Gleaning the Chaff: New Studies Report High Attrition Rates in Graduate History Programs

Roark Atkinson

The newest crop of history graduate students will begin coursework around the country in a few weeks--more than 2,500 of them (1). Like their predecessors, most will have done some investigative work before choosing their graduate programs in history: visiting campuses, considering the field strengths and weaknesses of various departments, looking at the size of the research libraries and university endowments, and gauging the reputations of the various professors. Even the most nonchalant applicants will have sought advice from their undergraduate faculty mentors. Many will have run to the local bookstore to peruse the latest national rankings of history departments in the US News and World Report (USNWR ), or at least glanced at the Gourman Report: A Rating of Graduate and Professional Programs in American and International Universities. More industrious types will have read Lingua Franca Book's The Real Guide to Grad School: Humanities and Social Sciences (as well as Lingua Franca's annual "Jobtracks" issue, which reports data on the placement of Ph.D. recipients in the job market).

Yet there is precious little that is scientific about one's decision to go to graduate school--it requires a leap of faith. At present, would-be candidates simply do not possess the information they need to make informed decisions--not only about which graduate program to attend, but whether to pursue a Ph.D. at all.

Traditional sources such as those above are woefully lacking any comprehensive information on the attrition rates of history graduate programs. Data on this phenomenon are arguably some of the most valuable--and elusive--one can acquire before choosing a graduate program. No national study on attrition exists, and a team of experts has recently indicated that creating one would be unfeasible (2). Several recent publications are attempting to fill the gap, or at least describe the gap in our knowledge.

The Path to the Ph.D. (National Academy Press) provides a roadmap of the studies being done to assess attrition rates in graduate programs by broad fields of discipline. The executive summary notes that deans and faculty in the 1960s estimated attrition rates of 20-40 percent for selected fields in science and the humanities. The percentage for humanities and social sciences by themselves has tended to be higher, however. Between 1967-1971 the attrition rate for graduate students enrolled in English, history, and political science programs together was 41.9 percent; from 1972-1976 it was 49.6 percent (the rates during this period for mathematics and physics together were only 33.1 percent and 35.4 percent, respectively) (3) . Today institutions are reporting rates of approximately 50 percent for selected fields in the sciences and humanities, and over 65 percent for some programs.

Unsatisfied with the broad categories used in this and other reports, I contacted Peter D. Syverson at the Council of Graduate Schools, who helped me find several recent studies that focus on history alone. A few universities have released history graduate student data on the Internet. Of these, the University of California at San Diego's website shows that out of the fifty-one graduate students who entered its history department between 1981-1986, only 33 percent completed the Ph.D. Of the remainder, 65 percent left the program, and one student (2 percent) was registered or on leave in spring of the tenth year (4). Another valuable study at the University of Wisconsin at Madison shows a similar trend in their graduate history program (5). Following five cohorts of graduate students over eleven-year periods, it shows that, on average, only 41 percent of graduate students between 1983-87 obtained the Ph.D. Of the 1985 cohort alone 28 percent received the degree (see Table 1). Since nine students of the 1987 class remain enrolled, this figure remains tentative. If we limit the pool to the 1983-1986 cohorts, 39 percent on average received the degree, suggesting an attrition rate of 61 percent. Since comparisons cannot be made nationwide, the disturbing pattern these figures reveal should not be seen as a reflection of the quality of the programs; the universities instead should be praised for making the information available to the public.

Syverson also put me in touch with Sharon Brucker, Database Coordinator of the Mellon Graduate Education Project. She provided me with preliminary data on history (all subfields) from an extensive study of twelve institutions presently underway (6). Brucker patiently explained the many complications involved in determining attrition rates, such as distinguishing between "residual" and "declared" attrition. (The former is the number of students left when you subtract the graduates; the latter is the number of students who have been "terminated" either by the institution, or through the student's choice. According to the Mellon study (which uses declared attrition), for the years in which cohorts can be tracked over ten-year periods, 40 percent of the students left the program. But the number is an aggregate, and individual institutions ranged from 20 percent to 64 percent. Also, if we look at residual attrition, the number rises to 47 percent for all institutions. Brucker added that "the percentage of students in the 1982-1985 entering cohorts who had earned a Ph.D. by the end of their tenth year in the program" [yields a] completion rate of 47 percent, which leaves 53 percent unfinished at that stage. Interestingly, 71 of the 126 students who did not finish in ten years went on to receive the degree within sixteen years, a fact that Brucker indicates "flies in the face of the common assumption that students who don't finish in ten years will never complete the Ph.D."

In other words, the history graduate students who stick it out are a tenacious bunch. This very tenacity is one of the issues that the Mellon study hopes to address. As Brucker explained, "analysis of the data will help departments redesign their programs so that students are likely to finish within seven years--and certainly within ten."

The reasons for failing to obtain the Ph.D. in an efficient manner (if at all) are numerous, and even harder to divine than the quantitative data. Most qualitative studies are written from the institutional perspective, and typically hold the student responsible, either for voluntarily dropping out of the program or failing to complete some stage of the process (7). A recent national survey on doctoral student education and career preparation recently conducted by the University of Wisconsin Center for Education Research promises to reveal the perspectives of graduate students in various fields and more clues on the forces that impel one to leave graduate school (8). Those results will be available in 2000.

