People often ask, “how can we reduce completion times in PhD programs?” The issue is that people take a long time for a variety of reasons:
Lack of ability/skill level.
Waiting for the “right” publications/extended job search.
The need to work at other jobs/lack of funding.
Student procrastination/work ethic.
Professor procrastination/resistance.
I am sure there are more reasons, but these are the basics. As you can see, no single policy will speed things up. For example, you could award more fellowships to solve #3 but that doesn’t help with #2, especially if the market in your field is bad.
Here, I want to argue for a proposal that will help with issues #4 and #5. I call this the “goodbye dissertation” policy. The issue is that there is a class of student who honestly will not continue in academia but they still hang out in graduate programs. Maybe they want the credential because it has value in another field. Maybe they can’t finish because they have perfectionist advisors who demand a bigger and better dissertation that they simply won’t produce. Maybe the are procrastinating because they are afraid that their ideas aren’t good enough.
The Goodbye dissertation policy goes something like this:
The department makes it clear, in written policy, that students on a non-academic track must still produce a quality dissertation, but it can be shorter and less ambitious than what is expected of an research track student.
The university will provide a modest material incentive for “clearing” out students in this position. Enough to be an incentive to have these lingering students “wrap it up,” but not enough to trigger the lowering of standards by faculty.
Informally, faculty will sit down with the student and make it clear that this is “goodbye.” The dissertation must still meet the scientific or scholarly standards of the field, but it can be shorter and less ambitious. It would be “between” an MA level work and what a competitive PhD dissertation would look like. Then, the student would be told in no uncertain terms that a dissertation written within these criteria would mean a “goodbye” to the academic career. Honestly, this would be a huge relief for a lot of people.
I see two objections. First, people might reasonably say, “Why do we need this? Don’t we already have a terminal MA program?” The response is simple. A lot of people realize they are not suited for academia later in the program (e.g., year 5 instead of year 2). These people, reasonably, want the credential and they’ve already done quite a bit of work. It is not reasonable to ask people to dump it all. Instead, it is ok to ask them to “wrap it up” with some extra work.
Second, critics might see this as a lowering of standards. There are two separate issues. One is if the dissertation meets the basic minimum threshold for work in the field. It’s previous obvious that no program should ever accept a dissertation that does not meet this standard.
A second issue is how good and compelling a work is beyond this basic research competency. My response is this: the PhD dissertation is a pedagogical work, meant to teach people research skills. It is NOT a demonstration of high level mastery (e.g., monograph or flagship journal level work). A dissertation might be disappointing when you consider a student’s potential, but committees are there to teach research, not maximize potential. If you accept this argument, then it makes complete sense to have many students write shorter “good enough” dissertations.
The “goodbye” dissertation policy will help procrastinating students finish up and leave the university, and it signals to our more stuffy colleagues that you just have to let some students go, and sooner rather than later.
Bottom line: Graduate school should be like a soccer game - you may get a few extra minutes at the end, but the referee needs the plays to wrap it up and move on.
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My books: Grad Skool Rulz - cheap advice manual for grad students / The history of Black Studies / Obama and the antiwar movement / A Social Theory book you will enjoy reading / Intro Sociology for $1 per chapter