Despite the increasingly prominent role played by postdoctoral education in the national research enterprise, there is reason to question how well this particular form of education has been incorporated into the overall academic enterprise. In many respects, postdoctoral education at the end of the twentieth century appears to resemble Ph.D. education at the end of the nineteenth century. In 1890, Ph.D. programs were a relatively new form of education in this country, lacking a consistent set of standards and expectations. Today there is cause for concern over the similarly ad hoc evolution of postdoctoral education..