“The Future of Graduate Education": Speech by National Science Board Chairman Kelly

“I believe we are now entering a new Golden Age for research and education in the next century.” -- National Science Board Chairman Eamon Kelly

This promising conclusion about the future of graduate education was made by NSB Chairman Eamon Kelly on December 7 at the twenty-fifth anniversary celebration of the Council of Scientific Society Presidents. A driving force, Kelly said, in this revitalization will be “information - the commodity on which knowledge, learning, and education depend...moving between distributors and users in new ways that are not susceptible to the old rules and hierarchies.”

Kelly first characterized the current environment: “with the end of the Cold War, the fierce competition for research dollars has been coupled with a decline in the public sense of urgency toward funding fundamental research, particularly Defense related research in the physical sciences and engineering.” He described “a rising chorus of criticisms” of graduate education in America from students, future employers, and the public. The National Science Board is studying these problems, Kelly said, outlining a series of issues and questions framing their deliberations. One of these questions is “How can new technologies be integrated into research and education to expand synergy among researchers and accelerate learning?”

Part of the answer is information technology, which will “enable people to access and apply information to contexts never thought possible before,” building “a new culture for the academy,” Kelly contends. He continues:

“The revolution in information technology is bringing and will bring significant changes in how we perform our functions as teachers and scholars, and how students learn. Those changes create an imperative for new institutional structures and a new academic culture.”

“It will offer new opportunities for cooperation across institutions...and for collaborations across fields of science.”

“I believe that one of the most dramatic changes will take place in the way we teach. In a current lecture class, students sit passively, receiving information.” “With information technology the possibilities open to making the task of learning into a complex, active, and intellectually challenging engagement with a subject.”

Kelly does not predict that campuses will disappear as students turn to “virtual” universities. Rather, “My own prediction envisions greater interdependence rather than independence among cutting edge researchers. Teamwork and collaboration will become ever more important as research questions draw on the expertise of diverse fields of knowledge.” Under this system, students might visit campuses “for shorter periods of concentrated interaction with faculty and research collaborations.” One of the results is that “the faculty of the future will need to be adept at drawing out the individual intellectual and creative talents of each student in guiding him or her beyond the mastery of information to the use and extension of knowledge.”

Looking ahead, Kelly concludes: “we are now entering a new Golden Age for research and education in the next century. This new age also will be supported by the Federal/university partnership, but will include greater participation by other stakeholders, both in the U.S., and in the international science and technology communities.”

Kelly urges that “we need to continue to be more agile in identifying and adequately supporting the most promising areas for research. We need to enable broader cross-disciplinary, cross-sector, and cross-institution collaborations among researchers and their students, even while providing strong support to traditional fields.” “We should be quick to seek opportunities to employ the latest in technology in research and learning in an environment of free and open inquiry.” He called for new efforts to expand participation by under-represented groups.

The speech concludes, “It is our obligation to provide our future citizens with a healthy infrastructure of cutting edge scientific research and graduate education not just for today but to serve the next quarter century and beyond.”

The full text of Dr. Kelly’s address to the Council of Scientific Society Presidents can be found under “Recent Speeches” at http://www.nsf.gov/nsb/documents/start.htm