FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Students can begin applying now for a place in a new doctoral program at the University of Arkansas that is expected to compete with the top education policy academic programs in the nation. The program will offer 10 doctoral fellowships that pay tuition and an annual stipend to qualified applicants.

The new doctor of philosophy in education policy is being offered by the department of education reform, which was established in 2005 with a $10 million gift – one of the largest ever given to a college of education in the United States – combined with $10 million from the university’s matching gift program.

In July, the Arkansas Higher Education Coordinating Board unanimously approved the department’s degree proposal. The board offered enthusiastic support, saying the emphasis on education reform was good for the university and the state. Students will study K-12 education policy, based on empirical and theoretical research in the social sciences and other academic disciplines.

Other leading academics in the field also expressed their opinions about the new degree:

• Professor James Guthrie, chair of Vanderbilt’s Peabody College department of leadership, policy and organizations: “Your faculty has assembled an absolutely terrific Ph.D. program ... that eventually will be rated within the nation’s top 10.”

• Professor Eric A. Hanushek, the Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University: “You have managed to hire a startling group of researchers who ... are very well positioned to offer this program. ... The other current producers – Stanford, Harvard, Michigan – will immediately see that they have competition.”

Following its creation three years ago, the department of education reform attracted some of the top academics and researchers in the field to fill six endowed chairs. They bring an array of disciplinary backgrounds – economics, political science, public policy, education – as well as high-level policymaking experience.

The department of education reform has awarded six fellowships previously to students pursuing interdisciplinary degrees with other departments at the university. These doctoral students have presented research at national conferences, published in peer-reviewed journals and received other national attention for their work on performance pay for teachers, charter school systemic effects and test-based promotion policies. Three of the department’s doctoral fellows have already obtained employment in university, think tank and foundation settings.

Students who are accepted can begin the new doctoral program in the fall of 2009. Graduates can expect to work for universities, state education offices, governor’s offices, think tanks, education foundations and research firms.

"There is a growing demand for high-quality, innovative education policy research, both nationally and in Arkansas, and this department was created with the mission of filling that demand,” said Robert M. Costrell, the department’s graduate director. “Our new Ph.D. program will stand out in the field by the exceptional rigor of the empirical training and the reform themes that will be researched and debated in our policy courses."

Faculty members have designed a number of new courses for the program, including courses in the economics and politics of education, and research seminars that focus on the five study areas of the department: accountability, policy, school choice, teacher quality and leadership. The student-teacher ratio will be about 2-to-1 with an average of one or two dissertation students per faculty member.

For more information about the application process, fellowships, research funding, lab facilities, courses and faculty members, visit http://edre.uark.edu/6499.htm.

Costrell holds the department’s endowed chair in education accountability. He earned a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University. Other members of the faculty are Jay Greene, endowed chair and head of the department, Ph.D. in political science, Harvard; Robert Maranto, endowed chair in education leadership, Ph.D. in political science, University of Minnesota; Gary Ritter, endowed chair in education policy, Ph.D. in education policy and leadership, University of Pennsylvania; Sandra Stotsky, endowed chair in teacher quality, Ed.D. in reading research and education, Harvard; and Patrick Wolf, endowed chair in school choice, Ph.D. in political science, Harvard.