Graduate education at berkeley

The Berkeley Department of Sociology has a distinctive training program that encourages the student to pursue an independent course of inquiry. While clearly still within the U.S. orbit, when arrayed along a continuum, the program leans more toward the European than the American tradition of postgraduate education. The Berkeley doctoral student substantially creates his or her own mix and is also most likely the principal architect of the research design and the sole collector of primary data for the dissertation. This article briefly explains the history and describes the current program. Troy Duster is professor and chair of the Department of Sociology and director of the Institute for the Study of Social Change at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of “American Dilemmas and Black Responses: Purpose and Bias,” which appears in the January–February 1987 issue ofSociety.