Great waves of reform regularly sweep through every educational enterprise in science. The most natural explanation for this is a dissatisfaction most scientists feel about the education they themselves received as well as the education they are giving to their students. Physical oceanography has witnessed a quiet but radical transformation over the last quarter century in the manner in which new recruits to the field are educated.

Pedlosky, J. 1992. Graduate education in physical oceanography. Oceanography 5(2):117–120, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.1992.19.

This is an open access article made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format as long as users cite the materials appropriately, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate the changes that were made to the original content. Images, animations, videos, or other third-party material used in articles are included in the Creative Commons license unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If the material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission directly from the license holder to reproduce the material.