Sept. 9

Ph.D. Completion Gaps

Significant gaps exist — by demographic groups and disciplines — in who finishes Ph.D. programs. Generally, foreign, male, and white students are more likely to earn their doctorates after 10 years than are their counterparts who are American, female or minority.

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The data and analysis — being released today — come from the Council of Graduate Schools and make up the largest ever study of completion rates by different demographic groups. (Much of the existing data on Ph.D. students focuses on degrees awarded as opposed to completion rates, potentially masking serious issues in Ph.D. production.) Twenty-four universities provided data on their doctoral students to allow for a broad cross-section of Ph.D.-granting institutions, disciplines and demographics. The study is part of the council’s Ph.D. Completion Project, which aims to identify policies and programs to encourage completion of doctoral degrees.

The project will use the new data as a baseline. Participating graduate schools now plan to start a series of programs designed to encourage completion and to speed it, and the hope is that subsequent data will show improvements.

Here are the figures that show where the graduate schools are starting:

Cumulative Completion Rates for Students Starting Ph.D. Programs, 1992-3 Through 1994-5

Group	By Year 5	By Year 6	By Year 7	By Year 8	By Year 9	By Year 10
Gender
—Male	24%	39%	48%	53%	57%	58%
—Female	16%	30%	41%	47%	52%	55%
Race/Ethnicity
—African American	16%	25%	34%	40%	44%	47%
—Asian American	15%	30%	39%	46%	49%	50%
—Latino	13%	24%	33%	43%	48%	51%
—White	18%	33%	43%	49%	53%	55%
—Other	12%	27%	35%	44%	46%	49%
International	33%	49%	59%	64%	66%	67%

Many unique factors shape whether an individual graduate student finishes a doctorate or does so in a reasonable time frame. But some of the average gaps may be significant enough, researchers hope, to help graduate schools over time identify better policies. Robert Sowell, director of the Ph.D. Completion Project, said that he was struck by the high success levels of black students in the life sciences and hoped that some factors might be found there that could be replicated in engineering.

One of the most striking gaps was found between international and domestic graduate students, with the former much more likely (67 percent vs. 54 percent) to complete doctorates within 10 years. Many graduate students from outside the United States enroll in science and technology programs, which historically have speedier Ph.D. completion times than do other programs. But even comparing international and domestic students with disciplines factored in, the non-Americans are much more likely to finish.

10-Year Completion Rates by Field and Citizenship

Field	Domestic U.S.	International
Engineering	58%	70%
Life sciences	58%	66%
Math and physical sciences	51%	68%
Social sciences	56%	63%
Humanities	50%	52%

Sowell said that a variety of factors could explain these gaps. Many international students have visas with specified time limits, and renewing visas can be complicated and uncertain — creating real pressure to finish, he said. Further, many of those visas limit the ability of the graduate students to hold jobs, while some American students hold full-time jobs throughout prolonged graduate school careers.

Gaps are also present when examining completion rates by discipline and race/ethnicity.

10-Year Completion Rates by Field and Race/Ethnicity

Field	African American	Asian American	Latino	White
Engineering	47%	53%	55%	60%
Life sciences	60%	47%	54%	60%
Math and physical sciences	37%	53%	53%	52%
Social sciences	47%	44%	55%	57%
Humanities	52%	46%	37%	51%

A similar analysis by gender — where men overall have higher completion rates — shows a split by disciplines. Men are more likely than women to finish doctoral programs in engineering, life sciences and mathematics and physical sciences. Women are more likely to finish in the social sciences and humanities.

10-Year Completion Rates by Field and Gender

Field	Women	Men
Engineering	56%	65%
Life sciences	56%	64%
Math and physical sciences	52%	59%
Social sciences	57%	53%
Humanities	52%	47%

In addition to examining 10-year completion rates, the report also has details on the percentages of graduate students finishing programs within seven years. For instance, of those who complete a Ph.D., 82 percent of men do so within seven years, while only 75 percent of women do. However, the data are not adjusted for leaves that, on average, women are more likely than men to take.

