The Completion Rate of Ph.D. Students in English

[Mondo]

Hello,

Do you guys know the completion rate of Ph.D. students in English? English graduate programs rarely release such info. I've heard it's around 50% in a majority of English Ph.D. programs, even in top programs. I can guess this by looking at the number of Ph.D. students a program admits each year and the number of graduates occasionally posted with their dissertation titles. I've heard that it's even worse in some of the programs in the middle or bottom tiers--sometimes less than 25%. I saw some friends leave with only an MA or just drop out even in the dissertation stage. I know there're many obstacles to get over during the course of a Ph.D. study, and that there're many sadistic English professors with weird personalities, preying on grad students, looking for every chance to take you out.

Anyway, does anyone happen to know English Ph.D. programs in the top forty or fifty in the US News rankings that are known for their nurturing academic environment--not overly competitive but more inclusive?

Thanks,

Mondo

[greekdaph]

One important point about attrition, which is something I hadn't thought about until I heard a DGS talk about it, is that there are (at least) two kinds of attrition: "good attrition" and "bad attrition." Some students leave PhD programs with a free Master's in tow because they decide that graduate study isn't for them, because their family circumstances change, or because of all kinds of other reasons. That makes it into the statistics, but it isn't necessarily a problem and, most often, has more to do with personal circumstances than institutional ones. What's a problem is people who stay ABD for their entire lives--people who get far into the program but, for whatever reason, don't finish and don't even plan to finish. In thinking about the latter category, what you want to look for and ask about is: what structural mechanisms are in place to help students make steady progress towards their degrees? Funding is important, obviously, but there are other kinds of support, too: does a program have structures in place to motivate you to write? Does a program give you fellowship semesters or years--that is, time off from teaching--so that you can focus on your writing? Does a program give you funding to travel to archives and present your work at conferences? The economy affects this, too, and not necessarily in a bad way, as some departments notorious for letting students stick around forever are now cracking down a bit. When you visit programs, ask them what support they give to dissertating students. The more support, the less attrition.

As for programs that have a more nurturing academic environment, look, in general, for programs that:

1. Have non-competitive funding (that is, they make a commitment to fund all of their incoming graduate students and give them the same or very similar funding packages). Money can be a source of tension, as it's tough to make a living as a grad student. Also, unequal funding offers can create hierarchies and cause insecurity.

2. Assume that the students they accept for the MA/PhD will be there for the duration of the program. Some programs don't automatically admit students for both the MA and PhD, which can cause all kinds of tension when some get the opportunity to stay and others are forced to go through the horrendous application process again. Some programs treat oral exams (or written exams; whatever, more generally, is the transition between coursework and candidacy) as qualifying exams, and may use them to weed people out, whereas at other programs it's extremely rare for someone to fail these exams. In general, it's that case that everyone at a program wants to see you succeed--they win and you win when you do well. But some students are more territorial, and some institutional structures facilitate competition rather than cooperation.

As far as specific program that have more nurturing environments, check out UNC-Chapel Hill, Rutgers, University of Michigan, and Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL) (there are many more, too). Bear in mind that some programs have a more professor-centric model, where your experience--and, sometimes, your chances at finding a good job afterwards--are more closely linked to your advisor (e.g., "Professor Awesome's students always do really well on the market!"), whereas other programs operate more on the it takes a village to raise a graduate student model (e.g., "Students from Awesome School always do really well on the market!"). It's hard to know up front which program is which, and hard to know up front which programs are more inclusive than others (often, it depends on how well individual cohorts get along, and often it can vary from year to year), but questions like that can be resolved much more easily on a campus visit where you get to meet other prospective students and where your gut feeling kicks in.

On 11/17/2009 at 8:12 PM, Mondo said:

Hello,

Do you guys know the completion rate of Ph.D. students in English? English graduate programs rarely release such info. I've heard it's around 50% in a majority of English Ph.D. programs, even in top programs. I can guess this by looking at the number of Ph.D. students a program admits each year and the number of graduates occasionally posted with their dissertation titles. I've heard that it's even worse in some of the programs in the middle or bottom tiers--sometimes less than 25%. I saw some friends leave with only an MA or just drop out even in the dissertation stage. I know there're many obstacles to get over during the course of a Ph.D. study, and that there're many sadistic English professors with weird personalities, preying on grad students, looking for every chance to take you out.

Anyway, does anyone happen to know English Ph.D. programs in the top forty or fifty in the US News rankings that are known for their nurturing academic environment--not overly competitive but more inclusive?

