Hypotheses on LAC/Uni differences in Social Sciences

interesteddad · July 21, 2005, 1:25pm

There are only a handful of colleges with more than 1 PhDs in "Social Services Professions" per 1000 graduates over the most recent 10 year period:

<hr>

Number of PhDs per 1000 graduates

Academic field: Social Services Professions

PhDs and Doctoral Degrees: ten years (1994 to 2003) from NSF database 
Number of Undergraduates: ten years (1989 to 1998) from IPEDS database 
Formula: Total PhDs divided by Total Grads, multiplied by 1000

Note: Does not include colleges with less than 1000 graduates over the ten year period 
Note: Includes all NSF doctoral degrees inc. PhD, Divinity, etc., but not M.D. or Law.

1 Chatham College 3.0
2 Virginia Union University 2.9
3 MacMurray College 2.4
4 Marymount College (Tarrytown, NY) 1.9
5 Erskine College 1.9
6 Hanover College 1.8
7 Barnard College 1.8
8 Brescia College 1.8
9 Adelphi University 1.7
10 Concordia Teachers College 1.7
11 St Mary College 1.6
12 Bethel College (North Newton, KS) 1.6
13 Fisk University 1.6
14 Wagner College 1.5
15 Rosemont College 1.5
16 Hendrix College 1.5
17 Berea College 1.4
18 Albright College 1.4
19 Bard College 1.4
20 Antioch University, All Campuses 1.4
21 Smith College 1.4
22 Yeshiva University 1.4
23 Cheyney University of Pennsylvania 1.4
24 CUNY Brooklyn College 1.3
25 Thiel College 1.3
26 Sarah Lawrence College 1.3
27 Columbia College (Columbia, SC) 1.3
28 Greenville College 1.2
29 Grinnell College 1.2
30 St John's College (both campus) 1.2
31 Clark University 1.2
32 Hood College 1.2
33 CUNY Graduate School and University Center 1.2
34 CUNY Hunter College 1.2
35 Oakwood College 1.2
36 Oberlin College 1.1
37 Goucher College 1.1
38 Xavier University of Louisiana 1.1
39 College of St Elizabeth 1.1
40 Connecticut College 1.1

carolyn · July 21, 2005, 1:41pm

One problem: women are more likely than men to go into the field of "social services." The list is heavily slanted towards women's colleges and schools that have a high proportion (greater than 60%) of female students.

I do appreciate it every time you share this data, ID. It is very helpful, even if it doesn't answer all of the questions. Thank you.

interesteddad · July 21, 2005, 1:43pm

[quote]
This is one of the major flaws of the major rankings, that they don't look at the experiences and outcomes of students in residential colleges and honors colleges. I know that at my own university these can come close to what I experienced at an LAC.

[/quote]

IMO, that misses the only value of these statistics. These stats, like almost all similar stats, are useless in predicting the outcome for an individual student. Rather, they provide a snapshot of the student body in its entirety. The reason that large public universities tend to fall lower on these lists is that, of the entire student body, a smaller percentage is engaged in rigorous academic pursuits and resulting career paths. Conversely, the schools that fall at the top of these lists have relatively larger percentages of the student body as a whole focused in these directions. Of course a subset of students at a large uni will look more like the overall student body at a top LAC because the student body at a top LAC is already a subset.

Conclusions about the overall student bodies jump from the data when looking at pairs of nearly identical schools with very different rates of PhD production.

For example, by almost any measure, Davidson and Haverford are nearly identical. Yet, Haverford produces large numbers of PhDs and Davidson does not. This is not a reflection of the quality of the schools, but rather a reflection of the two different student bodies -- one being almost exclusively focused on med, law, and business careers.

The same conclusion can be drawn from a comparison of two similarly excellent mid-size universities, for example, UChicago and Duke.

The point is not that UChicago is better than Duke or that Haverford is better than Davidson, because that is certainly not the case. The point is that these statistics tell us something about the student body and, therefore, something about the school and its culture and its priorities.

I would argue than many sets of statistics (diversity, financial aid, percentage of varsity athletes, percentage of med school admissions, median SAT scores, percentage of public high school) give us some small glimpse of each school's character.

mini · July 21, 2005, 1:43pm

"One problem: women are more likely than men to go into the field of "social services." The list is heavily slanted towards women's colleges and schools that have a high proportion (greater than 60%) of female students."

