Educating Innovators

Investment in graduate education in the 1960s and 1970s helped bring prosperity to the state in the 1980s and 1990s. Decisions about graduate student support today will determine the state’s fortune tomorrow.

By Alison Kent

Graduate students Jonathan and Jennifer Stickel share more than an interest in engineering: They’re both recipients of first-year fellowships—the reason they decided to come to UC Davis.

When asked whether they discuss engineering at the breakfast table, graduate students Jennifer

and Jonathan Stickel reply in unison: “Yes!” Jonathan adds, “and at the dinner table!”

The same interests, similar schedules, the shared miseries of homework and final exams, all make life easier, says Jennifer—certainly easier than when she was the only one in school, working to finish her undergraduate degree after Jonathan had already entered the work force. “That was hard, him not having to bring work home and me having homework,” she says. But mixing marriage with graduate studies has some unique challenges—like not having a spouse in the work force contributing a full-time paycheck.

After Jonathan and Jennifer completed their undergraduate degrees at universities on the East Coast, the two Colorado natives were eager to return to the West. “The No. 1 concern,” says Jonathan, “was a school that had graduate programs in both our fields: chemical engineering and biomedical engineering.” But also important to the dual-student couple was funding. Jonathan received comparable offers of financial assistance from UC Davis, the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and Colorado University at Boulder, but UC Davis offered a much higher level of support to Jennifer. Here they were both offered first-year fellowships through a campuswide program that rewards the most promising students. That sealed their decision to come to this campus.

Affordability was also a deciding factor for anthropology graduate student Max Viatori, who came to UC Davis from the University of Missouri. Viatori is working on a short grammar and dictionary of the Zápara language, whose native speakers in Amazonian Ecuador are fast dying out. He had considered graduate studies at the University of Texas, which has a highly regarded linguistic anthropology program, but he chose to come to UC Davis where, unlike Texas, domestic students can qualify for California residency and its lower costs after a year.

Funding of graduate education is not just an issue for students. It’s becoming an issue of increasing concern for research institutions like UC Davis and for the entire state.

That importance was highlighted in a report issued by UC’s Commission on the Growth and Support of Graduate Education: “Innovation and Prosperity at Risk: Investing in Graduate Education to Sustain California’s Future.” Arguing that today’s innovations emerged from California’s investment in graduate education in the 1960s and 1970s, the document sounds the alarm about California’s low number of graduate enrollments. It points out that undergraduate enrollment has grown dramatically at UC, whereas graduate enrollment has increased only modestly. Among the 15 largest states, California is the only one in which graduate enrollments decreased over the decade 1986–1996.

This decline, notes the report, will affect not only higher education in general but also the economy of California.

“The technology revolution, for example, was a direct result of California’s investment in graduate education in the 1960s and 1970s,” says Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef, who served on the commission. “Innovation is the result of discovery, and discovery happens in graduate school where graduate students learn their research and performance skills. The inventions of the future, the ideas of the future and the leaders of the future will emerge from the graduate student cohort of today. California must attract more of the best and brightest students if we are not to fall even further behind.”

The solution? The commission recommends a 50 percent increase in graduate students by 2010 across the University of California system, and since UC Davis is one of the few campuses with room and resources to grow, it has been asked to assume a higher proportion of the increase.

Additional pressure to grow is anticipated to come from an increase in demand. As the children of the baby boomers reach college age, UC Davis will be hit by what’s been dubbed Tidal Wave II, which will balloon graduate enrollments along with undergraduate numbers. A weak economy will probably increase that growth further.

“Graduate school is always more attractive in a bad economy,” says Charlie Duffy, assistant dean of graduate student programs. “Students feel they can improve their credentials and become more competitive, they may seek to retool their skills, or they may decide that now is a good time to invest in their future through education rather than looking for work.”

But in order for graduate programs to fulfill the mission outlined by the UC commission report—to train a generation of thinkers who can truly make an impact—the university must seek not only quantity but quality in its graduate population. And that means money—providing adequate funding to attract strong candidates.

Most graduate students pay for their education through a potpourri of loans, savings, teaching positions, fellowships and scholarships, research positions funded by faculty grants and university monies allocated to graduate programs. But money is far easier to obtain in some fields than others.

