Commission on the Future of Graduate Education in the Pharmaceutical Sciences

achillesheelUID: 2113233

Commission on the Future of Graduate Education in the Pharmaceutical Sciences
Final Report

David J. Triggle, Ph.D.
Kenneth W. Miller, Ph.D.

University at Buffalo— State University of New York and American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy



Table of Contents
Executive Summary.....................................................................................................................1
Introduction ...............................................................................................................................5
The Commission on the Future of Graduate Education in the Pharmaceutical Sciences ................6
The Future of Graduate Education ..............................................................................................8
Global Issues Affecting Academia ........................................................................................8
The Changing “Research University”....................................................................................8
Overview of Graduate Education in the U.S. ............................................................................. 10
Science and Engineering..................................................................................................... 10
Biomedical Sciences ........................................................................................................... 12
The Role of Medical Schools in Graduate Education .......................................................... 14
Overview of Graduate Education in the Pharmaceutical Sciences............................................... 15
The Lemberger Commission............................................................................................... 15
Measures of Graduate Program Status and Quality ............................................................. 16
Pharmacy Graduate Program Enrollment ............................................................................ 17
Program Size...................................................................................................................... 18
Ph.D. Degrees Awarded ..................................................................................................... 19
Research Funding............................................................................................................... 20
Faculty Publication and Citation ......................................................................................... 20
Employment of Ph.D. Graduates ........................................................................................ 21
Survey of Industrial Scientists ................................................................................................... 22
The Impact of Emerging Technologies on the Pharmaceutical Sciences ..................................... 23
Conclusions and Recommendations........................................................................................... 25
References ............................................................................................................................... 30
Additional Readings .................................................................................................................. 32
Appendix 1: Commission Members ........................................................................................... 34
Appendix 2: Conference on the Future of Graduate Education in the Pharmaceutical Sciences... 35
Appendix 3: Survey of Earned Doctorates (1975-1996)............................................................. 51
Appendix 4: Results of the Survey of Earned Doctorates (1975-1996)....................................... 57
Appendix 5: Commission Survey of Industrial Scientists............................................................ 66



Executive Summary
An Overview of Graduate Education in the United States
Nationally, graduate education has received relatively little attention compared to undergraduate and
professional education over the past several decades. The primary responsibility for graduate education lies
within the academic department and with the individual faculty member, whereas the entire university and
the professional colleges and schools are responsible for undergraduate and professional education.
Undergraduate and professional education programs undergo mandated external regional and specialized
accreditation to maintain participation in federal loan programs or to qualify for professional licensure.
Conversely, graduate education programs are not accredited and only undergo internal or external
evaluation for National Institutes of Health (NIH) training grant applications, or if mandated by the
university or state-level higher education boards. Additionally, the cost of graduate education at most state
institutions is hidden in the larger instructional budget, as state legislatures generally do not allocate dollars
for faculty research or graduate education. A national evaluation of graduate programs has been conducted
twice in the past two decades by the National Research Council (NRC), but these evaluations are not
inclusive of all academic disciplines, and they have been criticized as little more than opinion surveys
similar to those published annually in popular national magazines.
Increasing criticism of the national graduate education enterprise arose in the early 1990s, primarily from
new Ph.D. graduates in the physical sciences, who had difficulties finding desirable employment
opportunities. Concerns about this “oversupply” of Ph.D.s, or an “undersupply” of employment
opportunities in the graduate’s areas of research interest began to focus national attention on graduate
education. The Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy (COSEPUP) of the NRC in 1995
attempted to examine the career paths of Ph.D. graduates in the sciences and engineering, and define the
most appropriate structures and functions for graduate education. COSEPUP members “… were
sufficiently troubled by the lack of generally available information to conclude that students’, professors’,
and mentors’ lack of accurate, timely, and accessible data on employment trends, careers, and sources of
student support is a serious flaw in our educational system.” The COSEPUP final report, “Reshaping the
Graduate Education of Scientists and Engineers” concluded that “… the job opportunities of the future will
favor students with greater breadth of academic and career skills… .”
Additional reports and recommendations on graduate education have been produced by the American
Chemical Society (ACS), the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB), the
American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC), the American Association of Universities (AAU), and
another committee of the NRC. Related reports have been issued by the American Association for the
Advancement of Science (AAAS) on the declining graduate enrollment of minority students, the
Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology (CPST) on the status of postdoctoral fellows in
the U.S., and the Carnegie Foundation on the state of undergraduate education in research universities.
These studies and reports of the graduate education enterprise have several common conclusions and
recommendations:
· The Ph.D. degree should remain a research-intensive degree, but provide more curricular
or experiential options to increase the breadth of skills of graduates.
· Potential graduate students should be provided with accurate and timely information about
career prospects so students can make informed choices about their careers.

