Assessing quality in graduate programs: An internal quality indicator

Many approaches are used to measure quality in graduate education. In this study, the literature related to four approaches is reviewed: the reputational approach, the productivity approach, the correlational approach, and the multidimensional approach. This investigation examined one quality indicator that can be incorporated into the multidimensional approach. In this paper, we describe and analyze faculty judgments of doctoral examinations in the Graduate School at The Ohio State University. Graduate School representatives judge doctoral examinations and report their judgments to the dean of the Graduate School. The judgments are tabulated and presented as quantitative and qualitative indicators of quality. How these judgments are converted to useful data and illustrations of how these data are used and presented are discussed.Presented at the Twenty-First Annual Forum of The Association for Institutional Research, Minneapolis, May 1981.