I think you'd see a greater slant if you looked at terminal working degrees in social work and teaching (MSWs and MATs). These will, in turn, negatively impact Ph.D. productivity. (Same would be true, on the male side of the ledger, in engineering.)

mackinaw · July 21, 2005, 1:59pm

[quote]
IMO, that misses the only value of these statistics. These stats, like almost all similar stats, are useless in predicting the outcome for an individual student. Rather, they provide a snapshot of the student body in its entirety. The reason that large public universities tend to fall lower on these lists is that, of the entire student body, a smaller percentage is engaged in rigorous academic pursuits and resulting career paths.

[/quote]
That's also my point. The question from the individual's (high school senior's) perspective may well be, what are my odds of getting a high quality education (or a PhD) if I attend State U vs. Grinnell; and further, is any difference in odds worth the difference in cost? That student would like to calculate how the the odds, and the cost, of getting a such a good education may depend on what program that student attends at State U (e.g., residential college or honors college vs. not). Try to find information to calculate those program specific odds if you can.

interesteddad · July 21, 2005, 2:00pm

Actually, engineering PhDs comprise a signficant percentage of the overall PhDs awarded in the United States over the most recent 10 year period.

Only Biological Sciences and Psychology produced more doctoral degrees than Engineering over that period of time. This impacts the total PhDs for some schools. For example MIT drops signficantly. Princeton drops a bit. Swarthmore drops into a tie with Reed, and so on and so forth.

If you remove Engineering PhDs, the list looks like this:

<hr>

Number of PhDs per 1000 graduates

Academic field: ALL FIELDS EXCLUDING ENGINEERING

PhDs and Doctoral Degrees: ten years (1994 to 2003) from NSF database 
Number of Undergraduates: ten years (1989 to 1998) from IPEDS database 
Formula: Total PhDs divided by Total Grads, multiplied by 1000

Note: Does not include colleges with less than 1000 graduates over the ten year period 
Note: Includes all NSF doctoral degrees inc. PhD, Divinity, etc., but not M.D. or Law.

1 California Institute of Technology 250
2 Reed College 197
3 Swarthmore College 197
4 Harvey Mudd College 195
5 Carleton College 164
6 Bryn Mawr College 156
7 Oberlin College 155
8 University of Chicago 150
9 Yale University 140
10 Harvard University 139
11 Haverford College 135
12 Grinnell College 135
13 Pomona College 134
14 Princeton University 124
15 Williams College 124
16 Amherst College 123
17 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 118
18 Kalamazoo College 109
19 Wesleyan University 108
20 Rice University 106
21 St John's College (both campus) 105
22 Wellesley College 103
23 Stanford University 101
24 Brown University 98
25 Earlham College 98
26 Beloit College 95
27 Macalester College 92
28 Lawrence University 91
29 Smith College 88
30 Bowdoin College 88
31 Mount Holyoke College 88
32 Vassar College 87
33 Hampshire College 86
34 Hendrix College 84
35 Knox College 84
36 St Olaf College 84
37 Barnard College 82
38 Bennington College 82
39 College of Wooster 81
40 Trinity University 81
41 Occidental College 80
42 Whitman College 77
43 College of William and Mary 77
44 Brandeis University 76
45 Cornell University, All Campuses 75
46 University of Rochester 74
47 Wabash College 74
48 Columbia University in the City of New York 73
49 Davidson College 73
50 Duke University 72
51 Bates College 72
52 Fisk University 71
53 Dartmouth College 71
54 Wheaton College (Wheaton, IL) 70
55 Franklin and Marshall College 70
56 University of California-Berkeley 68
57 Johns Hopkins University 68
58 University of California-San Francisco 67
59 New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology 67
60 Furman University 65
61 Allegheny College 64
62 Bard College 63
63 Agnes Scott College 63
64 Antioch University, All Campuses 62
65 Rhodes College 61
66 Case Western Reserve University 61
67 Kenyon College 61
68 Bethel College (North Newton, KS) 61
69 Spelman College 60
70 Ripon College 60
71 Goshen College 60
72 University of Dallas 60
73 Erskine College 60
74 Colorado College 59
75 Hamilton College 59
76 Middlebury College 59
77 University of the South 58
78 University of Pennsylvania 58
79 Goucher College 58
80 Drew University 57
81 Wake Forest University 57
82 Northwestern Univ 57
83 Chatham College 56
84 Tougaloo College 56
85 Washington University 55
86 University of California-Santa Cruz 54
87 Concordia Teachers College 54
88 Colgate University 54
89 Colby College 54
90 Sarah Lawrence College 53
91 Southwestern University 53
92 Scripps College 52
93 Centre College 51
94 Austin College 51
95 Tufts University 51
96 Clark University 51
97 Trinity College (Hartford, CT) 51
98 Carnegie Mellon University 50
99 University of Michigan at Ann Arbor 50
100 Hope College 49

interesteddad · July 21, 2005, 2:16pm

Mackinaw:

