Curriculum
All students admitted into the ADMPS PhD Program are required to complete a minimum of 90 credits of coursework to fulfill their degree requirements. This coursework is broken into the following six categories: Department Core Courses, Specialization Courses, Research Methods Courses, Supporting Field Courses, Supervised Research Credits, and Dissertation Credits.
Several Courses should be taken in the first year: ADMPS 3003 (Theories of Educational Inequality), ADMPS 3001 (Research Methods), as well as the two first-year seminars that all PhD students school-wide take. Students may elect to take some combination of the required research methods courses in the first year or substantive courses. However, EDUC 3100 (Introduction to Quantitative Methods) and EDUC 3101 (Intermediate Quantitative Methods) are offered in the fall and spring and would ideally be taken in back-to-back semesters.
The two first-year seminars meet every other week (1 credit in Fall and 2 credits in Spring taken over and above the typical 9-credit course load) and focus on familiarizing students with practical and ethical issues in research (e.g., resolving questions of authorship and authorship order, human subjects guidelines), and supporting students’ work on their pre- dissertation proposal (Milestone 1) (e.g., developing innovative research questions, conducting a literature review). As part of the fall first-year seminar, students will complete the Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI) training courses. CITI courses are an online system required to access the Institutional Review Board (IRB) system, where study protocol are submitted in order to receive permission to collect data on human subjects. This is mandatory for all researchers and students.
Writing Seminar. In years 2-4, all students take the 1-credit writing seminar (EDUC 3087). This course is taken each fall and spring to support milestone work and other writing projects. Note: EDUC 3087 credits do not count towards 90 required credits.
Research Methods. The PhD program places a special emphasis on research methods. Preparing students to tackle policy problems, and create innovative research agendas, requires intentionality in the methods coursework that supports students’ development of independent projects, meaningful contributions to advisors’ research, and critical analysis of past research. To help ensure that students develop the necessary analytic competencies, students are required to complete a minimum of 6 methods courses: Introduction to Quantitative Methods (EDUC 3100) and Intermediate Quantitative Methods (EDUC 3103); Introduction to Qualitative methods (EDUC 3104); and 3 seminars in advanced quantitative or qualitative methods.
Supporting Field. All PhD students are required to have 9-18 credits in a disciplinary area outside of the School of Education in order to meet the University cognate requirement. For a student who does not have a bachelor’s degree in an academic discipline/field other than education, a minimum of 18 credits must be taken outside the School of Education in one discipline (e.g., sociology, political science, economics, mathematics or biology) or in an interdisciplinary concentration (e.g., Latin American studies, psycholinguistics, business, public and international affairs, etc.).
For a student who has a bachelor’s degree in an academic discipline, or an equivalent number of credits to that for a bachelor’s degree in an academic discipline, a minimum of 9 credits must be taken outside the School of Education in one field or in an interdisciplinary concentration. None of the 9 credits may be used to satisfy research methodology requirements. For a student who has a master’s degree or an equivalent number of credits toward a master’s degree in a relevant academic discipline, no additional credits outside the School of Education need to be taken but a Transfer of Credit Form must be submitted with the Plan of Study.
Supervised Research. A minimum of 6 credits of ADMPS 3097: Supervised Research is required for PhD students. The School-wide requirement of 6 credits is tied to students’ work on their pre- dissertation research projects (Milestone 2) and the Doctoral Comprehensive exam (Milestone 3). Supervised research credits are taken with individual faculty (typically the advisor
Dissertation Research Credits. All students are required to register for 18 credits of ADMPS 3099 Guidance in the Doctoral Degree (3090 or other credits can be used in some cases). Once students have completed all credit requirements, including 18 credits of dissertation research, they can register for full-time dissertation study at a reduced rate of tuition in order to maintain access to university resources.
Specialization courses specifically for HEM include ADMPS 2307 (Politics and History of Higher Education), which students must transfer in or take in their first year of PhD study, along with more than a dozen HEM concentration courses (see plan of studies). In particular, the HEM faculty recommend taking, as primary HEM courses: Foundations in Higher Education; Theory and Frameworks in Higher Education; Policy Studies in Higher Education; Economics and Finance of Higher Education.
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