The University of Queensland's Graduate School will focus on 'value-adding' to postgraduate students' educational opportunities and their welfare, according to the University's new Dean of Postgraduate Students Associate Professor Alan Lawson.
'The University of Queensland is one of the nation's leading postgraduate providers and in the past 12 months has graduated more than 400 research higher degree students,' he said.
'It should be our goal that UQ PhDs are not just the most numerous, but the best quality PhDs in the country. The postgraduate area is the apex of a real comprehensive research-intensive university. It's where teaching and research really come together. Disciplines and institutions renew themselves through cutting edge postgraduate research.
'University of Queensland postgraduate students have a higher employability rate than the national average. However, we recognise that the academic job market is tightening and a lot of graduates will look to jobs outside universities and major research institutions.
'The challenge is to help prepare students for those kinds of jobs as well as for more traditional careers.'
In 1997 the University's 5780 postgraduate population included 2258 PhDs, 650 research masters and 1576 coursework masters students. The number of research higher degree students at the University has doubled in 10 years.
Nevertheless, Dr Lawson said, national growth in higher degree enrolments had slowed and UQ would need to identify those areas where growth was still possible.
'I think there are particular disciplines and student groups that can still grow,' he said.
'A renewed emphasis on part-time students and mid-career entrants would be a good way to reaffirm the commitment to life-long learning and to retain academic contact with our graduates beyond the bachelor's degree. We want to find ways to pursue excellence at the same time as equity and diversity.'
Dr Lawson took up duties this month, succeeding inaugural Dean Professor David Siddle, now Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research) at the University of Sydney.
He said University Senate had approved the formation of the Graduate School last November, with University Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) Professor Paul Greenfield as director. Dr Lawson will be Graduate School deputy director.
'We believe the Graduate School should co-ordinate and complement what is already being done at the University and should not interfere with the proper business of departments or impose further administrative burdens,' he said.
Dr Lawson said he anticipated the Graduate School would develop value-adding training workshops in areas such as research-skills, information retrieval, writing skills, oral presentation, publishing skills, identifying prospective employment opportunities, and writing grant applications.
'These are generic skills which postgraduates need to acquire to enhance the progress of their research, to disseminate its outcomes, and to maximise their employability. Individual supervisors may not always have the time nor the expertise to impart these broader skills,' he said.
'I see various ways the Graduate School can contribute to the enrichment of the postgraduate experience, apart from accelerating progress towards an excellent thesis outcome.
'We would like to ensure that no students should leave UQ with just their theses, but take with them a range of other useful skills they have acquired here as well.'
Dr Lawson said the realities of reduced Government funding meant students did not get as long to spend on higher degrees as once they did and there was a real tension between academic standards and the increased complexity of research on the one hand, completion times and the realities of funding on the other.
Scholarships were restricted by numbers and length and a lot of pressure was being placed on students and institutions. At the University of Queensland, for example, PhD completion rates averaged 3.7 years and may drop further, but most scholarships were only for three years with the possibility of a further six months. PhD students, therefore, were under financial pressure towards the end of their degrees.
'These changes in funding patterns and academic culture have an immediate impact on students,' he said.
'The challenge for academics and institutions is to respond to them in imaginative and academically sound ways.
'We are likely to have workshops to enhance supervision in the departments. We are gathering more information from students and departments on the sorts of things that slow students down in their progress.
'Our PhD exit questionnaires have now been running long enough to give us some useful data. We would also like to survey students during their courses to see what might be causing them problems.'
The Postgraduate Research Studies Committee was investigating awards for supervision excellence to parallel the University's excellence in teaching awards.
The Graduate School also wished to investigate ways of enhancing mobility of postgraduate students during their degrees. Dr Lawson said Australian students did not move to study at different locations as much as their North American, European or New Zealand counterparts.
He hoped to devise a program of exchanges during PhD enrolment through mechanisms such as Universitas 21, a prestigious international consortium of universities to which the University of Queensland belongs.
Dr Lawson said the University of Queensland's reputation as a postgraduate and research institution was such that it figured in the top two or three nationally in all performance indicators.
'A large number of Australian and international students come here because of this to complete their masters and PhDs,' he said.
'They are also impressed by the peer rankings that have nominated the University of Queensland as having the number one departments in Australia in a broad number of disciplines.
'However, there just aren't enough scholarships to go around and we're having to turn down extremely good students - those in the top rank - and particularly international students unable to meet financial considerations. Since the Federal Government introduced fees for overseas students it is difficult to bring these students in the numbers we would like them to come.'
Dr Lawson chairs the Academic Board's Postgraduate Research Studies Committee, of which he has been a member since 1988. He has a long involvement with postgraduates and designing research methods training courses for postgraduate students and intends to write a book with his colleague Dr Chris Tiffin on research methods for graduate students.
Dr Lawson, who joined the University of Queensland as a lecturer in 1975, was director of postgraduate studies in the English Department 1994-1997. The Department currently has 180 research higher degree students.
A bachelor of arts graduate with first class honours and a University Medal from the University of Newcastle 1969, he was awarded a master of arts at Australian National University in 1972, and a PhD at the University of Queensland 1987 for a study of Australian and Canadian cultural institutions.
He has strong research interests in post-colonial theory and national cultural policy in Canada and Australia.
Media: For further information, contact Dr Lawson, telephone 3365 3477, email: a.lawson@research.uq.edu.au
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