Seems to me that the motivation behind "Honors Colleges" at state universities is to duplicate a proven successful formula:

a) offer huge discounts to attract the best students

b) provide a more personalized smaller-scale eductation

Why do the top LACs attract such a stellar subset of students? Because they offer huge discounts. Even if you are paying full sticker price at Swarthmore, you are receiving a $37,000 per year discount relative to the actual per student expenditures. No surprise that potential customers "do the math" (even if they do the math without knowing it by looking at facilities, student/faculty ratios, and other things that are the direct result of the high per student spending) and apply in droves. They accurately perceive a lot of bang for the buck.

Same premise at an Honors College, where the cost is often zero.

Of course, the outcomes at Honors Colleges will be higher. The combination of "better" students and the proven value of smaller-scale, personalized instruction is almost guaranteed to produce more impressive outcomes.

There is a lot of research that supports the notion that quality of peer group and interactive education experience (as opposed to passive learning in lecture halls) may be the two most important factors in "quality" of education.

mackinaw · July 21, 2005, 2:25pm

I agree with your analysis including your last point. We all have to make these calculations. For my son, the ultimate comparison was Williams/Carleton/Chicago/Reed vs. UMich (RC) and MSU (Madison College-also a residential college). No finaid at the first 4 (well, about $4K for NMS at Carleton, and $750 at Chicago), essentially full tuition scholarship at UMich, and total free ride at MSU. I think his "odds" of getting a quality education were higher at the 3 LAC's and Chicago than at either UM or MSU but not so great as to matter a whole lot. But the costs were vastly different. If cost had been a critical factor, he'd have ended up at UM. But in the end the calculation had as much to do with location and atmosphere as anything else. But he did want to attend a college where people didn't look down on you if you had an intellectual bent. And so it was Chicago. (And where does he end up 4 years after graduation? Not in grad school but doing baseball analysis and writing, and playing internet poker. . . .)

carolyn · July 21, 2005, 4:16pm

doing baseball analysis and writing>>

Sounds like a great life to me, Mack. :)

mackinaw · July 21, 2005, 8:19pm

It is, actually. Just goes to show that you don't have to leverage your UChicago education into an MBA or a PhD or an MD to have a successful career and life (so far). I think he definitely benefited from the education, though, because he really draws on his understanidng of economics and statistics, as well as general research and writing skills, in his current line of work.

wyogal · July 24, 2005, 6:40pm

Great thread!

There's another factor that hasn't been mentioned. Social science grads of LAC's are generally better prepared for an intensive study of a particular field than the same students from large universities.

Why? Because there are fewer opportunities in an LAC for frivolous and over-specialized courses. Every faculty member is essential to provide the necessary courses. Sure, there will be an occasional seminar in some bizarre fad of the moment, but the LAC grad in economics, psychology, sociology <a href="well,%20maybe%20not%20sociology,%20hmm????%20%20%20Just%20kidding!!!">i</a>* will have spent his major "core" in the basics = a thorough grounding in the discipline.

And, LAC's don't usually have majors in those fields like "social work" or "city planning" which used to have the MS as the terminal degree.

PS to mackinaw: All the very best journalists, sports and otherwise, come from UChicago IMHO.

monydad · July 24, 2005, 8:49pm

I postulate that social science PhDs are disprorportionally pursued by students with a background in Arts & Sciences colleges.

LIberal arts colleges are for the most part, with some exceptions, arts & science colleges period. Therefore a relatively high proportion of their student body are of the type for whom social science phds are reasonable outcomes from the outset.

Large universities frequently consist of a number of distinct undergraduate colleges, serving students with diverse interests. One of those colleges will be a college of arts & sciences, whose student destinations and outcomes can be fairly compared to the LAcs in my opinion. However, from the outset the other colleges in the university may not be as likely producers of future social science phds as a college of arts & sciences is. Each college in the university may have different admissions standards and different student body interests.

When the entire student body of the university as a whole is put in the denominator, its percentage PhD production may appear somewhat low due to the students attending these specialized colleges. This says nothing about the environment that an applicant to that university's college of arts & sciences will experience. An applicant typically can apply only to a particular college in a university, not to the university as a whole. At least that was my experience.

