There is growing awareness that established structures of higher education are often predicated on problematic assumptions about merit, excellence, and rigor. Doctoral qualifying exams, for example, are required to advance to candidacy in many Ph.D. programs despite decades of documented concerns about the implications of standard modes for…

We explore how physical science doctoral students navigate their role identities throughout their graduate programme. Physical science doctoral students take on many academic roles in addition to the role of scientist, including researcher, educator, and student. When social expectations of roles become internalized, they become role identities.…

Privileging elite academic pedigrees in graduate admissions preserves racial and socioeconomic inequities that many institutions say they wish to reduce. To understand this preference, I integrate across perspectives on trust in rational choice, social capital, and social network theories, and use the resulting framework to interpret 68 interviews…

The purpose of this case study was to explore faculty members' perceptions of the QEP in a public doctoral university with highest research activity. Particularly, the study explored how faculty members perceive the role of the QEP in student learning and institutional effectiveness, the relevance of the QEP activities in student learning and…

This dissertation considers the effects of national rankings, specifically the 2010 National Research Council (NRC)'s Data-Based Assessment of Research-Doctorate Programs, on higher education institutions' behavior. National research studies of graduate education require significant resources and data, yet it is uncertain how universities make…