Doctor of Philosophy Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ===History in the United States === Until the mid-19th century, advanced degrees were not a criterion for professorships at most colleges. That began to change as the more ambitious scholars at major schools went to [[Germany]] for one to three years to obtain a PhD in the sciences or humanities.<ref>Carl Diehl, ''Americans and German scholarship, 1770β1870'' (1978).</ref><ref>Henry Geitz, JΓΌrgen Heideking, and Jurgen Herbst, eds. ''German influences on education in the United States to 1917'' (1995).</ref> [[Graduate school]]s slowly emerged in the [[United States]]. Although honorary PhDs had been awarded in the [[United States]] beginning in the early 19th century, the first earned PhD in the nation was at [[Bucknell University]] in [[Lewisburg, Pennsylvania]], which awarded the nation's first doctorate in 1852 to Ebenezer Newton Elliott.<ref name="HonPhD">{{Cite book |last1=John Seiler Brubacher |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0O1yXnXkWIsC&pg=PA192 |title=Higher Education in Transition: A History of American Colleges and Universities |last2=Willis Rudy |date=1 January 1997 |publisher=Transaction Publishers |isbn=9781412815383 |page=192 |access-date=30 April 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190507011802/https://books.google.com/books?id=0O1yXnXkWIsC&pg=PA192 |archive-date=7 May 2019 |url-status=live}}</ref> Nine years later, in 1861, [[Yale University]] awarded three PhDs to [[Eugene Schuyler]], [[Arthur Williams Wright]], and James Morris Whiton.<ref name="Rosenberg">{{Cite journal |last=Rosenberg |first=Ralph P. |title=The First American Doctor of Philosophy Degree: A Centennial Salute to Yale, 1861β1961 |date=1961 |volume=32 |pages=387β394 |doi=10.2307/1978076 |jstor=1978076 |issue=7 |journal=Journal of Higher Education}}</ref> although honorary PhDs had been awarded in the U.S. for almost a decade. Over the following two decades, [[Harvard University]], [[New York University]], [[Princeton University]], and the [[University of Pennsylvania]], also began granting the degree. Major shifts toward graduate education were foretold by the opening of [[Clark University]] in 1887 which offered only graduate programs and the [[Johns Hopkins University]] which focused on its PhD program. By the 1890s, Harvard, Columbia, Michigan and Wisconsin were building major graduate programs, whose alumni were hired by new research universities. By 1900, 300 PhDs were awarded annually, most of them by six universities. It was no longer necessary to study in Germany.<ref>[[Roger L. Geiger]], "Research, graduate education, and the ecology of American universities: An interpretive history." in Lester F. Goodchild and Harold S. Weschler, eds., '' The History of Higher Education'' (2nd ed, 1997), pp 273β89</ref><ref>Laurence R. Veysey, ''The emergence of the American university'' (1970) is the standard history; see pp 121β79.</ref> However, half of the institutions awarding earned PhDs in 1899 were undergraduate institutions that granted the degree for work done away from campus.<ref name=HonPhD/> Degrees awarded by universities without legitimate PhD programs accounted for about a third of the 382 doctorates recorded by the US Department of Education in 1900, of which another 8β10% were honorary.<ref name=NSF/> At the start of the 20th century, U.S. universities were held in low regard internationally and many American students were still traveling to Europe for PhDs. The lack of centralised authority meant anyone could start a university and award PhDs. This led to the formation of the [[Association of American Universities]] by 14 leading research universities (producing nearly 90% of the approximately 250 legitimate research doctorates awarded in 1900), with one of the main goals being to "raise the opinion entertained abroad of our own Doctor's Degree."<ref name="NSF">{{Cite web |last1=Lori Thurgood |last2=Mary J. Golladay |last3=Susan T. Hill |date=October 2006 |title=Historical Background |url=http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf06319/chap2.cfm |url-status=bot: unknown |archive-url=https://wayback.archive-it.org/5902/20160210224027/http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf06319/chap2.cfm |archive-date=10 February 2016 |website=U.S. Doctorates in the 20th Century |publisher=[[National Science Foundation]] |df=dmy-all}}</ref> In Germany, the national government funded the universities and the research programs of the leading professors. It was impossible for professors who were not approved by Berlin to train [[graduate student]]s. In the United States, by contrast, private universities and state universities alike were independent of the federal government. Independence was high, but funding was low. The breakthrough came from private foundations, which began regularly supporting research in science and history; large corporations sometimes supported engineering programs. The postdoctoral fellowship was established by the [[Rockefeller Foundation]] in 1919. Meanwhile, the leading universities, in cooperation with the learned societies, set up a network of scholarly journals. "[[Publish or perish]]" became the formula for faculty advancement in the research universities. After World War II, state universities across the country expanded greatly in undergraduate enrollment, and eagerly added research programs leading to masters or doctorate degrees. Their graduate faculties had to have a suitable record of publication and research grants. Late in the 20th century, "publish or perish" became increasingly important in colleges and smaller universities.<ref>Christopher Jencks and David Riesman. The academic revolution (1968) ch 1.</ref> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page