more attention given to career placement and opportunities.

FGSR encourages all units to read this list and assess their own progress.

1. Admission decisions should be made with the goal of maintaining and improving the quality of programs.

   • Entering CGPA was raised in the spring of 1998.

   • Students without adequate language competency will not be registered.

   • Workshops on improved admissions quality and procedures were held in December.

2. Departmental recruitment and admissions policies should include provisions designed to increase the participation of talented students from groups under-represented in their graduate programs.

   • Committee of the whole discussion by FGSR Council in February 1999

   • The new graduate recruiting document features under-represented groups.

   • Differential Fee Waivers are available for some international graduate students.

3. Universities should encourage enrolment of exceptional foreign students while continuing efforts to develop the domestic talent pool.

   • FGSR has collaborated with RLO to address international recruitment.

4. All admitted students should be given accurate information about the costs they will incur and realistic assessments of future prospects for financial support.

   • FGSR documents, recruiting documents and Office for International Students documents all contain information on fees and other costs of studies at McGill.

   • At the recent Admissions workshops, departments were encouraged to include financial cost and support specifics in their letters of acceptance.

5. Financial support should be designed to assist students in their progress to a degree; financial support through work that draws students away from their graduate program should be avoided.

   • At present there are university fellowships for recruitment and for progress through studies. Restructuring of McGill fellowships is expected to increase adaptability to student needs.

   • More fellowship money is needed.

6. Institutions should evaluate the graduate curriculum to assure that it equips students with knowledge and skills for a broad array of postdoctoral careers that they might wish to pursue.

   • Consideration is given to this during the approval process for new programs.

7. The graduate curriculum should balance breadth and depth with the need to minimize time-to-degree.

   • Time limitations statistics are reported by FGSR each year.

   • Curriculum is reviewed in the program approval process but needs systematic program review.

8. Faculty mentors should confer with students frequently to assess students' progress, and should provide the department with periodic assessments on progress to degree.

   • This aspect of mentoring is included in McGill's Guidelines on Graduate Supervision.

   • Progress tracking was the subject of a Best Practices workshop for graduate program directors.

   • This will be evaluated by the Protocol to Improve Graduate Education at McGill which is presently under review.

9. Institutions and departments should clearly affirm the importance of faculty mentoring through policy guidelines and incentives.

   • Introduction of a second FGSR teaching award for graduate mentoring.

   • This will be evaluated and written into the Protocol for Improving Graduate Education at McGill which is presently under approval.

   • Incentives for mentorship are recommended in FGSR Guidelines on Supervision.

10. Institutions should maintain data on completion rates, time-to-degree, and placement to the first employment, as well as conduct exit surveys for all PhD recipients.

    • These data will be gathered annually in the form of performance indicators and an exit survey.

11. Institutions should provide job placement assistance for students who request it.

    • Certain departments run job placement services for their students.

    • Student services has limited job placement for graduate students and runs workshops on how to find jobs outside of academe with a PhD for a limited number of students.

12. Institutions should evaluate the quality of and justification for their doctoral programs through self-study, on-site evaluation by external reviewers or both.

    • Graduate studies performance indicators will be collected this spring.

13. Institutions should terminate programs that cannot maintain the infrastructure and student financial support necessary for acceptable program quality.

    • Needs to be addressed by systematic program review.

14. Institutions should not begin new programs in the absence of a regional or national need and sustainable support.

    • Considered by FGSR, SCTP, APPC and the MEQ in the program approval process.

15. Institutions should ask departments to provide descriptions of their goals and expectations for their graduate programs, and should periodically compare these against departmental program performance data.

    • Needs to be addressed by systematic program review.