Yesterday, I was looking over a summary of the 2004/2005 Survey of Earned Doctorates by Statistics Canada. I was thinking about the ways that statistics are presented, and what kind of things are left unsaid (and uninterpreted) when you’re talking about raw numbers. WARNING: this is an unusually grumpy post for me, as it points to what I believe are some serious problems within the Canadian system of graduate education. I will resume my Mary Sunshine attitude tomorrow.
According to the report,
“enrolment in doctoral programs has increased. Between 2000 and 2004, enrolment grew at an average rate of almost 7% a year. In 2004/2005, more than 34,000 students were enrolled in all years of doctoral programs. This suggests there should soon be a commensurate increase in the number of earned doctorates.”
Maybe, maybe not. Logically, yes, we should be able to assume this. But that doesn’t take into account the number of people who are just going to bail now from their programs, as a result of the bleak academic job market. And then there are all of those other variables that always existed: people quitting due to depression, feeling stuck, being broke, being sick of being broke, being punished for who they are/what they study, family obligations, changes of heart, shifting priorities, etc.
“The Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada attributes the growth in enrolment to two factors. The first is an increase in the number of faculty at Canadian institutions, which has increased the institutional capacity for training graduate students.”
Which is kinda funny, from my point of view. If there are so many more faculty at Canadian institutions, why are Canadian grad students routinely getting so screwed in terms of supervisorship? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve witnessed or heard about supervisors who screw their grad students over by a) neglect, b) power/ego struggles with other dissertation committee members, c) sheer incompetence (NB: I was blessed with a competent, connected, caring supervisor, without whom I could have easily stumbled, fallen, and failed to finish). If faculty took their roles as dissertation supervisors seriously, then we WOULD actually see a spike in the numbers of doctoral candidates crossing the finish line.
“The second is an increase in the level of funding for graduate students through student financial assistance and research grants from both governments and universities.”
Hahahahaha! Hahahahahaha! Hahahaha! (Oh, sorry, let me just wipe the tears from my eyes–god, that’s a good one!) Hahahahahha!
“Even though female graduates neared parity with men, there were wide gaps between the sexes within certain fields of study.”
Oh, right. There is that. Engineering=menfolk. Psychology=the ladies. But there is this:
“Some of the gains made by women came in traditionally male dominated fields. In computer and information sciences and mathematics, as well as in physical sciences, the numbers of female graduates grew much faster than the number of male graduates.”
For the purposes of this blog, this was the interesting bit:
“Almost three-quarters of doctoral graduates had firm plans for their future when they graduated. Graduates of social sciences and life sciences were the most likely to have established plans.”
Okay, so the survey established that about 75% of people graduating with PhDs are from science and engineering. It also says 75% of graduates had firm future plans. And it also says most of the people with future plans are social scientists and life scientists. So, would I be wrong in assuming the people who feel really screwed upon graduating are the humanities folks?
“While students in the social sciences were most likely to have firm plans after graduation, those in the humanities were less likely to have firm plans.”
Huh! Imagine that. (Okay, I actually plucked that from the subsequent year’s study, but is it too difficult to extrapolate to 2004/2005?)
“The majority of doctoral graduates found employment in research and development, or teaching. Almost 38% of graduates intended to work in research and development, while 33% planned to teach.”
Which means that 29% of the people who said they had future plans– 75% of the people–must have had plans for non-academic jobs. And the other 71% had plans of teaching and research. Plans, mind you, and intentions. How many of those people had their plans and intentions fulfilled?
Then there was the 2005/2006 report, which said:
“The most popular field of study was in the biological sciences, followed by engineering, humanities, social sciences, psychology and education.”
So more people in the humanities than the social sciences graduated, and those are the people who have the least firm plans when they leave. Okay.
This surprised me:
“The majority (69%) of students were married at the time they received their doctoral degree and 36% had dependent children.”
Coincidence? I think not. How many people have to quit PhDs because they’re single and broke? How many marrieds can squeeze through the tough times because they’re got a spouse with (possibly) a stable income?
This is suitably vague:
“In all, 7 out of 10 graduates stated having firm plans in the first year after graduation. Of those, about one-quarter said they would be returning or continuing in the same employment/position which they held prior to their doctorate, whereas the remainder said they had signed a contract or made a definite commitment for other work or study.”
So, 3 out of 10 felt uncertain about their future. That’s a lot of people. It’s almost a third. In fact, if 4,000 graduated, that’s 1,200 who graduated, not having “firm plans” after finishing. Can we get a collective WTF here, and point to the fact that this is a serious problem, year after year after year?
“Approximately two-third of graduates with firm plans for employment for the coming year stated that they would be doing research and development (35%) or teaching (37%) as their primary work activity.”
Translation: contract teaching.
The other thing I want to add is that I remember receiving notification of a survey from StatsCan or even getting the survey after I graduated. I was so exhausted from completing that final home stretch that I can’t say with certainty that I completed it. I wonder how many people who know they won’t be continuing in academia self-select themselves out of a study of this nature because they just don’t have the energy. With such a small sample size, even a small number of people declining to participate could make a statistical difference.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
That is a pretty good reading of the report. It caught my eye, and I kept reading in large part because I bailed out myself from a doctoral program, for some of the reasons you list above (and let me add certain academic advisor more interested in weeding people out of the program than keeping them). But more importantly, I think this is the kind of thing that more graduate students and potential graduate students should be reading and take to heart as they make a decision to pursue that doctorate or not. I got lucky. I managed to transfer, get the second masters instead (library science) and get a job. Not all are so lucky. Thank you for writing, and for letting us know that there can be hope outside academia and the “usual” paths.
Best, and keep on blogging.
I recall looking at some of this data a while ago. completion times vary a lot too and are particularly long for humanities scholars. Quality supervision is pretty important there, too, I suspect. Not least helping you keep the project down to thesis size.
On the marriage stat, I think that is also just that the vast majority of people marry and most do so in their 20s and 30s. so it makes sense that grad students are often married. Same with having kids. Your on the clock for that and if you don’t finish your PhD until you are 30…
I know that some grad students actually make a decision to have their kids while students because they think it will be that much harder when on the tenure-track. Not sure if their logic pans out but would also contribute to that stat.
I’m actually part of that cohort – I graduated with a Ph.D. in history in late 2005. I just want to add to your point about things being left unsaid. I remember when Statistics Canada called me for a follow up I was asked if I was working in the field I had trained for (or something along those lines). I answered yes because I was teaching history, but what that answer doesn’t say is that I worked as a TA until I could get hired as a sessional lecturer the following year. I don’t remember being asked if I thought I was underemployed although I definitely was and continue to be (which is one of the reasons why I’ve decided to leave academia). In their follow up StatsCan should take into account graduates’ level of satisfaction with their position in order to paint a more accurate picture.
Angel, thanks for your awesome comment. And thanks for being another example of someone who bailed and survived!
Jo: I TOTALLY want to write a post about the whole “baby before or after grad school?” thing because I’ve got my own thoughts on that and would love to hear others!
MelB: This is totally fascinating information, because I did not know StatsCan was actually doing follow ups. I’m going to do some more poking around to see what they’re doing with that data, because that’s the first inkling I’ve had that StatsCan is actually keeping numbers on PhDs and their employment paths. So thank you so very much for leaving this comment. Plus, it also twigs a memory that they did try to contact me after I finished, and I was too exhausted to respond (which again makes me wonder how many academic leavers do the same).