Inside the Black Box of Doctoral Education: What Program Characteristics Influence Doctoral Students’ Attrition and Graduation Probabilities?

Keywords

PhD programs, attrition rates, completion rates

Abstract

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s Graduate Education Initiative (GEI) provided funding to 54 departments in the humanities and related social sciences during the 1990s to improve their PhD programs. This article estimates the aspects of PhD programs the GEI influenced and how these aspects influenced attrition and graduation probabilities. It uses survey data on entrants to PhD programs at 44 of the “treatment” departments and 41 “control” departments during a 15-year period that spanned the start of the GEI. Factor analysis is used to group more than 100 program characteristics into a smaller number of factors, and the impact of the GEI on each and the impact of each on attrition and graduation probabilities are estimated. The article estimates the routes via which the GEI influenced attrition and graduation rates and indicates which aspects of PhD programs departments should concentrate on to improve their programs’ performance.

Original Publication Citation

Ehrenberg, Ronald; George Jakubson; Jeffrey Groen, Eric So, and Joseph Price. “Inside the Black Box of Doctoral Education” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 29(2): 134-150, 2007

Document Type

Peer-Reviewed Article

Publication Date

2007

Publisher

AERA

Language

English

College

Family, Home, and Social Sciences

Department

Economics

University Standing at Time of Publication

Assistant Professor

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