In this article, the authors focus on three relatively concrete reform efforts now being implemented in a number of schools of education that took part in the Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate (CID) study: (1) the establishment of a core of educational courses; (2) significant changes in the preparation of educational researchers; and (3) new initiatives for developing educational professionals, only some of whom will eventually work in the academy. The authors award so much attention to these three because they conjecture that three different--and mutually exclusive--conceptions of the doctorate underlie the various reforms. Each conception entails a different curriculum; each suggests its own characteristic set of recommendations for change. These conceptions call into serious question the meaning of faculty mentoring, the role of preliminary or qualifying examination, and the place within doctoral programs of traditional course work. While these topics are germane to every doctoral program, regardless of discipline, the authors believe that the field of education addresses them in more fundamental and urgent ways. They believe that the discussions that have emerged through the CID project and the reform efforts being conceived by their colleagues in participating departments and schools of education are much more fundamental in nature than the general doctoral reform literature might suggest. As the authors show, these discussions reflect a deeply rooted commitment to the types of reform characteristic of maturity in the field of education. The authors have articulated the three competing conceptions of the doctorate to underscore the fact that the reforms under discussion are not superficial but deep, rooted in difficult questions about what a doctoral education should be.