Sowell said that there are many reasons to focus not just on completion but speed to completion. Attrition can be particularly difficult for those who have spent years working on a degree, and universities and other employers of Ph.D.’s are looking for talent, he noted. There is also the matter of cost. “The longer it takes the student, the more it is going to cost the student and the institution,” he said.

Fundamentally, it is important for graduate schools to close these gaps in light of larger demographic trends, he said, to keep the supply of academic talent coming. Since future cohorts of graduate students will be less white and less male than current cohorts, Sowell said, “it’s a matter of meeting that work force need.”

He cited three examples of the kinds of the strategies colleges are trying to increase completion rates:

Better information going in. One factor many graduate schools believe contributes to high attrition rates is a lack of information about what it means to earn a doctorate. “They don’t know what they are getting into,” Sowell said. So graduate schools are trying to be more explicit about the demands of their programs and to expose prospective students to just what their lives would be like.
Dissertation help. More graduate schools are starting a range of programs to help the writing process, he said. “Dissertation boot camps,” either as retreats or regular on-campus meetings, are designed to allow Ph.D. students to coach one another while receiving expert advice as well.
Family leave. More graduate schools are adopting policies to support students who become parents. In some cases, these policies may delay completion, but Sowell said that “the positive thing about the policies would be the completion rates.”

— Scott Jaschik

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Comments

Ph.D. Completion Rates

As a white, foreign, female Ph.D. student who completed her degree in the humanities (American Studies) the biggest difference I saw between myself and my “U.S.” colleagues was that I didn’t have access to student loans and only had access to on-campus jobs at low pay. I saw my colleagues working to time graduate with getting their first teaching job. Indeed, I believe I was close to being the first if not the first of my cohort to graduate. I ended up in part-time adjunct status for about 3.5 years before I found a one year full-time teaching position in the U.S. and about 3 years ago I moved to a full-time tenure track position in Geography.

Amanda Rees, Dr at Columbus State University, at 8:55 am EDT on September 9, 2008

All Ph.Ds by Field

In some countries Council for Higher Education (CHE) established to regulations for Ph.D. completion not exceed for five or six years. If the Ph.D. candedates can not earn Ph.D. degree within six years, they are dismissed. It is very restrictly and non-sense regulations for every Ph.D. candidate. CHE & many universities’ regulations damage human brain.The worst situation for higher education (esp., in Thailand). What is lifetimes learning? I love higher education management in US universities. Many world-class universities (WCUs) by rankings (THES-QS,ARWUby SJTU),the topmost universities mostly are in USA..Harvard, Yale, Columbia,JHU,TX-Austin, Stanford,Michican,UC-Berkeley,and so on, so forth. Great..NCLB, and No Ph.Ds., and Agings Left Behind. A very smart and green education in USA..to be applauded!

Kampechara P., Bangkok, Thailand.

Kampechara Puriparinya, U-MDC at TSU, at 8:55 am EDT on September 9, 2008

Two points

“Generally, foreign, male, and white students are more likely to earn their doctorates after 10 years than are their counterparts who are American, female or minority.” I agree with Professor Sowell that the foreign/American gap admits to a number of plausible explanations. But let me make two points about the male/female and white/minority gaps.

First, in part this may be a result of less qualified females and minorities being admitted into these graduate programs in the first place, courtesy of affirmative action. As Professor Richard Sander has shown in the the law school context—and Stephen Cole and Elinor Barber showed in the context of faculty diversity—such mismatching ultimately does no one any favors.

Second, whatever measures are embraced to improve completion rates, they should be open to both men and women, and both minorities and nonminorities. That is, if we are going to have “dissertation boot camps,” for example, then they ought to be open everyone regardless of skin color, national origin, or sex. This is only fair—and it is required by the federal civil rights laws.

