sci.research.careers

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The whole emphasis in this article (below) is seriously misplaced.

The issue that needs attention involves: i) the attrition AFTER the PhD is=
=20
awarded FROM careers for many reasons, and ii) the failure to even be=20
able to START a career in a PhD-requiring job.

Documentation of this is in the book "The PhD Factory" by Massy and=20
Goldman, with more information and background on the website:



=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D no change to below, included for reference and context =3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D

On Sat, 6 Oct 2007, 20817 wrote:

> /2007/10/03/education/ ?em&ex=3D1191=
816000&en=3D877d3ff2b10abc13&ei=3D5087
>
> October 3, 2007
> On Education
> Exploring Ways to Shorten the Ascent to a .
> By JOSEPH BERGER
> Correction Appended
>
> PRINCETON, .
>
> Many of us have known this scholar: The hair is well-streaked with
> gray, the chin has begun to sag, but still our tortured friend slaves
> away at a masterwork intended to change the course of civilization
> that everyone else just hopes will finally get a career under way.
>
> We even have a name for this sometimes pitied species - the . -
> All But Dissertation. But in academia these days, that person is less
> a subject of ridicule than of soul-searching about what can done to
> shorten the time, sometimes much of a lifetime, it takes for so many
> graduate students to, well, graduate. The Council of Graduate Schools,
> representing 480 universities in the United States and Canada, is
> halfway through a seven-year project to explore ways of speeding up
> the ordeal.
>
> For those who attempt it, the doctoral dissertation can loom on the
> horizon like Everest, gleaming invitingly as a challenge but often
> turning into a masochistic exercise once the ascent is begun. The
> average student takes years to get a .; in education, that
> figure surpasses 13 years. Fifty percent of students drop out along
> the way, with dissertations the major stumbling block. At
> commencement, the typical doctoral holder is 33, an age when peers are
> well along in their professions, and 12 percent of graduates are
> saddled with more than $50,000 in debt.
>
> These statistics, compiled by the National Science Foundation and
> other government agencies by studying the 43,354 doctoral recipients
> of 2005, were even worse a few years ago. Now, universities are
> setting stricter timelines and demanding that faculty advisers meet
> regularly with prot=E9g=E9s. Most science programs allow students to
> submit three research papers rather than a single grand work. More
> universities find ways to ease financial burdens, providing better
> paid teaching assistantships as well as tuition waivers. And more
> universities are setting up writing groups so that students feel less
> alone cobbling together a thesis.
>
> Fighting these trends, and stretching out the process, is the
> increased competition for jobs and research grants; in fields like
> English where faculty vacancies are scarce, students realize they must
> come up with original, significant topics. Nevertheless, education
> researchers like Barbara E. Lovitts, who has written a new book urging
> professors to clarify what they expect in dissertations; for example,
> to point out that professors "view the dissertation as a training
> exercise" and that students should stop trying for "a degree of
> perfection that's unnecessary and unobtainable."
>
> There are probably few universities that nudge students out the door
> as rapidly as Princeton, where a humanities student now averages
> years compared with in 2003. That is largely because Princeton
> guarantees financial support for its more than 2,000 scholars for five
> years, including free tuition and stipends that range up to $30,000 a
> year. That means students need teach no more than two courses during
> their schooling and can focus on research.
>
> "Princeton since the 1930s has felt that a . should be an
> education, not a career, and has valued a tight program," said William
> B. Russel, dean of the graduate school.
>
> And students are grateful. "Every morning I wake up and remind myself
> the university is paying me to do nothing but write the dissertation,"
> said Kellam Conover, 26, a classicist who expects to complete his
> course of study in five years next May when he finishes his
> dissertation on bribery in Athens. "It's a tremendous advantage
> compared to having to work during the day and complete the
> dissertation part time."
>
> But fewer than a dozen universities have endowments or sources of
> financing large enough to afford five-year packages. The rest require
> students to teach regularly. Compare Princetonians with Brian Gatten,
> 28, an English scholar at the University of Texas in Austin. He has
> either been teaching or assisting in two courses every semester for
> five years.
>
> "Universities need us as cheap labor to teach their undergraduates,
> and frankly we need to be needed because there isn't another way for
> us to fund our education," he said.
>
> That raises a question that state legislatures and trustees might
> ponder: Would it be more cost effective to provide financing to speed
> graduate students into careers rather than having them drag out their
> apprenticeships?
>
> But money is not the only reason Princeton does well. It has developed
> a culture where professors keep after students. Students talk of
> frequent meetings with advisers, not a semiannual review. For example,
> Ning Wu, 30, a father of two, works in Dr. Russel's chemical
> engineering lab and said Dr. Russel comes by every Friday to discuss
> Mr. Wu's work on polymer films used in computer chips. He aims to get
> his . next year, his fifth.
>
> While Dr. Russel values "the critical thinking and independent digging
> students have to do, either in their mind for an original concept or
> in the archives," others question the necessity of book-length works.
> Some universities have established what they call professional
> doctorates for students who plan careers more as practitioners than
> scholars. Since the 1970s, Yeshiva University has not only offered a
> . in psychology but also a separate doctor of psychology degree,
> or ., for those more interested in clinical work than research;
> that program requires a more modest research paper.
>
> OTHER institutions are reviving master's degree programs for, say,
> aspiring scientists who plan careers in development of products rather
> than research.
>
> Those who insist on dissertations are aware that they must reduce the
> loneliness that defeats so many scholars. Gregory Nicholson,
> completing his sixth and final year at Michigan State, was able to
> finish a 270-page dissertation on spatial environments in novels like
> Kerouac's "On the Road" with relative efficiency because of a writing
> group where he thrashed out his work with other thesis writers.
>
> "It's easy, especially in our field, to feel isolated, and that tends
> to slow people down," he said. "There's no sense of belonging to an
> academic community."
>
> Some common sense would also hasten the process. The dissertation is a
> hurdle that must be cleared, not a magnum opus, the capstone of a
> career. Princeton's Mr. Wu has made that calculation.
>
> "You do not want to stay forever," Mr. Wu said. "It's a training
> process."
>
> Correction: October 4, 2007
> The On Education column yesterday, about efforts to shorten the time
> it takes to earn a ., misstated the number of graduate students at
> Princeton University. There are more than 2,000 - not 330, the number
> of degrees the university awarded last year.
>
>
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