Ten simple rules for aspiring graduate students.

Several supervillains have higher degrees—why don’t you? There can be a variety of reasons for wanting to go to grad school and for applying to a particular school and program. But often, one can only tell apart good and bad reasons from hindsight. Failing at something is perhaps the best way to know what can go wrong and what advice would have been useful when considering graduate school applications.We should know: one of us started graduate school 4 separate times, and another learned what a PhD was only after having started one; lost 2 supervisors before even starting to write her thesis, and yet another accepted a PhD offer from the lab where she was working, without considering any alternatives; finally, one of us had applied to graduate schools for 5 years (with 19 rejections) before finally landing a PhD offer from their dream school. We hope that our hard-earned lessons will help you to avoid some of the pitfalls that we ourselves fell prey to. In this article, we address how to choose a graduate program, how to apply strategically, and some of the key challenges that may arise along the way toward graduate school. Conveniently, our advice can be summarized as 10 simple rules . . . so here they are.The authors acknowledge the support of the Gates Cambridge Trust [AIL], Cancer Research UK [RRG], Alzheimer’s Society [CCN], Merck [CCN], and the Isaac Newton Trust [EG]

Graduate Connections- November 2008

In This Issue: Click on links to navigate the newsletter Navigating Graduate School......1 Feeling Like the Last Person on Earth? Intellectual Community Good Practices in Graduate Education....................................3 The Institutional Review Board: An Interview with UNL’s Research Compliance Staff Teaching Tip .................................4 Socratic Questioning Essential Connections..................5 New and Improved Graduate Studies Web Site Professional Development...........5 Preparing for Academic Conferences The Academic Job Interview: Questions to Help You Prepare Interactions...................................7 Graduate Students to Be Honored with University Fellowships What Makes a Competitive Fellowship Application? GSA News Funding Opportunities.................9 Announcements..........................11 Current Fellowship Applications Commencement Changes LGBTQA Reading Group Calendar......................................12 Word to the Wise.......................13 Ten Simple Rules for Oral Presentations Readers’ Corner.........................14 The Portable Dissertation Adviso

Income-Driven Repayment and the Public Financing of Higher Education

This article provides the first comprehensive analysis in the legal literature of the federal government’s new income-driven student loan repayment programs, known as Income-Based Repayment and Pay As You Earn. In a set of gradual and little-noticed statutory and regulatory moves, the federal government, through these programs, has dramatically reshaped higher education finance in ways that schools, students, and even the government itself are only beginning to understand. Under IBR and PAYE, a student borrower pays no more than 10% of her discretionary income in loan service payments, and after a maximum of 20 years, the remaining debt is forgiven—for any borrower, regardless of degree, career, or debt load. This article argues that such an income-driven system is analogous to the federal government paying the up-front costs of higher education, but raising that money from a 10% “surtax” on the incomes of graduates. This is a huge change from the current mixture of debt-financed tuition, need-based grants, and moderate state subsidies. This framing raises important questions. Is this income-driven repayment structure appropriate? How tax-like and progressive are IBR and PAYE in fact, and can they be made more (or less) so? What are the risks and downsides of such a structure? This article claims that using a tax-like instrument such as income-driven repayment is well suited for higher education, given its economics, financial characteristics, and social benefits. In particular, the key difference between income-driven repayment and up-front need-based grants, such as Pell Grants, is that income-driven repayment makes a judgment of need based on ex post graduate income, rather than ex ante parental income. Based on this analysis, this article concludes with some novel suggestions for reform to PAYE

Graduate employability and the principle of potentiality: an aspect of the ethics of HRM

The recruitment of the next generation of workers is of central concern to contemporary HRM. This paper focuses on university campuses as a major site of this process, and particularly as a new domain in which HRM‟s ethical claims are configured, in which it sets and answers a range of ethical questions as it outlines the „ethos‟ of the ideal future worker. At the heart of this ethos lies what we call the „principle of potentiality‟. This principle is explored through a sample of graduate recruitment programmes from the Times Top 100 Graduate Employers, interpreted as ethical exhortations in HRM‟s attempt to shape the character of future workers. The paper brings the work of Georg Simmel to the study of HRM‟s ethics and raises the uncomfortable question that, within discourses of endless potentiality, lie ethical dangers which bespeak an unrecognised „tragedy of culture‟. We argue that HRM fashions an ethos of work which de-recognises human limits, makes a false promise of absolute freedom, and thus becomes a tragic proposition for the individual

The Silent Epidemic: Perspectives of High School Dropouts

Presents findings from a survey that examines why some students do not complete their high school education, and what academic and personal supports would have helped them stay in school. Includes recommendations for improving graduation rates

The Case for More Debt: Expanding College Affordability By Expanding Income-Driven Repayment

Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) for federal student loans is rapidly becoming the primary tool that the federal government uses to provide progressive funding to individuals to pay for college. Under these programs, borrowers can choose to pay back their loans as a percentage of income, with eventual debt forgiveness after 10-25 years. If administered well, these programs can make student loans affordable for everyone, regardless of income. In this symposium essay, I argue that for IDR to meet its goal of providing affordable higher education to everyone, the federal government needs to raise the individual borrowing limits on Direct Loans and issue substantially more debt than it does today. This perhaps counterintuitive proposal—help students by increasing debt—follows from the observation that an IDR student loan is conceptually not at all like traditional debt and is more akin to a tax instrument. If a borrower promises only to pay a percentage of income, the nominal amount of the debt is not as crucial. Furthermore, if a student cannot cover net tuition with federal student loans, the student may be forced to use private loans or to work excessively, which can lead to worse outcomes

Faculty Excellence

Each year, the University of New Hampshire selects a small number of its outstanding faculty for special recognition of their achievements in teaching, scholarship and service. Awards for Excellence in Teaching are given in each college and school, and university-wide awards recognize public service, research, teaching and engagement. This booklet details the year\u27s award winners\u27 accomplishments in short profiles with photographs and text