Thanks,

Mondo

[Mondo]

greekdaph,

Thanks for your thoughtful response. From what I hear from people, there are many possible scenarios for ABDs leaving. It's not like they don't want or plan to finish. The majority of them want to, considering several years of hard work, but unexpected things happen. Your supervisor might move to another school, retire, or die. Your relationship with your supervisor might suddenly change, and s/he becomes more and more difficult to deal with and so doesn't cooperate with you anymore, for example, making an unreasonable request for a rewrite of your dissertation, or simply showing almost no interest in what you're doing, leaving you all alone. Funding is one of the issues that might hinder your progrss or unimately force you to leave, like you said, but there're other subtle ways to show you the door even in a later stage. You just simply figure out and leave on your own, realizing that your supervisor won't be there for you anymore. You're at their mercy. I don't know if professors in top programs have a certain ethical standard to uphold, or if they have a better system to handle this kind of issues, but it's hard to shake off the impression that English professors are probably the most selfish people in academia.

Mondo

[catilina]

I went to graduate school in English years ago. Top 20 program. Of the 15 or so people who started with me, I think I was the only one who didn't finish? Only about half got jobs, none of those were particularly good jobs.

[Mondo]

I have run into this website, www.graduatestudentabuse.org

Although it's about the grad student abuse at the UCLA Slavic dept, it sounds very familiar, as I have heard similar stories about some English grad programs. A list of abuses is as follows:

• physical displays of faculty anger including frequent yelling and even slamming a chair on the floor

• students being intimidated into taking particular classes because of enrollment concerns

• students who fear writing anything but laudatory comments in the "anonymous" course evaluation forms

• a fractious faculty so immobilized by disagreement that no common reading list can be agreed upon (at least for linguistics) to assist the students in preparation for their exams

• students who feel compelled to tailor their intellectual approach in exams to the committee membership, and who are advised to "get one on your side" before going into exams

• students who don't dare complain for fear of retaliation in the MA or PhD exams, or in obtaining a dissertation signature

• students who feel that the only value of their comments is for use as ammunition in the internal squabbles of the faculty

• repeated episodes of students being ridiculed for having various deficiencies in their background; e.g. "What the hell are you doing here?" or "Well, you might as well just be an undergraduate!"

• students feeling abandoned and with no place to turn

• faculty who appear to change their minds about the quality of work in response to unrelated circumstances

• ladder faculty conspiring against non-ladder faculty in the presence of students

• faculty playing out their rivalries by deprecating students' choices of dissertation advisor

• students being threatened with loss of funding in arguments with faculty, e.g. " ... and don't think you are going to get funding next year..."

• students being threatened with disciplinary action for voicing disagreement with faculty

They also complain about the lack of funding and the high level of attrition, which again sounds very familiar.

You can read more about this at http://www.graduates...use.org/4a.html

[Mondo]

It can turn deadly. A grad student stabs his supervisor to death over funding at Binghamton: http://www.nytimes.c...1&ref=education

[piccgeek]

On 12/14/2009 at 1:46 PM, Mondo said:

It can turn deadly. A grad student stabs his supervisor to death over funding at Binghamton: http://www.nytimes.c...1&ref=education

Wow. That is so sad and frightening. I mean, I know people who get a little eye-twitch whenever funding is mentioned but...this is something else.

[Mondo]

Humanities (especially English) job outlook gets bleaker according to today's NY Times article: http://www.nytimes.c...r.html?_r=1&hpw

I was told it is the worst time to get into an English Ph.D. program, and that more grad students started abandoning their study. Is it true?

[JennyFieldsOriginal]

On 12/18/2009 at 1:15 AM, Mondo said:

Humanities (especially English) job outlook gets bleaker according to today's NY Times article: http://www.nytimes.c...r.html?_r=1&hpw

I was told it is the worst time to get into an English Ph.D. program, and that more grad students started abandoning their study. Is it true?

What I've been doing is looking at schools that have an especially strong placement record. Come hell or high water, I'm going to graduate school and I'm just trying to get into the school that gives me the best chance of having a job on the other end. Brandeis, WashU and Vanderbilt seem to be really good at placements despite their smaller cohorts and seem to offer great funding.

There are no guarantees with this process. It can be expensive to apply, a risky job proposition, and generally make your head explode. For me though, it's an incredible luxury to be able to get my PhD and I'm going to get everything I can out of the experience, work my butt off, and if I don't get a job it won't be because I didn't do every single thing I could.

I'm wishing everyone the same and hopefully we will all have tenure (or at least fancy PhD robes) in no time!