A Year Without New Grad Students: CHE article

[polly_mer]

https://www.chronicle.com/article/Amid-Rumors-of-Shift-to/247199

The University at Buffalo is barring most departments in its College of Arts and Sciences from recruiting funded Ph.D. students next year, unless they qualify for certain scholarships.

[kaysixteen]

Well, ah, good old UB.  I did my PhD in classics there finishing 20 years ago.  I was unfunded.  The dept did have some funding lines, but university policy forbade more than a max of 4 funded years, and many funded students didn't get to keep theirs for the whole 4.  One can not help guessing that graduate student attrition was high, with a vast number of ABDs falling into a black hole.  And of course eben then, certainly now, most newly minted classics PhDs are also unlikely to get a tt job.  So I get the complaints some of the current grad students are lodging wrt this extreme policy change, but I am ambivalent nonetheless, and this very action on the uni's part also makes one call into question the overall funding and prospects of the school as well.

[Wahoo Redux]

SUNY Buffalo's grad rankings are solid if not exceptional, so it can't be program quality. 

This is probably a harbinger of things to come.  Programs will be trimmed from the academic tree, and maybe it is time.

[Parasaurolophus]

A pause in admissions to fund an increase to current stipends seems fine to me.

But they shouldn't be accepting unfunded students period.

[writingprof]

A pause in admissions to fund an increase to current stipends seems fine to me.

But they shouldn't be accepting unfunded students period.

Indeed.  And unfunded students shouldn't be accepting their "offer."  Don't these kids have undergraduate professors to talk some sense into them?

[Wahoo Redux]

A pause in admissions to fund an increase to current stipends seems fine to me.

But they shouldn't be accepting unfunded students period.

Indeed.  And unfunded students shouldn't be accepting their "offer."  Don't these kids have undergraduate professors to talk some sense into them?

Some of us have tried.  My experience has been that the idea of graduate school and the ideological lure of being a professor (whatever that means to them) is simply too strong for some folks. 

[Parasaurolophus]

Indeed.  And unfunded students shouldn't be accepting their "offer."  Don't these kids have undergraduate professors to talk some sense into them?

I think that some disciplines are a lot better about this than others. And I expect that loads of professors (especially if they're not at R1s) are just not plugged in well enough any more to know, or can't be bothered to care enough to inform themselves. Perhaps they see it as part of the research world they've largely left behind.

[marshwiggle]

A pause in admissions to fund an increase to current stipends seems fine to me.

But they shouldn't be accepting unfunded students period.

Indeed.  And unfunded students shouldn't be accepting their "offer."  Don't these kids have undergraduate professors to talk some sense into them?

Some of us have tried.  My experience has been that the idea of graduate school and the ideological lure of being a professor (whatever that means to them) is simply too strong for some folks.

Sadly, this can persist indefinitely after graduation as well, regardless of peoples' actual experience of the academic job market.

[Durchlässigkeitsbeiwert]

While I support idea to admit less students to fund admitted ones better, I envision some [unintended?] side effects due to unfunded admissions going on. It appears to be quite possible that some Profs/Depatments will encourage students to go unfunded for a year while hinting that money will be available for subsequent years.

[spork]

U Chicago implementing enrollment caps for graduate programs:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/10/09/university-chicago-will-guarantee-full-funding-all-humanities-and-social-sciences.

[Hibush]

U Chicago implementing enrollment caps for graduate programs:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/10/09/university-chicago-will-guarantee-full-funding-all-humanities-and-social-sciences.

The problem U Chicago says it is addressing is that PhD students in certain humanities fields are not able to finish within the currently guaranteed six years of funding. They are still there after nine years, but are not getting money and often fail to complete. Their solution is to keep funding the stragglers.

In my field, the solution to this familiar problem is rather the opposite. We try to identify those making unsatisfactory progress early (year three) and either get them mentorship that is a better match for successful completion or having them pass a masters exam and go off with our best wishes for success in a different endeavor. If they make it deep into year six without an immediate end game, there will be pressure from many directions to cut them off (with a consolation MS).

A biologist in a ninth year of PhD studies is going to be unemployable in academics or industry. Letting them carry on that long is unforgivable.

[spork]

I suspect the end result at Chicago will be the same -- tightening of standards to admit only the applicants who appear most likely to complete the program, and lots of pressure to quit with a master's degree if satisfactory progress isn't made. Otherwise new students don't get admitted because the program has hit the enrollment cap.

But I can see the occasional person turning this into an infinitely-long GTA gig.

[apl68]

U Chicago implementing enrollment caps for graduate programs:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/10/09/university-chicago-will-guarantee-full-funding-all-humanities-and-social-sciences.

The problem U Chicago says it is addressing is that PhD students in certain humanities fields are not able to finish within the currently guaranteed six years of funding. They are still there after nine years, but are not getting money and often fail to complete. Their solution is to keep funding the stragglers.

In my field, the solution to this familiar problem is rather the opposite. We try to identify those making unsatisfactory progress early (year three) and either get them mentorship that is a better match for successful completion or having them pass a masters exam and go off with our best wishes for success in a different endeavor. If they make it deep into year six without an immediate end game, there will be pressure from many directions to cut them off (with a consolation MS).

A biologist in a ninth year of PhD studies is going to be unemployable in academics or industry. Letting them carry on that long is unforgivable.

Yes!  I wish our department had taken that approach when I was in grad school.  I quit in my sixth year, but they tried to encourage me to keep blundering along even longer.  I seriously wondered at the time--and still do--whether the idea wasn't to keep around a pool of desperate cases ready to do shamefully underpaid grading work in an effort to stay in the game.

[polly_mer]

The announcements regarding Fall 2021 entry for grad school have been rolling in and many humanities and social science programs are skipping a new cohort: https://www.wsj.com/articles/pandemic-leads-dozens-of-universities-to-pause-ph-d-admissions-11609261200

[Hibush]

The announcements regarding Fall 2021 entry for grad school have been rolling in and many humanities and social science programs are skipping a new cohort: https://www.wsj.com/articles/pandemic-leads-dozens-of-universities-to-pause-ph-d-admissions-11609261200

One of their graphs shows the proportion of PhDs with definite job plans at graduation. The range is smaller than you'd think. The hot fields (eg computer science) at 76%, the stable (life science) at 67% and the ailing-so-bad-they-are-not admitting-students (Humanities) at 59%. 

That a difference of 8% is the difference between normal and critical over/undersupply is surprising.

I'm in life science, and having sent off most of our students to some nice gigs, we are admitting a normal number of PhD students.