Graduate Completion Rates

The University of Nottingham in the UK announced today that its Ph.D. students are among the most successful in England, according to data released by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). Nottingham ties with Bristol University on a measure of PhD completion rates that compared 111 English universities, with 88% of full-time Home and EU doctoral students qualifying to graduate within seven years. Unfortunately, this data is not compared with completion rates in other countries.

The Commission on the Future of Graduate Education in the United States, a joint effort of the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) and Educational Testing Service (ETS) recently released The Path Forward: The Future of Graduate Education in the United States, outlining research findings and recommendations on how best to increase graduate education completion. To my knowledge, the last time Ph.D. completion rates in Canada were made available was in a report published by the Canadian Association for Graduate Studies (CAGS) in 2003 and revised in 2004. At that time, it was estimated that Canadian universities needed to produce between 80,000-90,000 graduate degree holders in the next decade. Six years later, I wonder where we stand. It is clear that more and more people apply and enter graduate programs each year, as educational qualifications for employment continue to rise.

It would be useful if statistics on graduate completion rates at all universities could be made available to students, faculty, and deans, so comparisons can be made across programs, institutions, regions, and countries, and to identify problems areas as well as solutions to make improvements. The CAGS report highlights three means by which Canadian universities can increase the number of master’s and doctoral graduates: 1) Increase the number of students admitted; 2)graduate more of the students that are admitted; 3) reduce the time to degree, increasing the number of students graduating within a given period of time. Those in favour of the first option should proceed with caution, given the recent research on student disengagement and grade inflation occurring in Canada’s post secondary institutions (see Cote and Allahar for discussions on these issues). The second method seems quite logical in theory, but may prove more difficult to implement. Issues that have been identified in the literature as contributing to graduate program drop-outs and lengthy times-to-degree include funding, inadequate supervision, lack of support or difficulties assimilating into the academic lifestyle; poor academic preparation, to name only a few. The third option has garnered some discussion, and some countries have already implemented steps to change the structure and requirements of Ph.D. programs to encourage and assist students to complete on time.

This brings up an important point with regards to time to degree. I see using narrow time frames (which vary by institution and program) for completion rates as potentially problematic and misleading as a measure of success. Today’s graduate student population is a lot more diverse than it once was. Many students complete masters and doctorate degrees part-time while working, raising families or pursuing other career and life goals. Depending on the program, students may be younger or more mature than average. Many factors contribute to why students take longer to complete, and longer times to degrees should not necessarily be considered a bad thing. For the sake of quality education if nothing else, students certainly shouldn’t be rushed through their programs, a point that Noreen Golfman, Dean of Graduate Studies at Memorial University, makes in her post; efforts to prepare them for the world outside of school should be emphasized more. A comparison of the productivity and successes of on-time versus late completers once they finish would be an interesting study.