Comments on Baby Steps on Speeding Up the Ph.D.

• 10.1 years? Kind of silly, isn't it?
• Posted by J. Swift on March 28, 2006 at 6:40am EST

• While 8-year time limits have become popular -- this article shows how ridiculous, silly, and wasteful the U.S. doctoral educational system is.

  When your advising professors and work supervisors are one in the same -- the possiblity for incompetence and abuse are rife. ENRON should have had it so good.

  The quality of teaching can be poor -- but who's going to complain? The workload can be heavy -- who's going to complain?

  After PhD programs in the arts, humanities, and social sciences, this is one of biggest scams in the U.S. today.

• Posted by student t on March 28, 2006 at 8:10am EST

• Au contraire, "Those who received research assistantships had the shortest time to degree." Doesn't sound to me as if the work supervisors are slowly their candidates cown.

• PhD program length
• Posted by Hoosier Prof on March 28, 2006 at 10:11am EST

• Puh-leeze, J. Swift! That's quite a broad conclusion to make. Where's your evidence?

  Back to the topic... these long time spans are nothing close to my experience or that of friends and colleagues. But we were all full-timers, graduating from humanities and social science fields in 5.5 (my record) to 8 years.

  Which leads me to wonder what proportion of these doctoral students are part-timers. Seems an important piece of information to leave out of this report. That's probably what we are seeing in the longer time spans and older ages of students in the education field, where many education majors continue to teach while they pursue a PhD part-time.

• Is there really a problem?
• Posted by Rob on March 28, 2006 at 10:20am EST

• I don't understand what "the problem" is and why it's "essential" to shorten the time to degree. The article does not address the consequences of why a lengthy time to the Ph.D. is a problem. Some fields of study warrant several years of full-time work prior to entering the Ph.D. program (like certain areas in education, for example). The article appears to be biased toward a speedy time to degree completion, but it does not explain why.

• Statistics abuse?
• Posted by English prof. at Midwest liberal arts on March 28, 2006 at 10:20am EST

• This article seems to say that the 10+ years counts time from receiving the bachelor's degree to receiving the PhD. It does not count the time in graduate programs. In other words, if someone receives a BA, works for 10 years, and then completes a PhD in 5 years, he/she counts as 15 years. Although science students generally start the PhD immediately after receiving their BS, this is certainly not the case in the humanities. In other words, this statistic is completely useless for any discussion of the unduly long length of doctoral programs. Correct me if I'm wrong--perhaps the writer of the article just explained himself poorly.

• Posted by DN , Doctoral student on March 28, 2006 at 10:25am EST

• Remember, not everyone starts a Ph.D. program right away. As the study states "Total time to degree is the number of years between when a candidate received his or her baccalaureate degree and the Ph.D." Many doctoral students, especially in education, are starting their program after a successful first career in edcuation or a related field. Average time is closer to 5 years, and I will finish in 4 years, even while working full time.

• Please note
• Posted by PhD Candidate under the clock on March 28, 2006 at 10:25am EST

• It should be emphasized that the definition of time-to-degree is the time from when the person earned the baccalaureate to the time the PhD was earned. These days, most people (the sciences being the exception) go to work before going back for the doctorate. The high cost of graduate education may be part of the reason, but also, many programs want their students to have practical experience before starting the doctoral program. So while "8 year time limits are popular" (7 in my experience) these refer to the time from entering a program to finishing; not the same definition as time-to-degree in this article.

• Time to PhD
• Posted by Rachel on March 28, 2006 at 10:25am EST

• What's silly is the way of calculating the time to degree. It's expedient to base it on the time between earning the bachelor's degree and the PhD, but that doesn't mean it's a useful measure. I received my PhD 11 years after my BA, but I spent 4 years of that time working outside of academia, so I spent 2 years on the MA and 5 years on the PhD, which seems a good pace to me.

• Posted by Rob Kevlihan at School of International Service, American University on March 28, 2006 at 10:25am EST

• I wonder to what extent that statistic might be skewed by people who work for a number of years between doing their undergrad and their Ph.D. It seems that time taken from registration on a doctoral program would be a more appropriate measure. Surely it a good thing to have at least some people who have worked - often in the field of their research interest, before they enter doctoral programs?

• Response to questions about time to degree measure
• Posted by Doug Lederman (author) on March 28, 2006 at 11:30am EST

• Hello IHE readers --

  Thanks for your comments on this article -- nice to have people reading so thoroughly and carefully. The NSF study looked not just at total time to degree (which many of you have rightly questioned the adequacy of as a measure) but also at "registered time to degree," the time a doctoral candidate actually spends enrolled in grad school. I had left that measure out, for expediency's sake, but based on your questions, have added the numbers in the table and elsewhere in the article. So I hope that presents a fuller picture. Best, Doug

• More on statistics
• Posted by DSV on March 28, 2006 at 12:10pm EST

• It should also be noted that the total time to degree and registered time to degree are 'medians' not means (or averages). This says that there are an equal number above and below the number reported. I suspect this was used since older students would skew the mean to a larger less indicative number. Furthermore, The Inside Higher Ed Article uses average age at degree, although when you go to the actual article it also uses median for age at degree as well. Let's not confuse the two. They are different.

• Sea Changes
• Posted by Larry TCG on March 28, 2006 at 1:00pm EST

• “Time to Degree” is actually a red herring. I would prefer that the profession focus on what is done in the time.

