UPENN SAS will not admit new Ph.D. students next year due to COVID-19

[TreadingLife]

The School of Arts and Sciences will pause admissions for school-funded Ph.D. programs for the 2021-2022 academic year.

....decision was made as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic's impact on the school's finances. 

Pausing admissions for the next academic year will allow SAS to allocate available funds towards current graduate students who need more time to complete their degrees, according to the email. In the coming weeks, Fluharty and Wenger will meet with the graduate and department chairs to create a program providing funding to students who require extra time to complete their degrees.

Fluharty and Wenger wrote that graduate programs are encouraged to continue admitting Master of Arts and Master of Science students for the 2021-2022 academic year.  (Of course not. You can't bite the hand that feeds you.)

https://www.thedp.com/article/2020/09/graduate-student-programs-canceled-upenn

[Parasaurolophus]

Seems fine to me. I'd certainly want to attend a program that recognized what its current grads are about to go through and invested in them more heavily.

I believe Rice has done the same for its entire School of Humanities.

[polly_mer]

For years, the cries have been to have fewer graduate programs in many fields.  It'll be interesting to see how that plays out in reality.

[Caracal]

Seems fine to me. I'd certainly want to attend a program that recognized what its current grads are about to go through and invested in them more heavily.

I believe Rice has done the same for its entire School of Humanities.

In an ideal world, you would have done it this year, but I suppose admissions was well underway by March. I can't imagine what would be like to be starting a grad program this year. Very lonely, I imagine. But, sure, seems like a good decision. Hopefully, departments will have the flexibility to give extra years of funding several years down the line. In a lot of fields, if you were on track to finish this year the effect might have been minimal. If you would have been going off to do your research this year, or were in the midst of it last spring, you are probably way behind now.

[Durchlässigkeitsbeiwert]

Too many details are unknown to properly evaluate this decision. E.g.:
1) What is the fraction of "school-funded" students? Even departments with limited access to research grants may have many named scholarships
2) Will departments stick to the spirit of this decision? As opposed to offering prospective PhD students a [not-funded] place in the master-level program while implicitly suggesting an upgrade to funded position next year.

[polly_mer]

As opposed to offering prospective PhD students a [not-funded] place in the master-level program while implicitly suggesting an upgrade to funded position next year.

My bet is humanities and social science programs will do this.  Physical sciences may have research funding still to fund master's students.


Even in physical sciences, I more than once had the conversations with postbacs applying to grad school to not go if they aren't fully funded.one guy in particular asked, "Really?  Not even for just a master's degree?" Yes, really.  A good physics or math department will fully fund you.

[Caracal]

As opposed to offering prospective PhD students a [not-funded] place in the master-level program while implicitly suggesting an upgrade to funded position next year.

My bet is humanities and social science programs will do this.  Physical sciences may have research funding still to fund master's students.

At a place like Penn, lots of humanities programs don't admit many terminal masters students. I just looked at their history department listings, for example, and there are fewer than five masters students. The places with big masters programs in most disciplines tend to be big state schools or less prestigious programs.

[spork]

The Chronicle of Higher Ed has a list of graduate programs that have suspended admissions. The article is paywalled. Frequently on the list: history, English, anthropology, sociology, art history, religious studies, foreign languages, and various area studies programs. Universities on the list include the Ivies, some flagship state universities, and a couple of large private universities like Rice and NYU.

Any program not on the list probably ought to be permanently closed, but it won't be.

[Caracal]

The Chronicle of Higher Ed has a list of graduate programs that have suspended admissions. The article is paywalled. Frequently on the list: history, English, anthropology, sociology, art history, religious studies, foreign languages, and various area studies programs. Universities on the list include the Ivies, some flagship state universities, and a couple of large private universities like Rice and NYU.

Any program not on the list probably ought to be permanently closed, but it won't be.

My grad institution seems to be accepting applications. I don't know if they are considering it, but I can tell you that it has nothing to do with teaching undergrads, grad students don't teach courses normally and TA responsibilities are pretty light. What makes things complicated is that none of these students are actually going to be here till next year, and then they won't be on the job market for six years. The program cut the number of students they admitted each semester quite a while ago as a direct response to the job market.

I'd be curious to know if the cohort was already reduced in size this year and if incoming students were allowed to defer admission. If so, you might already have a few students locked in and want to fill out a cohort a bit. It could be very isolating to have only two other people in your cohort. Really, as the Penn statement said, the main reason to pause admissions is to redistribute funding towards students who had their research disrupted and may take longer to finish. Grad program funding is a weird thing and there are all sorts of funding mechanisms. Some of them are even endowed and can't be shifted around. The point is, that you probably should go easy on the sweeping generalizations.

[fourhats]

The article is paywalled.

As an aside, at least at the places I've worked, it's possible to read Chronicle articles if your library subscribes to it. I first log in using VPN, then I'm able to read articles as though I have a subscription.