Parent-teacher conferences

Patsy Allen is a writer and consultant who has taught in and directed preschool, secondary, and college early-childhood-education programs.     

Postgraduate Education Towards the Year 2000 — A Changed Role for the Commonwealth Postgraduate Awards Scheme 1

Ph.D. research training in Australia only came into existence after World War II. It grew slowly until the late 1950s when The Commonwealth Postgraduate Award (CPRA) Scheme was introduced to promote the development of research training. The scheme has had an extensive impact on research training, supporting over 700 new students a year by 1982. However, no serious evaluation has been made of the Scheme and whether in the changed circumstances of the 1980s it needs to be revised. The present article reports some of the key results of the evaluation that the Commonwealth Department of Education commissioned. This study has shown that the CPRA scheme achieved its original objectives’, to develop postgraduate research schools; to maintain a flow of highly trained personnel to the workforce; and to promote the full intellectual development of the most talented students. But it is now operating in a new context where the conditions of expansion of the 1960s no longer exist and stronger pressures for relevance are being exerted on university research. In short, education policy and research policy have come into conflict, the result of which is new pressures on research education in general and the CPRA scheme in particular. Solutions to this conflict are proposed, involving no radical alterations of the scheme, but the trial introduction of a pluralist approach to postgraduate support which leaves the present scheme intact but meets the new demands the changing context is placing on postgraduate education.