Why do most good colleges require scholarship?
Joining the community of scholars implies a lifetime of seeking new knowledge — or artistic production — and submitting one’s accomplishment to professional peers for evaluation. Defending the dissertation should be thought of as the first step in a lifetime of reading, thinking, research, writing, and publication. When graduate students earn a doctorate or other terminal degree, we typically welcome them into “the community of scholars.” That phrase is often a part of graduation ceremonies. Graduate education, notably at the doctoral level, challenges students to learn how to be a scholar and then to produce a piece of work that qualifies as scholarship. Throughout the advanced stages of graduate study, most of a student’s attention is devoted to acquiring new knowledge and writing about it. In some graduate programs, performance or artistic creation replaces writing, but the principle is the same. Graduate students who concentrate upon studio art are expected to become practicing a