· Non-U.S. students have primarily been responsible for the rapid growth in the number of
Ph.D. degrees awarded in the last decade.
· The growth in Ph.D. degrees, particularly in the biomedical sciences, has contributed to a
significant increase in the number of postdoctoral fellows and time spent in postdoctoral
positions.
There is disagreement among the various reports as to what should be done or even whether anything
should be done about the present “oversupply” situation. Increasing the breadth of graduate programs for
the purpose of preparing Ph.D.s for alternative (non-academic) careers was recommended by some and
rejected by others. Most reports suggested that no attempt should be made to limit enrollment in graduate
programs, including foreign students, but a recent NRC study suggested that graduate programs in life
sciences should constrain their rate of growth and that no new programs should be developed except under
rare and exceptional circumstances. Concurrent with the recent recommendation to limit enrollment in
graduate programs in the life sciences, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and the NIH have announced plans
to initiate Ph.D. programs that are independent of any university affiliation.
Graduate Education in the Pharmaceutical Sciences in Colleges and Schools of Pharmacy
Graduate education in the pharmaceutical sciences is and has been a major concern of the Pharmacy
Academy and the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP). An AACP standing Committee
on Graduate Education was initially appointed in 1946 to address the acute shortage of qualified pharmacy
faculty following World War II. In 1978, Past-President Jere Goyan appointed a Special Committee on
Research and Graduate Education that became the present standing AACP Research and Graduate Affairs
Committee (RGAC). The RGAC addressed the issue of graduate program quality in colleges and schools
of pharmacy from 1978-1979 to 1985-1986. AACP Past-President Jean Paul Gagnon appointed a study
commission in 1986 to perform a comprehensive study of graduate education in the pharmaceutical
sciences. The study commission, chaired by Dean August P. Lemberger published, “Graduate Education in
the Pharmaceutical Sciences: The Quest for Quality” in 1989. This report reviewed the state of graduate
education in colleges and schools of pharmacy and recommended that all graduate programs undergo
regular, voluntary external evaluations for the purpose of improving program quality.
The Commission on the Future of Graduate Education in the Pharmaceutical Sciences (the Commission)
was appointed in 1996 by AACP Past-President Charles O. Rutledge. Dr. Rutledge charged the committee
to examine the following issues:
· What are the numbers and abilities of Ph.D. graduates needed in the pharmaceutical
sciences now and in the future? In particular, what faculty should be used to monitor the
supply and demand of pharmaceutical scientists and how can programs adjust the supply
to meet the current and projected demand for scientists?
· What should be the nature of the education and training of Ph.D. students in the
pharmaceutical sciences? Additionally, what is the appropriate range of skills needed by
Ph.D. students in order to maintain productivity in a rapidly changing scientific
environment practiced on a global scale?