Roger Clegg, President and General Counsel at Center for Equal Opportunity, at 9:35 am EDT on September 9, 2008

Study seems ass-backward. The assumption is that that you can take a program that has higher completion rates per arbitrary category of people (race, ethnicity, nationality) then see what the successful programs are doing right to apply it to another program with relatively low success. The assumption is wrong since the difference between people who go into the successful program are different in ways they can’t identity from people who go into programs with less successful outcomes, for reasons that may have nothing to do with the categories looked at by the researchers.

anonymous, at 9:50 am EDT on September 9, 2008

Additional Data

Observed gaps are a also function of the selected universities and fields. For another take, check out Journal of College Student Retention 10(2) pp. 171-190. Due to the small number of underrepresented minorities in some fields, the observed ethnicity gap is particularly subject to the choice of data sources.

David Most, at 10:25 am EDT on September 9, 2008

Same Ol’, Same Ol’

From Mr. Clegg:

“First, in part this may be a result of less qualified females and minorities being admitted into these graduate programs in the first place, courtesy of affirmative action.”

Oh, of course! Why didn’t I think of that? Obviously, the best way to deal with the gap between white/minority and male/female completion rates is to admit fewer women and people of color into our Ph.D. programs. Brilliant!

Notice, by the way, how Mr. Clegg cleverly throws both women and minorities into the “less qualified” category. Even if we accept his implicit argument that standardized test scores are a valid, unbiased indicator of qualification (which I do not), there is little evidence that women do especially worse than men on that count. But Mr. Clegg must act as though they do for an obvious reason: if factors other than “qualifications” are impeding the progress of female academics, then it is also possible that they might be impeding the progress of racial and ethnic minorities as well. And that, of course, would force Mr. Clegg to reconsider the idealized colorblind society that exists primarily in his imagination.

Unapologetically Tenured, at 10:40 am EDT on September 9, 2008

International Students Work Too / Department politics

Based purely on hours worked many international students put in as much work in their on-campus jobs and grad assistantships as their counterparts who work full time. As international students are technically “at the mercy” of their institutions, they feel and are obliged to do as they are asked, irrespective of whether they have part-time work hours. I know of many who are assigned to teach up to 3 different classes while holding down the mandatory full time course load. Add the pressures of living on meager stipends (as most other graduate students do, visa/immigrant pressures and limited family support. One factor the could be considered is “department politics". Students are treated differently depending upon their background (everything from racial, gender, national origin to professional). Many professors naturally show favoritism for students who can contribution to the professors’ own career development, be it in terms of research input or community connections. Quid pro quo. It appears that many international students tend to “lay low” and avoid the politics. Good study but so many other factors in play.

Avid Reader, at 11:40 am EDT on September 9, 2008

American Indians get PhDs too.

One again, American Indians are missing from the data analysis. The population most in need of understanding in higher education — lost in the “other.” How is it that quantitative researchers can ethically leave out an entire population? Let us make use of mixed-methods approaches in our data analysis so we capture a more complete picture that includes American Indians. Come on, it’s not that difficult!

Faceless American Indians, at 12:10 pm EDT on September 9, 2008

Ph.D. Completion Gaps and Affirmative Action

As an African-American female, I found it ironic and insulting that the President and General Counsel at Center for Equal Opportunity jumped to the conclusion that, “this may be a result of less qualified females and minorities being admitted into these graduate programs in the first place, courtesy of affirmative action.”

Affirmative action was never to be about promoting the unqualified but giving opportunities to the qualified who often were overlooked or not allowed to participate in the opportunities available because of their race, ethnicity or gender.

Life happens! Regardless, those who persist and graduate in spite of life’s challenges should be applauded for their diligence and hard work rather than denigrated as unqualified because they took longer than anyone would have expected to complete their doctoral degrees.

Karen Parrish Baker, Ph.D., Associate Professor, at 1:05 pm EDT on September 9, 2008

completion of program by gender & field

It is interesting to note that women are somewhat more likely than men to complete their programs in traditionally “women’s fields” such as social science and humanities and less likely than men to do so in “men’s” fields.

