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Questioning the Ph.D. Most of the Muscatine recommendations would raise the need for more college teachers, and the report proposes a solution. It would create a new doctor-of-arts degree carrying all of the requirements of the Ph.D. except the long research dissertation. "The time has come to question the whole system which makes the Ph.D. the only acceptable form of certification for college teaching," says the committee, which is composed entirely of Ph.D.s. It argues that too many good teachers never finish their final paper because of the pressures of teaching and raising a family, and jeopardize their careers as a result.
The aim of most of these changes is to relate scholarship more closely to life -and to try, as trie committee puts it, "to build bridges across that gulf between generations that separates students from their teachers."
The report will be presented to the Berkeley academic senate this week, where, predicts one committee member, "there will be a lot of screams, but I think we will have a lot of this accepted." Another committee member, Chemist George Pimentel, included a minority recommendation for a slower approach to any "sweeping changes" that might imperil Berkeley's "precious position of pre-eminence." Chancellor Roger Heyns said he was "very pleased" by the report, called it "substantial" and "provocative." Student President Jerry Goldstein said the report "recognized and answered" many of the student problems, urged its adoption.