  In thirty years (as chair, director of programs, coordinator of freshman comp as well as 4/4 “infantry”), I have seen new and used Ph.D.’s shell-shocked in their first years on the job. Why? Grad school doesn’t do what it needs to do to prepare fine teachers; it depends far too much on a person’s native gifts for teaching. Aside from a disciplinary (or “content”) curriculum should be REQUIRED full courses in (1) counseling (adolescent counseling for traditional-aged student bodies, adult counseling for re-entry-based schools), (2) writing (not only scholarly papers, but curriculum design, proposals, minutes, syllabi, recruiting letters, self-assessments, letters of recommendation, grants and probably 20 other kinds of writing I can’t think of right now, with a few no-holds-barred lessons on grammar and usage), (3) public presentation, not only for professional conferences, but for addressing the faculty in a school or division, for “outreach” (now commonly expected by many colleges), and for classroom effectiveness (yes, some of us need work, feedback and guidance here—a slumped class isn’t always the fault of students’ short attention spans). And under this category should be personal presentation: as grad students are neither fish nor fowl, collegiality is an alien concept when they land on a faculty which already has its own dynamic.

  Within courses that already exist, older professors from all sorts of other schools should be frequent guest-lecturers to upper-level students: upcoming Ph.D.’s could then get a glimpse of life in a research university, a tiny liberal-arts college, or a faith-based school (or even the latest phenomenon—a faith-based university). Visiting profs could also tell their stories about their achievements, and probably give a more realistic sense of time lines, family life, and meeting personal and professional goals. Mid-career profs could offer tales of the tenure-track, and second- and fourth-year reviews. I think what the resident profs would hear from their would-be Ph.D. students might prompt adjustments and start urging the graduate school experience more toward actual preparation.

  So, the time of completion to getting a Ph.D. should be determined by meeting these academic, professional and personal criteria: lots of analytical thinking, a good bit of creative thinking, a professional point of view, and ability to adjust personal proclivities for the sake of a better learning atmosphere. If this takes ten years, fine. If it takes three, fine. I am simply saying, “Git er done.”

• Posted by Hoosier Prof on March 28, 2006 at 1:00pm EST

• Great comments, all. And thanks, Doug. Your addition of a median figure for the amount of time actually spent as a registered student really makes a difference with the stats. So how about the FT vs. PT comparison? Doug or anyone out there have some stats or guesses about the trend?

• Why it takes too long to finish a PhD program
• Posted by Soc ABD , PhD Candidate, Sociology at University of Chicago on March 28, 2006 at 6:10pm EST

• As someone on the long track, I can say that the primary reasons for taking too long to finish are departmental requirements (in my case nearly 3 years of coursework) and lack of financial support at the end of the program. My department has dealt with the first problem to some degree, but not with the more important latter issue. As a result, many students spend a great deal of time and energy applying for various grants and fellowships, all of which are extremely competitive and for which the applications are quite time-consuming. Moreover, many people end up working on or off campus several days a week, which drastically reduces the time one can spend on the dissertation. And the final problem is standards. Yes, I hear time and time again on these sorts of websites that the best dissertation is a done one, but that's not what all committee members think! Many students write several drafts in order to fulfill high expectations. So what is to be done? I think increasing financial support for students in the later years of the program so that they can work on their dissertations full time would make the biggest difference.

• Posted by Geog Prof on March 28, 2006 at 8:55pm EST

• One variable that the article and the comments are missing is the significance of a Masters degree and especially a Masters thesis. In Geography and other social sciences, Masters theses are substantial projects, almost like mini-PhDs. Some Masters theses I have seen are longer and more elaborate than some PhDs. The natural sciences rarely require a Masters thesis, and sometimes treat the Masters itself as a kind of consolation prize. Obviously, a substantive Masters thesis (commonly taking 2-3 years) is going to lengthen the time it takes to get a PhD.

• Preparation for teaching/PhD
• Posted by Les on March 29, 2006 at 8:05am EST

• I would like to second Larry's comments and repeat a few points: not all will be teaching at Large State Research U. Students need to know about teaching evaluations, difficult colleagues, and how to create and execute courses of different types as well write and give research papers. Furthermore, if PhDs were familiar with more types of institutions (perhaps internships for a chance to try things out for a semester?) they would have fewer difficulties in entering the market.
  Being told the week before class, "cover half the book" as we were in the late 70's, no longer makes it as preparation for teaching!
  Les, at small liberal-arts college

• Changing demographic?
• Posted by PTaylor , college advisor on May 17, 2006 at 11:00am EDT

• Just a point to ponder: I wonder if any thought has been given to what are now called changing "life styles" between the 70s and now. I may be entirely off the mark, but I would reckon a fairly significant change HAS taken place in the profile of doctoral candidates. Registered time to degree could well be longer if one is juggling family demands. On this last point, I certainly can speak with some authority.

• Posted by r wells on March 19, 2007 at 5:30am EDT

• I completed my PhD in 6 years. It could have been in 5 had I not put the dissertation on the back burner for a year. I worked full time (music director), coached full time as well as built a house and all the responsibilities a family of 4. I do not understand why there is the discussion. If a person wants it, they will get it. If a person is not disciplined enough to work consistently I do not see where it is the university's responsibility to coddle a doctoral student. How about a little cheese and crackers with all the whining.