> A major puzzle: After a lot of taught about the watering-down of the
> degree, the article observes that average time to completion has risen
> from 4 years to 10 or so. At least on the surface, this sounds like
> standards are a lot tougher! This is just what you'd expect to happen
> in a signaling model as it gets easier and easier to get grad school
> funding - people have to jump through more hoops to prove the same
> thing.
> Prof. Bryan Caplan
I wouldn't take the article too seriously... it incorrectly states
that social science Ph.D.'s at Chicago don't have a language requirement,
which from personal experience I can say is incorrect!!
The lengthening of he Ph.D. - although Bryan's explanation is consistent
with the data, I'd add some empirical facts. First, graduation rates
by discipline negatively correlate with # of tenure track jobs, a finding
of a previoius NORC survey some years ago. This suggests that
people graduate when there are jobs, so the the long term contraction
of the academic labor market post-1970 would result in non-graduation.
Second, the biggest producers of Ph.D.'s who compete for university
positions are those disciplines favored by the wealthy. A consistent
findng in the college major selection literature is that family background
has a positive effect on choosing usless majors like philosophy or
history, controlling for ability and vocational orientation. Thus,
as we become wealthier as a society, we are more able to support
children who pursue such uselss topics at the graduate level. Some
recent research suggests that family wealth has a positive effects
on the choice to pursue non-vocational graduate degree. The result
is that there's an excess of grad students, which tightens labor
markets, an suppresses graduation rates.
So I'd say additional hoop jumping may be part of it, but there's
also a lot of other processes that shape the academic labor market.
Fabio
