Only at a few schools I looked at with a separate stand-alone Master’s program. Something which most of the departments I knew of didn’t have back then or even now.
From what I’ve gathered from relatives and friends who did their PhDs in the '60s and '70’s, this phenomenon was common enough that law school back then was commonly viewed among those in academia/PhD students as a “dumping ground” for “PhD failures/rejects”
An uncle who dropped out of a PhD program* in the early '70’s felt a bit of that stigma when he ended up attending what is now a T-6 law school and admitted feeling bad for a while as his identity with being a PhD student and tenure track scholar was so strongly tied to his own during his early-mid twenties. He eventually got over it and is now happily working as an attorney.
- Left due to an extremely toxic environment created due to a vicious departmental "civil war" between two factions of senior Profs with the grad students like said uncle being caught in the middle.
I know of a couple of people who were given the terminal MS boot: Joyce Carol Oates and Saul Bellow. Both were told they were not really well suited to the academic approach to their fields. Maybe their advisors were pretty smart.
My fallback if I washed out of my PhD program was culinary school—not really the lawyer type, I’m not.
@mathmom, regarding post 90, sorry for the side bar, but were the MD/PhD students more able because of the competition / selection or less able because of the demands of the medical school? Just curious
Out of curiosity, does the author have separate statistics for PhD students who voluntarily dropped out because they found more positive alternatives for themselves personally outside academia as opposed to those who flunked or were otherwise explicitly or implicitly forced out due to poor/failing performance on exams or because their advisors otherwise felt they weren’t meeting their personal standards for PhD advisees?
@Dave_N there’s much more competition to be an MD/Phd student. It’s basically a way to get paid to go to med school. (At the cost of even more years in school.) It’s really the cream of the crop of med students.
It is difficult to disentangle “voluntary” versus 'involuntary" attrition especially at the later stages of a doctoral program but here are some numbers from the “PhD Completion Project” sponsored by the Council of Graduate Schools in 2010.
The Council of Graduate Schools reports that in most math and science fields, the students who will leave are usually gone by year three. The humanities are another story, and not a happy one: Only half of all attrition takes place by the third year. The other half of the humanities noncompleters—25 percent of those who enter graduate programs—trickle out over the following seven (!) years. That’s a horrifying finding. Worse still, as Lovitts notes, noncompleters are more likely than completers to carry heavy student-loan debt.
http://chronicle.com/article/PhD-Attrition-How-Much-Is/140045/
I have graduated about 25 PhDs over the last 20+ years, and am currently mentoring 4 doctoral students in a STEM discipline. The institutions I have worked for range from very top to very good.
A few comments:
- There are good advisers and there are bad ones. But fundamentally, these are rather "good matches" and "bad matches", for both academic and personality reasons. Be very careful before you commit to a PhD program or a PhD adviser, but don't blame everything on others when things don't work out. I have rarely seen a colleague who does not care about their students, who actually carry out the adviser's research agenda. It is also very expensive to support a doctoral student, which costs ~$80K/year in my current institution, not counting research expenditure.
- At least in my field, the advisers do not have a big bias in terms of students going for academia or other career paths. Of my own students, including postdocs, two-thirds have become faculty in universities or national labs, with the remaining in industry (one person is making BIG bucks as a hedge fund manager!). Honestly, I have helped (maybe somewhat influenced their directions based on my assessment of their suitability) my students to get jobs they are interested in, but I would not have any issues with whichever career paths they choose.
- At least in STEM, if you do not have the passion, the brain, and the resolve, please do not apply to or enroll in a PhD program. Most of the attrition happens because of these reasons, in addition to student-adviser mismatch (which might be savaged by switching to a different adviser/program). Keep in mind that the hallmark of the PhD degree is "to make original contributions to your field of study", which requires intellectual capability, commitment and grit, and good luck. Many/Most of the A students may not be able to this. (BTW, I have never had a doctoral student who could not finish. It might be pure luck, but also some careful screening/matching process.)
- For those who really want to do a PhD (in STEM): 1). Work with an adviser who is a true expert in your field. If this is not possible, enroll in (at least) a good program/department. Otherwise, your job opportunities (in your preferred paths) might be more limited. 2). Factors in PhD admission (in my experience/practice): a. Important: personal statement (what research interests and why, why you are a good candidate, why this program/adviser), research experience and mentor's recommendation letter (if any), grades (from which schools/departments), interview. b. Considered: other recommendation letters, GRE (it may keep you out but it will not get you in).
Follow-up interview with the researcher/author here: http://chronicle.com/article/Inside-the-Graduate-Admissions/235093
As a PhD candidate, my fallback was Home Depot… 20 years out, it still is!
I just bought this book partly because of this thread. I’m in the beginning of it. Will probably share some more thoughts as I get further into it.
I have to say, though, that - having spent six years of my life in a doctoral program - I am not at all surprised by the finding that faculty admit people like them.
But the reliance on the GRE is disappointing. Just in the first chapter, a few programs admitted that they ranked students by GRE score and cut the bottom 50% just so they could winnow their numbers down. It’s especially disheartening because there are zero studies that investigate connections between GRE scores and completion rates or success in programs long-term - much less long-term success in academia.
^just proves the saying: ‘test scores will not get you in, but they could keep you out’. But then, that is the same as in undergrad, so it should not be surprising.