Slow to Learn
It seems superfluous to blog about an article that was already number one on the New York Times most e-mailed list, but in this case, how can I resist. Apparently the average time for getting a PhD in the US is a whooping 8.2 years, with some fields, education for example, taking much longer. You’d think that anyone who’s been in school for over 30 years of their life would be automatically be considered an expert on education, but apparently a lengthy thesis is also required.
Anyway, according to the Times, Princeton has lowered their average for humanities PhDs to 6.4 years (down from 7.5 in 2003). This statistic makes me think the 8.2 year average was also limited to humanities. If not, I dare say I’m wildly ahead of schedule, as is my entire department, and every CS PhD I’ve ever met (I’m guessing computer scientists take 5.5 years on average). Personally I’m shooting for 5 years, although I did start working with my advisor before I was enrolled as a graduate student.
I’m not sure what these humanities folks do for 8+ years, but I’m guessing it isn’t work towards their PhD full time. Science PhDs generally get paid enough to be full time students and come out of school debt free, humanities not so much. To reduce the time it takes to get a PhD, Princeton guarantees all PhDs at least 5 years of funding (this includes tuition, health insurance, and about $30,000 a year to live on). Brown has recently made the same guarantee. This decision doesn’t affect us science types much, but it sure makes getting a degree in an English or History more appealing. Sadly most universities don’t offer a similar guarantee, but this could be the beginning of a trend.
Another major factor in the length of a PhD program is what students plan to do with their degree. In the sciences, PhDs often get jobs in industry. This is generally much less competitive than going into academia and as an added bonus, the pay is better. In contrast, humanities students often vie for a small number of academic jobs, which puts additional pressure on them to have a truly groundbreaking thesis (good luck with that). Finally humanities types read a lot of books. That’ll hold anyone back.