(The longest doctoral program in the nation is the music program at Washington University in St. Louis, with a median length of 16.3 years, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
The link is here.
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Has anyone checked out the full report? Man, it does need a doctoral degree to make sense of it! It’s probably the most complex survey datasheet that I have seen.
Incidentally, they probably have a thriving MA program, and the occasional doctoral student will be an MA graduate who wants or needs a doctorate, but who for some compelling personal reason doesn’t want to leave Wash U to go to a larger and more typical program. Again, this kind of thing is common in musicology.
It seems the less useful the degree the longer it takes to get the PhD.
@Andrew:
Maybe it is a result of incentives: The more useful your degree the larger is the pot of gold at the end of the tunnel. 🙂
It seems the less useful the degree the longer it takes to get the PhD.
Define useful ?
Don’t worry guys, don’t worry guys, I’m sure the graduates of that program have such AWESOMELY enhanced human capital that they can EASILY recoup the costs of being unproductive for 16.3 additional years,as they will have majestically amazing output that people will throw money at by the truckload!
*obscene grip gesture*
The only real employment you can usually get with a humanities PhD is an academic position. So, “useful” here probably means “helps you to get an academic job in the field your degree was in.”
Silas Barta: I’m repeating myself, but it is EXTREMELY DOUBTFUL that the students in the PhD program in question were somehow remaining in residence on campus for a median of 16.3 years. They (and there were probably only 2 or 3 of them) probably were working productively elsewhere, having gone ABD some years ago, and for reasons best known to them decided to finish up a long-dormant PhD by submitting a thesis. The reason it works that way is that you can often teach humanities as an adjunct with only an MA. So basically, the implied economic reasoning that you attribute to the PhD students or their program is almost certainly totally wrong. It may be irrational to be a humanities scholar, but it’s not as bad as you make it out to be.
Yeah, you are exactly right, I didn’t really mean that you can “only” get academic employment with a humanities PhD — just that that’s the stated goal of humanities graduate programs and at least the initial goal of most students who enter those programs.
At least for many business positions, I’ve seen that companies are just as willing to hire a qualified person regardless of the undergraduate major.
The economics for grad school are different than undergrad. You come out of a PhD knowing far more about your subject area than any other, so it’s more of a sacrifice to change fields — you’re giving up a lot more expertise and experience than an undergrad who has specialized in a particular subject for maybe 2 years past core classes.
I think Grouchy Musicologist has a great point about ABD, though — a very long time to graduation could just as easily indicate that people are getting jobs without the PhD.
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