A long time ago, Lois Hoffman found that women showed “fear of success” when contemplating entrance into a man’s field. Later, scholars began to look at “fear of punishment for success.

Jane Hood, Assoc. Prof., at 4:35 pm EDT on September 9, 2008

Not all Doctorates are Ph.D.s

As someone who finished a doctorate in seven years after courses were completed, worked full time, raised a family, dealt with a husband with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma (including a bone marrow transplant), and a department that made no effort to assist any of the doctoral students after they completed the coursework requirements — we were left to our own devices during the ‘dissertation phase’... I have some residual issues about my post-graduate experiences.

I earned a Doctor of Education degree — the Ed.D. — and I find academic snobbery in any article that identifies the Ph.D. as the only doctorate worth studying, identifying specifically, or finds it acceptable to lump all other types of doctoral degree programs into one category. What about the Psy.D. folks or the DMAs or the DSWs, et al???? Each and every person who perseveres through the academic rigors of their doctoral program deserves to be recognized appropriately. We’re all Doctor Somebody but we’re not all Ph.D. graduates.

Dr. Deb., at 7:15 pm EDT on September 9, 2008

Issues and Hopes

This article is missing several strands of analysis that I believe are essential to the discussion of persistent and significant gaps in who finishes Ph.D. programs. First, the study “aims to identify policies and programs to encourage completion of doctoral degrees,” but it does not include all doctoral degrees—the Ed.D. and DPA, for example. I think the decision to focus exclusively on the Ph.D. should be clearly explicated, including a thorough discussion of the rationale to exclude other doctoral programs. If, indeed, the goal is to examine doctoral degree completion, then I would like to see all doctoral degree programs represented because currently this is a gross misrepresentation of and lack of respect given to all doctoral-level work.

Second, the article fails to consider gaps in completion rates by institution type (e.g., public, private, large, small). From this perspective it would be possible to examine the characteristics of particular institutions of higher education that encourage or discourage Ph.D. completion. I believe I read that the Ph.D. Completion Project does, in fact, examine these trends by institution type, but I think the article is not well-balanced without giving that part of the conversation the same level of attention in the article as the differences by demographic groups and disciplines.

Third, the director of the Ph.D. Completion Project indicated that he was struck by “the high success levels of black students in the life sciences and hoped that some factors might be found there that could be replicated in engineering. To that I will add that we would be remiss if we did not understand the persistent problems this country faces related to college readiness, college access and college completion. I argue that while some insight might be gleaned from comparing black students’ success levels in the life sciences with those in engineering, the fundamental issue is going to be the supply of talent sufficiently prepared to enter into engineering programs at the doctoral level in the first place. Visit an organization like the American Society on Engineering Education or the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering to understand the issues with STEM education and minority student engagement and pursuit of STEM-related advanced study and careers. My caution is to be clear that the patterns we see at this advanced level of study are in large part due to the cumulative effects of deficiencies in the continuum of our education system.

The above points notwithstanding, for an education professional who does not specialize in higher education issues and who is an African-American woman planning to earn her doctorate, I am encouraged by the potential of this study. I think the Ph.D. Completion Project has the potential to accomplish two things: First, as I alluded to in a previous paragraph, one of the benefits of this study will be to expose the weaknesses in this country’s education pipeline. Second, when considering doctoral study in isolation, this study can spur innovation and improvement in doctoral degree programs that will better support those scholars who have persevered and earned the opportunity to pursue their doctoral studies.

Samantha A. Murray, at 8:55 am EDT on September 10, 2008

Another perspective

As a dropout from a humanities program, I find the entire premise of this study—that we need more people to finish their phd’s—a bit bizarre. In the humanities, one reason people drop out is that they realize that job prospects in academia are rather bleak. From this perspective, attrition is not a problem; it’s the corrective to universities training far more phd’s than will ever gain employment (and the problem is the fact that universities train so many phd’s in low-demand fields in the first place).

