Providing tough intellectual challenges: The issue of quality training

Abstract

Sociological training is not sufficiently demanding, at either the graduate or the undergraduate levels, and thus we do not attract high-quality students. We need to build more tough intellectual experiences into our graduate programs at several points, not merely at the dissertation stage. Six specific suggestions are made, most of which emphasize the importance of theoretical work, syntheses and careful analyses of existing theories, and advanced methodological work.