The Commission examined past and present demographic data on graduate programs in the pharmaceutical
sciences, career pathways of past graduates, and the recommendations and suggestions from pharmacy
faculty at the Commission’s conference on graduate education held prior to the 1998 AACP Annual
Meeting to derive the following conclusions and recommendations.
One finding of the Commission is that the current outlook for pharmaceutical science graduates from
colleges and schools of pharmacy appears to be good to excellent, with no apparent need to constrain future
enrollment, unlike the biomedical sciences. This is in large part due to the bright future of the
pharmaceutical and related biotechnology (life sciences) industries that employ significant numbers of
pharmaceutical scientists. Unlike other life science disciplines, pharmaceutical science Ph.D. graduates
have generally viewed an industrial career to be equivalent to an academic career, not as a less desirable
“alternative” career.
The bright future envisioned for the new integrated life sciences industry is being built around the emerging
discoveries in genomics and an increasing understanding of the molecular basis of many diseases. This
future scenario poses both opportunities and challenges for graduate programs in the pharmaceutical
sciences in colleges and schools of pharmacy. The challenges primarily come from within the university as
many biomedical science, chemistry, biomedical engineering departments, and schools of public health
refocus their research in areas of drug discovery, drug design, drug action, drug delivery, drug marketing,
pharmacoeconomics, and the drug-related areas of health care policy to avail themselves to the increasing
financial resources available to conduct research in these areas. To maintain and enhance a successful
research and graduate program within the university environment, pharmaceutical science graduate
programs and faculty in colleges and schools of pharmacy will have to simultaneously become both more
competitive and collaborative with other academic disciplines within the university.
The Commission offers the following recommendations to assist colleges and schools of pharmacy with
strengthening their graduate programs in the pharmaceutical sciences and planning for the future:
Recommendation 1: To maintain both the viability and visibility of graduate programs in the
pharmaceutical sciences, colleges and schools of pharmacy must offer students research environments
where competitive, funded, cutting edge research is performed under the supervision of highly qualified
faculty mentors.
Recommendation 2: Institutions contemplating starting graduate programs (Ph.D. or M.S.) should only do
so after an objective examination of the need for graduates with the particular expertise that the program is
designed to provide. An inventory of faculty research experience, extramural financial support, and the
research infrastructure (i.e., instrumentation, animal facilities, etc.) available to perform cutting-edge
research in the proposed program area should be conducted, and deficiencies corrected before initiating a
graduate program. Colleges and schools of pharmacy at less-research intensive universities should identify
non-pharmacy departments (i.e., chemistry, mathematics, statistics, etc.) on their campus or on an adjacent
campus that can provide research support and didactic courses at a level advanced enough to provide
sufficient breadth to the proposed programs of graduate study.
Recommendation 3: Pharmaceutical sciences faculty are encouraged to engage in multi- or
interdisciplinary research and graduate training programs within their own institution and with other faculty
within the university. Pharmaceutical sciences faculty need to be more proactive in proposing and
organizing interdisciplinary institution-based and campus-wide research programs, centers, or institutes,
despite the possibility that the majority of faculty participants may not be from the college or school of
pharmacy.

Recommendation 4: Graduate programs in the pharmaceutical sciences should establish, compile, and
assess longitudinal databases of performance indicators to internally and externally assess faculty, student,
and program quality. Sufficient data should be made public to assist potential graduate students to
determine if the program is consistent with their research career aspirations. A common set of performance
indicator measures should be submitted annually to AACP for the purpose of constructing comparison
college and school cohorts (benchmarks) for chairs and deans to evaluate and improve the performance of
their graduate programs.
Recommendation 5: All colleges and schools of pharmacy with graduate programs should provide
“survival skills” training to their graduate students through a combination of didactic presentations and
supervised experiences. These survival skills include, but are not limited to: research ethics, written and
oral communication skills development, teaching skills development, computer skills enhancement, career
counseling, and research team building opportunities.
Recommendation 6: Colleges and schools of pharmacy need to increase their recruitment efforts for U.S.
students from disciplines other than pharmacy. The availability of large numbers of qualified foreign
pharmacy graduates should not be used as a continual justification for the lack of recruitment of U.S.
educated students. Colleges and schools of pharmacy also need to explore innovative approaches to
increase the numbers of U.S. pharmacy students in graduate programs, through joint Pharm.D./Ph.D.
programs that offer a significant decrease in time to complete both degrees.
Recommendation 7: Colleges and schools of pharmacy are encouraged to examine a Ph.D. program in the
clinical sciences as an appropriate addition to their graduate program offerings.
Recommendation 8: Colleges and schools of pharmacy are encouraged to reexamine the M.S. degree as an
applied pharmaceutical science graduate degree with a prescribed set of didactic and research requirements
for completion.
Recommendation 9: The topic of graduate education should become an area for programming at AACP
Annual Meetings.

其余部分请见附件 3880_CommissionReport.pdf (271.47 KB, 下载次数: 72)

2009-4-18 23:43:10 上传

下载次数: 72