That said, anecdotally I have seen evidence of a completion gap, even in the humanities (where the study, interestingly enough, finds none). In my cohort, the only people who finished were white, protestant, straight males. Among the dropouts: an African-American woman, a gay man, and a Catholic. Probably just a coincidence, but it has always seemed strange to me.

humanities dropout, at 10:30 am EDT on September 10, 2008

Completion Gaps

I have read the various comments and while there are easy arguments to take exception to (e.g. Mr. Clegg and affirmative action as a cause"in part") I think that there are key pieces missing in both the article and the commentary. 1. It is important to look at the statistical significance of the study. While I choose to believe that the Ph.D. Completion Project framed this study as comprehensively as was practical, there are obvious data gaps when only 29 universities participate. The universities may represent a cross-section and the larger trends can then implictly be extrapolated, but there are inherent issues in extrapolation. For example, in engineering, of the top ten producers of minority doctorate degrees this year (according to Divers Issues in Higher Ed.) only four are included in this cohort. More starkly only one of the top five is included (UIUC). This may seem insignificant but there are institutions that consistently produce high numbers of minority doctorates (e.g. Georgia Tech, Stanford, etc...) that, for whatever reason were not included. As such this may be a good signpost for the issues that we know exist, but should not necessarily be taken as the gospel truth. 2. What continue to go unexamined in these conversations are the “wild card” variables that lead to attrition. Some have been mentioned like not knowing what the degree entails, not being prepared, not liking the job prospects upon completion, etc... Equally important but not as often discussed are things like professional school and the income disparities between say a J.D., M.B.A. and a Ph.D. Typically, the top minds in a given field find that the world begins to open to them upon graduation. Often it is then a difficult argument to make to that student that a 5-10 year investment in a Ph.D. is worth the return. As an anecdote, I know several people who were in Ph.D. programs and got lucrative offers that led to their withdrawal. 2b. At the same time, the lifestyle that a Ph.D. has is something that is often misunderstood. Other degrees/fields have either done a good job, or had good examples to make the lifestyle compelling. Ph.D.’s do not tend to be perceived as the “sexiest” bunch and while that may not be true, for students perception is reality.

I was in the Ph.D. program, at a major university, in engineering, fully funded through external fellowships. I passed my qualifiers, I worked on my proposal, I published papers. It was not a matter of ability, it was a choice that led to my withdrawal. I left for a few reasons, but primarily because I knew that the requisite desire to earn the degree had waned to a point where the pursuit was because I was already there instead of to contribute to the field. In our current world of Youtube, google, video games, and overall instant gratification, me first, path of least resistance, getting students to earn a doctorate is a tough sell. It is not an easy road for anyone, no matter what you look like, where you are from, where you went to school, or how smart you may be. We are doing a decent job of getting people to begin this nebulous journey that is earning a doctorate. However, until a compelling argument can be made for why one should stay until one finishes, our completion rates are going to hover around where they are, across the board. The value proposition for completion is what we have to sell, and so far, many remain unconvinced...

Sunji Jangha, at 12:35 pm EDT on September 10, 2008

Great Comment

Re: Sunji Jangha’s comment. I think you raise excellent points that should be part of the discussion. I was concerned about the small number of universities included in this study, and I am concerned about the types of conclusions that could be drawn (something that I should have addressed in my previous comment). I don’t know how many Ph.D-granting universities there are in the U.S., but there are far too few included in this study.

I also see great merit in considering other motivating factors that drive us to complete doctoral programs or influence us to make the decision to withdraw.In many cases, as you have indicated, doctoral students decide to leave their programs for myriad reasons, not all of which the study appears to capture.

On a side note: 1) I wish the report didn’t cost $30.00 for non members! 2) I made an error in my previous post — it should read, American Society for Engineering Education.

Samantha A. Murray, at 2:25 pm EDT on September 10, 2008

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