In the fast-paced twenty-first century educational environment—with new technologies, mounting global competition for students and scholars, blurring of boundaries between traditional disciplines, and growing pressures for accountability—doctoral programs face fundamental questions of purpose, vision, and quality.

Sponsored by The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, The Formation of Scholars distills the results of a five-year project to develop creative solutions and approaches for transforming doctoral programs. The authors outline the processes, tools, and opportunities through which faculty and graduate students can turn their habits and skills as scholars—their commitment to hard questions and robust evidence—on their purposes and practices as educators and learners.

This groundbreaking book explores the current state of doctoral education in the United States and offers a plan for increasing the effectiveness of doctoral education. Programs must grapple with questions of purpose. The authors examine practices and elements of doctoral programs and show how they can be made more powerful by relying on principles of progressive development, integration, and collaboration. They challenge the traditional apprenticeship model and offer an alternative in which students learn while apprenticing with several faculty members. The authors persuasively argue that creating intellectual community is essential for high-quality graduate education in every department. Knowledge-centered, multigenerational communities foster the development of new ideas and encourage intellectual risk-taking.

The Formation of Scholars issues a call to action for administrators, faculty, and students to ensure that the United States' doctoral education continues to be the envy of the world.