Sharon Brucker, Project Coordinator of the Mellon Graduate Education Improvement Project at the Woodrow Wilson School’s Survey Research Center (SRC), has co-authored a book titled, “Educating Scholars: Doctoral Education in the Humanities” (2010, PU Press).

The book was made possible by funding by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in 1991, which launched the Graduate Education Initiative (GEI). GEI was established to improve the structure and organization of Ph.D. programs in the humanities and social sciences. The grant was the largest effort ever undertaken to improve doctoral programs in humanities and related social sciences. Since August 2003 the Foundation has supported the coordination of the project at the Survey Research Center.     This past December 18, 2009 following the release of the book, the Foundation has awarded SRC another grant for over $300,000 in order to finalize the database and conduct additional analysis beyond the scope of the book.

Co-authored with Irving M. Ives Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations, Economics at Cornell University and director of Cornell Higher Education Research Institute; Harriet Zuckerman, Senior vice president, at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and Professor emeritus of Sociology at Colombia University; and Jeffrey Groen, a research economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Brucker and her colleagues focused on four key issues facing America’s doctoral programs in the humanities including, major content changes of graduate programs; the time it takes to earn a degree;   the financial burdens, and high rates of student attrition.

In a blog article for phd-connect.com, the authors discussed the study and their findings. They noted that the study was based on annual data on the progress of all students who entered those Ph.D. programs including, annual reports by professors, and the results of a retrospective survey of all students pursuing the degree in both treatment and control departments.

Among their key findings the authors note that on average graduate students in the humanities and related fields took 7.3 years to complete their degrees which means that a considerable number took longer than that. In fact, approximately a quarter of those who eventually completed their degrees did so after remaining for 10 years or longer.   In a related finding, the authors report those who go beyond seven years to complete the degree program will lessen their probability of getting a tenure-track position as their degree time lengthens.

In addition, they found that   “multiyear financial-aid packages appear to have reduced attrition early in students’ graduate careers. The packages often had the effect of substituting late attritions for early attrition.”

Brucker and her colleagues note, “the notion that students are held back by teaching ‘too much’ needs qualification. Serving as a teaching assistant for a reasonable number of terms- five or fewer- did not delay degree completion, but longer stints did.” In addition, “having a fellowship rather than an assistantship in the fifth and sixth years would increase the completion rate by more than 4 percent by the end of the sixth year.”

In the book the co-authors made several recommendations to institutions and their leaders as to how to address their findings. They assert that “the most heartening lesson from the GEI is that raising awareness of how many grad students drop out and how long degrees actually take can stimulate thoughtful reviews of programs and sensible decisions to change them.”

The findings of this new research have since impacted the way the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation supports graduate education in the humanities and related social sciences.