NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL (NRC) ASSESSMENT OF RESEARCH DOCTORAL PROGRAMS (2010)

Description


Periodically, the National Research Council (NRC), part of the National Academies, conducts an assessment of research-doctorate programs in the United States. The first major assessment was carried out in the early 1980s, the second major effort occurred in the mid-1990s, and the third assessment has recently been completed and is based on data from the middle part of the present decade. The goal of these assessments is to provide


  • benchmarking data to help institutions improve doctoral program quality

  • students accessible and readily available information on doctoral programs

  • a context for enhancing the nation's overall research capacity

While the two earlier NRC reports provided critical information about the quality of research doctoral programs, they were not without criticism. The 2010 report is the latest effort to respond to the perceived shortcomings of earlier assessments of research-doctorate programs and is significantly more data-driven than the previous study. Institutions, doctoral programs, faculty, and students completed separate questionnaires that solicited various data elements (e.g. time-to-degree, student financial support) not included in the previous assessment. As a result, meaningful comparisons with earlier NRC assessments are not possible.

More than 5,000 programs in 61 fields at 222 institutions participated in the assessment. Forty-nine Rutgers University doctoral programs participated in the assessment.1 The data emering from the most recent NRC study provides a rich source of information about Rutgers doctoral programs. Yet it is critical to remember that these data represent only a snapshot of programs from one rather narrow period of time.


The University believes the NRC assessment is important in that it will provide a significant amount of publicly-available information about Rutgers graduate programs and those across the United States. The data contained in the 2010 report will be critical to the university's ongoing assessment of its research doctorate programs.


1 Forty programs are New Brunswick-based and two programs are Newark-based.  Seven additional programs are joint programs with the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.


Links to Rutgers Documents Pertaining to the NRC Assessments