Study: Time to degree in some UI grad programs tops 9 years

The median time for students to earn doctoral degrees surpassed eight and nine years in some University of Iowa graduate programs, according to a recent study.

It's called “time to degree,” and it's a hot topic at the UI and in higher education nationally.

A UI task force on graduate education recently said 14 of the university's 108 master's and doctoral programs need additional review that could result in changes, mergers or closures. Time to degree was one measure used to rank the programs.

Time to degree is climbing nationally, and some at the UI say programs must work harder to educate doctoral students in a shorter time. Longer time to degree, they say, makes it harder for programs to financially support students and bring in new students.

“Time to degree and percent completion had a lot of traction with this task force, for right or for wrong,” Graduate College Dean John Keller said. “Just because it may be nine years nationally in a discipline, that doesn't mean we should feel comfortable if we're in that range.”

Other faculty and students argue the task force put too much emphasis on time to degree and that median times vary too much to be a good measure, especially in smaller departments where one or two students can sway it.

In the time frame studied by the task force - entering students from 1996 to 2000 - to see how many earned doctorates by May 2009, the linguistics department had a median time to degree of nine years.

Catherine Ringen, professor and department executive officer, said that's an inaccurate picture, because it was calculated using only two students. Looking at the 10 most recent doctorate graduates shows a lower median of six years.

“That's the sort of thing that hurts a small department,” she said. “There can be radical fluctuations.”

Film studies had the

longest time to degree,

9.3 years. In the program response, officials said including more recent grads in the time frame reduces it to 8.6 years.

Several doctoral students said time to degree is a non-issue; they care more about program quality and placement rate in tenure-track academic jobs.

“Time to degree is one of those statistics that really has very little to do with the department or its mission or how well it produces Ph.D.s,” said Ryan Watson, 29, a fourth-year film studies doctoral student. “They want you to complete the program in five or six years, and they do everything they can to help you.”

Perhaps the task force weighted time to degree too heavily, but faculty must realize it is becoming a standard measure nationally, said Morten Schlutter, director of graduate studies for religious studies.

Like other humanities programs, religious studies may require language acquisition and international field work, which can lengthen time to degree. The department also is among those looking to reduce time to degree through more mentoring, checklists or summer fellowship funding.

A checklist for incoming graduate students has proved successful in classics, which had a median time to degree of 8.5 years. It's a demanding program that requires students to learn ancient Greek, Latin, German and French, but officials want to see degree time lowered, said Mary Depew, director of graduate studies.

The checklist is like a contract, with expectations over six years.

“In the last two years, everyone is on track,” she said.

Faculty don't want to see students stall, which can be bad for their career prospects, philosophy Chairwoman Diane Jeske said.

“That being said, I think the task force perhaps had the wrong sorts of expectations about what's a reasonable time to degree, particularly in certain fields,” she said. “You can't compare pharmacy to philosophy.”

The median time to degree for all UI graduate programs was six years, a number Keller considers good. The national median is 7.7 years.

UI Provost Wallace Loh said time to degree is a symptom but not the underlying problem. Higher education has seen median time to degree grow by several years in recent decades, Loh said, and schools must ask why.

“I'm not saying these programs don't have outstanding faculty and outstanding students. I'm saying let's look at student outcomes and student success,” Loh said.