What percentage of graduate students entering PhD programs in the arts
and sciences at leading universities actually complete their studies?
How do completion rates vary by field of study, scale of graduate
program, and type of financial support provided to students? Has the
increasing reliance on Teaching Assistantships affected completion rates
and time-to-degree? How successful have national fellowship programs
been in encouraging students to finish their studies in reasonably short
periods of time? What have been the effects of curricular developments
and shifts in the state of the job market? How has the overall "system"
of graduate education been affected by the expansion of the 1960s and
the subsequent contraction in enrollments and degrees conferred? Is
there "excess capacity" in the system at the present time? This major
study seeks to answer fundamental questions of this kind. It is based on
an exhaustive analysis of an unparalleled data set consisting of the
experiences in graduate school of more than 35,000 students who entered
programs in English, history, political science, economics, mathematics,
and physics at ten leading universities between 1962 and 1986. In
addition, new information has been obtained on the graduate student
careers of more than 13,000 winners of prestigious national fellowships
such as the Woodrow Wilson and the Danforth. It is the combination of
these original data sets with other sources of national data that
permits fresh insights into the processes and outcomes of graduate
education. The authors conclude that opportunities to achieve
significant improvements in the organization and functioning of graduate
programs exist--especially in the humanities and related social
sciences--and the final part of the book contains their policy
recommendations. This will be the standard reference on graduate
education for years to come, and it should be read and studied by
everyone concerned with the future of graduate education in the United
States.
Originally published in 1992.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand
technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from
the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions
preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting
them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the
Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich
scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by
Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
