The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 20, 2006, Friday

Copyright 2006 The Chronicle of Higher Education
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The Chronicle of Higher Education

January 20, 2006 Friday

SECTION: RESEARCH; Pg. 24 Vol. 52 No. 20

HEADLINE: Doctoral Programs in the Humanities Are Scrutinized

BYLINE: DAVID GLENN

BODY:
Doctoral programs in the humanities can raise their students' completion rates by admitting fewer students, setting clear expectations for how they spend their summers, and discouraging them from polishing or publishing their dissertations before receiving their degrees. Those were among the conclusions of two studies presented at this month's annual meeting of the American Economic Association, in Boston.
The studies drew on data from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's recent $80-million effort to improve Ph.D. programs in the humanities. From 1991 through 2001, the foundation offered grants to 51 highly ranked departments in the humanities and the "soft" social sciences.
In order to receive the grants, the departments were required to tighten academic deadlines and carefully monitor student progress. Known as the Graduate Education Initiative, the project has now been evaluated by scholars at the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute. The Cornell researchers gathered data from the 51 participating departments, as well as from 50 similar departments used as a control group.
The Mellon project had only modest effects on students' success, said Ronald G. Ehrenberg, a professor of industrial relations and economics at Cornell University and director of the research institute. The participating departments' cumulative attrition rates declined by an average of 3 percentage points.
A survey of more than 13,000 present and former graduate students, Mr. Ehrenberg said, suggested that clear expectations about student progress and encouragement to finish dissertations quickly were the most powerful elements of the program.
In a second paper, Jeffrey Groen, a research economist at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, said that the program's small positive effects seemed to have been caused by increases in financial aid, improvements in student quality, and by reductions in cohort size that is, admitting fewer students each year.
Mr. Ehrenberg's and Mr. Groen's papers were financed by the Mellon Foundation.