Canadian Graduate Education in the News

Canadian graduate education has been all over the news lately. A number of recent articles have stirred the pot, so to speak, on a number of debates going on in the higher education arena, particularly with regards to times to completion and the poor job market new Ph.D.'s are currently facing. At Queen's, the dean of the School of Graduate Studies responded to a column expressing concern over a new policy that aimes to lower graduate student times to completion. Meanwhile, Speculative Diction blogger Melonie Fullick revisits the job crisis and the purpose of doctoral education in a Globe and Mail article

PhD Reform?

Attention has been drawn to doctoral education in the popular media lately. An article and blog post in University Affairs call for PhD reform in Canada, prompted by the release of exclusive date on completion rates and times to completion that have not been published elsewhere. While this data is not comprehensive, representing only eight of the 15 top research-intensive universities- none of them identified, it helps to create a picture, of what has been termed elsewhere the ‘crisis’ in doctoral education. This data, provided by a group of the country’s leading research-intensive universities, known as the U-15, shows that of a 2001 PhD cohort, 55.8% of those in humanities, and 65.1% of social science students completed their programs, compared to 78.3% in the health sciences and 75.4% in the physical sciences. Times to completion were also highest in these disciplines, with humanities students taking, on average, 18.25 terms, or just over six years, and those in social science programs averaging 17 terms. This data substantiates earlier research that found that fewer than half of those who start a doctoral program in the humanities and social sciences actually graduate; these faculties have the lowest completion rates at both the master’s and doctoral degree levels. Doctoral students in these fields of study are also reported to have the longest times to completion, with averages hovering around 77 months, according to statistics released by the Canadian Association of University Teachers.

Funding Issues for International PhD Students at Canadian Universities

According to Western News, six philosophy Ph.D. students at the University of Western Ontario have recently raised concerns about funding for students who take more than four years to complete the degree. Western guarantees funding for all doctoral students for four years, or five for those who have been admitted directly from a n undergraduate program. This benchmark is based on criteria set by the Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges, and Universities’ (MTCU). As a result of recent federal policy changes, international student applicants who formerly qualified for the Federal Skilled Worker program will not longer be eligible. These changes restrict international students from applying for permanent residency status while on a study permit, and those students who do not complete their degree within four years risk being deported. Previously, PhD students who qualified for permanent residency status could pay domestic tuition fees, which at Western are less than half of what international students pay. It is being argued that this is not only an international issue. Both Canadian and international students sometimes require more than four years to complete the Ph.D. But while Canadian students are eligible for government funding programs such as the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), international students are not. The Associate Dean of Research for the Faculty of Arts at Western notes that there has been an issue of slow completion that the university is working to improve. Nonetheless, Western, along with other Canadian universities, has brought its concerns about the policy revisions to the federal government.

Ph.D. Placement Statistics

There has been some recent discussion at Princeton University about Ph.D. statistics. This editorial published in The Daily Princetonian, commented on the need for graduate schools at research universities to release information on the placement of their Ph.D. graduates into academic positions to potential graduate students. Unfortunately, few schools release these statistics, although it is argued that these statistics help students to consider their options with regards to a career path- an important decision considering the job market today. The fact of the matter is that while most Ph.D. students in the social sciences and humanities are encouraged to enter academia, few will find opportunities for employment upon graduation. This reality, and the disillusionment that accompanies it, is evidenced by websites about dropping out of graduate school, such as SellOutYourSoul.com, and Leavingacademia.com. The editorial further notes that a recent report released by the National Research Council, discussed in an earlier blog, did not include data on graduate placement because of the difficulty encountered in trying to obtain it from institutions. A recent column, written in response to the earlier editiorial, says that schools should strive to provide more than just placement stats; information on completion and time-to-degree in Ph.D. programs should also be made available.

U.S. Doctorate Program Assessment

Yesterday the National Research Council released a report entitled A Data-Based Assessment of Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States. According to the report brief, this assessment consists of data on over 5,000 doctoral programs in 62 fields at 212 universities, and includes "information on faculty research productivity, institutional support for students, and the diversity of faculty and students, among many other characteristics."

The assessment provides data for each program on 20 characteristics, which were collected from the academic year 2005-2006 through questionnaires sent to doctoral faculty, as well as heads of doctoral programs, administrators, and students. Information on characteristics such as publications and citations came from public sources and uses a considerably longer timeframe.Data on these 20 characteristics also served as the basis for the illustrative rankings included in the assessment.The report also offers illustrative ranges of rankings for each program on three separate dimensions of doctoral education- research activity, student support and outcomes, and diversity.

Finally, the report examines findings and trends in doctoral education. Some interesting points are as follows:

-The number of students enrolled has increased in engineering (4%) and in physical sciences (9%) but declined in the social sciences (-5%) and humanities (-12%).

-On average programs in all fields have experienced a growth in the percentage of female students. The smallest growth (3.4%) was in the humanities fields, which were already heavily female, while the greatest growth (9%) was in engineering - to 22% overall.

-Over 50% of students complete their degree in six years or less in the agricultural sciences and in engineering. In the social sciences 37% complete in six years or less, while the same percentage of humanities students complete by eight years.

-The majority of students in the five fields surveyed for the report (chemical engineering, physics, neuroscience, economics, and English) were "very satisfied" or "somewhat satisfied" with the quality of their program. Over 60% in most fields felt they benefited from the program's intellectual environment, but only 40% or less of were satisfied with the program-sponsored social interaction.

According to the news release, the assessment is designed to help universities evaluate and improve the quality of their programs and to provide prospective students with information on the nation's doctoral programs.

Further information, and a download of the full report, can be accessed here.

Russian Ph.D. Programs

There has been talk of increasing the period of graduate study in Russia from 3 to four years. This proposal has been justified in part due to the fact that some disciplines, such as the technical and natural sciences require mandatory experimental validation of the theoretical results.

From Inside Higher Ed:
The idea behind that proposal is that it should significantly improve the quality of dissertations and the quality of academic training. This proposal is consistent with international practice, where dissertations can take 4-5-6 years. More importantly, the current situation really needs to be improved – drop-outs are high and the average level of research associated with doctoral theses is quite low. However, many people believe that increasing program length, by itself, is unlikely to change anything, and that the problem is not too little time, but extremely poor financial support for such studies and work. Indeed, the basic post-graduate scholarship –currently about $50 a month – doesn’t allow students to focus entirely on research since they must seek some part-time or even full-time job to support themselves. The sad result is that most of PhD students devote too little attention and effort to their dissertation. Only 26% of graduate students finally submit their thesis and the quality (generally) is rather weak. Additionally, since PhD degrees are prestigious, there is a large demand for degree holders and this status is easily bought and sold. So the PhD degree does not necessarily reflect strong training or a sophisticated academic qualification anymore (This situation is most disastrous in the social sciences).

The Russian government also recently announced increases in graduate scholarships starting this September. This comes at the cost of reducing the number of graduate students.

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.