Whatever the cause, the callous among us might see high attrition as good news--fewer students finishing means fewer Ph.Ds. in the marketplace competing for scarce jobs. Spencerians might delight in the notion that only the very best and brightest are getting hired, out of a sea of strong candidates. The quality of higher education, as the theory goes, would rise as a result. There are problems with these assumptions, however. Many of those who never received the degree are ABDs pursuing part-time positions at campuses around the country. Without full credentials, they must (and are usually willing to) work for incredibly low wages. This choice often seals their fate: they must work several jobs to make ends meet; correspondingly, they have less time and energy to devote to completing their Ph.D. Many, of course, never finish, and never obtain the tenure, security, or decent pay dreamed of in graduate school. They continue in this cycle of underemployment for many years, apparently qualified enough to teach, but unable to secure a permanent place in the profession (9).

Providing more financial support to graduate students already enrolled may help them avoid "adjunct purgatory," as one part-time instructor has termed it. But departments tend to save the best financial packages for incoming students. According to an Association of Graduate Schools / Association of American Universities (AGS/AAU) study of 20 graduate history programs, as many as 26 percent of first-year and 33 percent of second-year students at public and private institutions (29 percent and 38 percent at private institutions alone, respectively) did not receive financial aid (10). These figures illustrate the pattern of favoring incoming students over those already matriculated, though the report does not specify the nature of the aid. In any case, those who do not receive financial support (as well as those who do, since many students only receive partial aid) find that they must borrow tuition dollars to fill university coffers. In 1996, according to the National Research Council's (NRC) Summary Report, of those in the humanities who actually finished the degree, approximately 45.5 percent had accumulated $5,000 or more in debt. Of these, 25.7 percent had borrowed more than $15,000 toward their degree (11). It is likely that those who did not complete the Ph.D. also had sizable debts, though these data are not available. Given the informal accounts I have heard from students around the country, graduate student borrowing is much higher than that described among Ph.D. recipients in the NRC study. It may be time for us all to have a frank conversation about the crippling debt many students are electing to take on for a degree most will not attain.

Universities attempting to address oversupply of Ph.Ds. and ABDs in the job marketplace by curtailing admissions may be remedying attrition indirectly. Truly drastic cutbacks are anathema, however, since many history departments are dependent on the relatively inexpensive instructional and research support the students provide. As the "Statement from the Conference on the Growing Use of Part-Time and Adjunct Faculty" indicates, "in 1993 the nearly 200,000 graduate assistants at four-year institutions actually exceeded the 184,000 part-time faculty positions" (12). Dependence on a ready supply of graduate student employees in one institutional setting continues to exacerbate the oversupply of labor in another. The apparent solution is for departments to make even greater reductions in their graduate student bodies, painful as this may be. Barring that, they should become more open about the performance of their program so that potential graduate students can decide for themselves whether or not to enter them.

Given that a national study of attrition is not in the offing, each department not already doing so should begin monitoring the attrition/completion rates of their students and posting the data in a regular and convenient manner, perhaps on the history department's web site, or that of the OAH. As Sharon Brucker explains, "If we can get students to expect and ask for this type of information, the departments may begin to keep it and report it. The departments are so used to competing with financial aid packages--maybe they could begin to think in terms of competing with efficient program structures." Data should be gathered in a uniform way (using residual or declared attrition, for example) and presented with an explanation of the data-gathering methods used, so that meaningful comparisons can be made between institutions. Maresi Nerad and Debra Sands Miller also call upon institutions to undertake "qualitative investigations that allow for an understanding of why students leave before completing the desired degree" (13).

Their own study at Berkeley included a qualitative component, with other interesting results and useful recommendations for other institutions. The data thus acquired would be invaluable in calling attention to problem departments that need to reevaluate their graduate program. But most importantly, they can equip would-be students with valuable information before they set foot on the path to the Ph.D.

The author would like to thank Peter D. Syverson, Vice President for Research and Information Services, Council of Graduate Schools and Sharon Brucker, Database Coordinator of the Mellon Graduate Education Project for their help in the preparation of this article.

Endnotes

1. Estimate based on 1998 figures. Source: AHA Perspectives Vol. 37 No. 1 1999. Figures compiled by OAH staff from the AHA Directory of History Departments yielded a higher number (2,850) for that year.

2. The Path to the Ph.D. (National Academy Press), 1.

3. Bowen, William G., and Neil L. Rudenstine, In Pursuit of the Ph.D. (Princeton: Princeton university Press, 1992), 132, cited in The Path to the Ph.D., 25.

4.Go to <http://www-ogsr.ucsd.edu/graddata/tofcont.htm#IV>.

5. The study is available online at <http://www.wisc.edu/grad/gs/profiles/index.html>.

6. Brucker noted that the attrition/completion rates for other subfields of history--some of which require extensive foreign language preparation--would likely be substantially different than the American field alone.

7. See, for example, Kathy E. Green, "Psychosocial Factors Affecting Dissertation Completion," in Lester F. Goodchild et al., eds., Rethinking the Dissertation Process: Tackling Personal and Institutional Obstacles (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1997), 58.

8. See < http://www.wcer.wisc.edu/>.

9. See Paul Murphy, "The Knowledge Industry's Brave New World" and Roark Atkinson, "Adjunct Faculty: A Buyer's Market" in OAH Newsletter 24 No. 4 (1996), 1, 4-6.

10. "Doctoral Student Enrollment Trends in English and History Programs at Selected AAU Institutions: 1992-1995", (Russo, R., December 1997) <http://www.tulane.edu/~aau/pubsprof.htm>.

11. Source: Summary Report 1996: Doctorate Recipients from United States Universities (Washington: National Academy Press, 1998), 50. This study includes history as a humanity, not a social science.

12. The figures are for all fields, not just history. This report is available on the OAH web site at <http://www.oah.org/reports/ptfaculty.html>.

13. Maresi Nerad and Debra Sands Miller, "Increasing Student Retention in Graduate and Professional Programs" in Jennifer Grant Haworth, ed., Assessing Graduate and Professional Education: Current Realities, Future Prospects (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1996, 62.