David Nylund and Linda Sanderson, who are students in the cultural studies graduate program, have faced significant obstacles in their quest for funding to supplement their teaching assistantships.

“Part of the challenge has come from focusing on popular culture—which may not be perceived as important compared to other fields,” says Nylund, who is studying masculinity and sports talk-radio programs like the nationally syndicated “Jim Rome Show.”

Sanderson, who is looking at the phenomenon of rodeo cowgirls in the early 20th century, agrees. “I’ve basically given up applying for funding,” she admits. Both she and Nylund left successful careers to return to graduate school, yet neither of them regrets it. They both think highly of the graduate program in cultural studies and of the overall graduate experience, despite their difficulties with funding.

The best students sometimes hail from overseas: Science and engineering, in particular, have large numbers of highly qualified international candidates.

“Non-resident tuition has made it very hard for the University of California to attract the best graduate students,” says Jeffery Gibeling, dean of graduate studies. And although out-of-state domestic students qualify for California residence after their first year of graduate school, this is not the case for international students, who must pay full non-resident tuition (over $12,000 per year) until they pass their qualifying examinations—a daunting additional sum for these students and for the faculty who wish to support them.

Graduate student Christine Meynard is studying avian ecology, work she’ll pursue at the Point Reyes Bird Observatory next year.

International students often arrive with their own initial funding, but that may not be enough to carry them through the four to seven years required for doctoral study. Christine Meynard, a Chilean graduate student in ecology, was awarded a prestigious Fulbright scholarship and was thus able to shop around for the best graduate program in the country. Even with the Fulbright, which she was able to renew for a year, she met with universal pessimism on the part of faculty with whom she corresponded about their ability to fund her for the duration of her study.

“It’s a huge problem for international students, and it’s their biggest concern when they’re accepted,” Meynard says. “Many professors are open to having international students in their labs, but they may not have additional funding of $10,000 or more.”

Yao Luo, a Chinese student who is working on tomato pathogens in the graduate group in genetics, points out, “International students are put under a lot of pressure to take their qualifying exams quickly. The professors can save one quarter or more of non-resident tuition.” But that’s a particular challenge for students with language difficulties. To prepare for the exam, Luo and her peers have formed small study groups, which help them focus and articulate their research projects.

Christine Meynard is aware of the arguments in some quarters that state universities should serve the state and its residents to the exclusion of everyone else. “International students are doing research that will benefit California and the United States,” she says. Her work is on avian biodiversity distribution, which she’ll pursue at the Point Reyes Bird Observatory next year—work that will directly benefit the state.

Yao Luo, a graduate student from China, is studying tomato pathogens—work she hopes will one day help solve nutrition problems both in China and the United States.

Yao Luo agrees that everyone benefits from graduate student research. After completing her Ph.D. she plans to do a postdoctoral fellowship before returning to China. “China has almost solved its food problem, but the population is so enormous,” she says. “If we can improve plants, it would help more people. You can add vitamin A or B to plants and decrease people’s susceptibility to disease. This is especially helpful for poorer people.” It is also directly relevant to California’s ability to feed the United States, which despite rising obesity is facing a high incidence of malnourishment.

UC Davis is increasing its efforts to support graduate students through a partnership between the state and campus, the faculty and private donors. Graduate programs are currently allocated a certain amount of campus and state funds, which are used to support the best students within those programs. Faculty efforts to secure research and training funds have also increased dramatically; for example, UC Davis currently holds two highly competitive National Science Foundation IGERT grants. These “Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship” grants foster collaborative research that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries.

The next step? A focus on private giving by individuals, corporations and foundations for prestigious fellowships. “The work that our students are doing now, like Jennifer Stickel’s research on biomedical imaging, will have a direct social and economic impact on California and the nation,” says Graduate Studies Dean Gibeling. “More importantly, graduate study is the preparation for a lifetime of discovery, creativity and innovation that will more than repay our investment.”

Alison Kent is communications director for the UC Davis Office of Graduate Studies. Photography by Debbie Aldridge/UC Davis Public Communications.