English Department restricts graduate admission to Black Studies only

[JBStillFlying]

@bluebayou

I prefer official statistics when available over a student newspaper article:

2016/17: 8.85 years
2017/18: 7.75 years
2018/19: 8.25 years
2019/20: 6.5 years, but only 4 students graduated so far; the others in the cohort are still toiling away, so that number will quickly rise to 8+ (even accounting for COVID).

Again,

https://provost.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/ProgramStatisticsHUMEnglish.pdf

. . . . . . .

Yes, I’m well aware of Cal’s academic prowess. Back when the nrc was ranking PhD programs, Berkeley had more top 10 departments than everybody but Harvard. (Surprisingly, English was no longer one of them.) That said, do you happen to know Berkeley’s time to completion?

Besides Berkeley, Michigan is a strong public with a high-ranked English PhD program. They get their students out in 6 years.

btw: Stanford and Harvard also find a way to get their English PhD’s out in 6 years…Duke is 6.

Chicago remains the outlier in its peer group. Perhaps Marlow has some insights as to why that might be?

• Blue, I couldn't find Berkeley's time to completion and no statistics for Yale or Stanford other than "typical time to completion" verbiage. Perhaps I have poor Google-foo. I did find the Duke stats. Yale uses this metric which ranks UChicago ahead of Duke but behind Stanford at PhD programs for faculty at the top 30 grad departments (as defined by USNews).

https://www.jgoodwin.net/jobs/
https://jgoodwin.net/jobs/group.html

This is helpful, but selective. For instance, Yale (and others) might place many in the 25-30 range. UChicago might place more in the 1 - 10 range and send more to non-university research appointments. UChicago’s own five-year outcome is that 58% are in tenure/tenure track five years out. Not sure how that compares to Yale, etc. Or Cal.

• The graph I cited is NOT compiled by the student newspaper LOL. It's from the provost's office. This is the graph that Provost Diermaier presented when he announced that several departments would be capped for grad student enrollment. I do not know the time period or the exact peer group but I'm guessing the provost's office can do this analysis properly - ie, without picking and choosing a few schools.
• A review of cohort year for all 63 grad students listed reveals four poor souls still slaving away well past eight years. However, in terms of everyone else, the earliest cohort listed is 2014 - pretty much what you would expect given that we are six-seven years past that. There are six remaining in that cohort compared to the eight or so who enrolled. The other two bailed, as the English Department stats show (2/8 is approximately 13%). So I don't see a whole lot of 7+ year grad students "toiling away." Keep in mind that the grad school has actually increased enrollment in recent years so those four who graduated in 2019/20 might well have represented half the class, with the other half expected to graduate in 2021. that's what the historical numbers suggest. Now clearly, Covid might spike that number up as would-be faculty and post-doc appointments dry up, but that's true for everyone, not just UC.