provocative opinion -
Meeting the Challenges of Graduate School Education Donald R. Dimmel The Institute of Paper Science and Technology. 575 14th Street N.W.. Atlanta, GA 30316 On a percentage basis, fewer U.S. undergraduate chemistry majors are pursuing a graduate education today than in the As past director of an extensive program to recruit graduatestudents and as an American Chemical Society tour speaker, I have had the opportunity to witness and discuss wi& numerous faculty the reasons for this disturhing trend. There appear to be several reasons, including: more financial debt for the student a t graduation, a longer time to get theBS degree, frequent graduation in the nontraditional term, a general lack of undergraduate counseling on the benefits of a graduate degree, and the perception by some students that the purpose of a graduate program is to produce research results which enhance a department's national reputation-student educational benefits are secondary. How can we make graduate school more meaningful and more attractive to U.S. undergraduates? Besides the obvious enhancement of salary and career opportunities, the graduate degree has to be educationally attractive. The prospective students need to know that their general knowledge, communication skills, and problem-solving skills will improvegreatly and that they will be rhinkingpnrtners in their research proiects. Yet, I am not certain that our universiries are meetingthese needs. I am disturbed to learn from one survey that only 10% of the graduate students knew why they were doing their r e ~ e a r c h . ~ The Institute of Paper Science and Technology (IPST) has developed unique ways of developing graduate student communication and problem solving skills and involving students in planning their research investigations. In some ways, the program a t IPST is related to IPST's relatively small size (
