Will we ever get our doctoral program?

When I interviewed for this job in 2001, several people said to me that they expected my department to have a Ph.D. program in about 5 years -- that is, two years ago. It was one of the things that attracted me to this job. Since then, I've become our graduate program's coordinator and have been trying to pave the way to that Ph.D. program that helped tantalize me into this gig.

So this article in The Austin American-Statesman suggesting there's a glut of Ph.D. programs is not encouraging news.

Higher education specialists generally agree that doctoral education should be reserved for a relatively small number of campuses to ensure the depth and quality essential for creating a thriving community of scholars.

I don't think I'd ever heard that position before. Maybe it's just because I'm from western Canada, where there were about six universities in two provinces at the time, and 5 of them had doctoral programs (UBC, UVic, SFU, U of A, UC). I went to the about the only university that didn't for my undergraduate degree, U of L.