For example, a university may have a fine college of Arts & Sciences that produces its fair share of future social sciences PhDs. However, that same university may have the following undergraduate colleges, which produce far fewer future social science Phds on a percentage basis: Agriculture, Architecture, Hotel Administration, Engineering, Nursing. All of the students at these disparate separate colleges are lumped together in producing the university's % social science PhD number. So obviously the result looks lower than many LAcs, which tend to have student bodies with more homogeneous interests in the first place. If that university's College of Arts & Sciences could be isolated from the rest of the university, perhaps it's place on this list would be significantly higher. This probably applies to the Arts & Sciences colleges at many leading universities with disparate colleges.

I'd guess that some of these larger schools probably produce more future PhDs on an absolute basis, and offer more courses,etc. An applicant has to decide what stats are relevant and what stats are misleading.

interesteddad · July 24, 2005, 10:32pm

Monydad:

There is certainly truth to the notion that large state universities have a very broad range of students, only some of whom would be interested in pursuing an extremely academic or research oriented field. If I were considering a large public university, I would not pay much attention to the overall PhD production numbers. It is clear that, whatever the reason, large publics cannot rise to the top on this particular statistical metric. I might, however, compare the PhD production among various large publics.

However, your explanation does not explain the strong relative PhD production of LACs versus highly regarded small to midsize private universities. In this comparison, the curriculum and departments and students are often virtually identical and the stats aren't skewed by agric. departments, nursing schools, etc.

In this comparison, it's not a "quality of student" issue. It seem to me that it has to be some combination of student self-selection and the actual undergrad teaching environment. I think Thomas Cech (Nobel Prize winner and current head of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute) probably explains it best in his essay on undergrad science education. He postulates that it is the focus on undergrad teaching, the small scale of the educational experience, the mentoring relationships, and the opportunity to do real research (i.e. with unknown outcomes) at the undergrad level.

mini · July 24, 2005, 10:48pm

It's a reasonable hypothesis, but until there is data about comparable students upon entry into different academic environments (not only by GPA and test score, but by race, gender, and family income), and until a correction is made for students who seek a different terminal degree (social work, engineering, physician's assistant, naturopathic, business, etc.), and a correction made for the different academic environments within universities, it is unclear that there is really anything that requires explanation..

monydad · July 24, 2005, 11:01pm

Student self-selection - I agree.

THe rest: I doubt it, personally.

Some other possiblilities:

-LAC grads are incentivized to go to grad school because frequently there aren't enough advanced courses in their sub- field of interest at the undergrad level, in their teeny-tiny department with just a few profs. Once they're in grad school, better chance they'll keep going to PhD. In contrast, big-school students can take all the advanced courses they want as undergrads; less likely to feel something's missing from their undergrad training in their field.

-In many cases, LAC grads are more likely to go to grad schools because they have a harder time getting jobs right out of undergrad without an advanced degree. To get a flavor for this, look at how many recruiters come to campus at LACs vs. the Ivy league schools or big public universities. There are a few LACs that get some attention from recruiters, but most LAC students are pretty much on their own, employment-wise.

Then, once they are in grad school, as before, more likely to keep going..

emeraldkity4 · July 24, 2005, 11:39pm

when schools have strict distribution requirements- when history majors for example are having to take lab science etc- particulary when "gut" courses are not available like Rox for jox- students don't have as many upper division courses in their major as they would at a univerisity- there simply isn't time.
Those students are likely to attend grad school as monydad pointed out- as their undergrad degree has a different focus- they have a liberal arts degree with a major in history and likely want to do more advanced work.
Whether you are attending a LAC or a University with schools of engineering etc, you still are going to come out with a BA.
personally, I think that in many fields having courses in complementary or even antethical fields can give background and perspective that adds depth and breadth to the undergrad experience.
However there are of course many students who once they know what they want to major in, only want to take courses in that major- look at all the students on the boards who want to know where they can go with out needing math for example.
I don't think that education, engineering,or business should be even be undergrad degrees. I think that coursework in supporting fields should come first- if they want a tech degree go to tech school.
For the students who are coming from LACs they are able to get jobs in their field right after college- particulary in the sciences- but if you want a job that requires a PH.d in psychology, it isn't going to matter if you took 3/4 of your coursework in psychology, if the job requires an advanced degree, that is what it takes. I dont' believe you can use courses that you took as an undergrad to fulfill graduate school requirements, can you?

interesteddad · July 25, 2005, 12:38am

Mini:

If you select pairs of schools for comparison, there isn't much correction to be made for socio-economic, gender, race, etc.

For example, I really don't think there much difference in the student body at Williams and Dartmouth. I don't believe that more Dartmouth grads are getting a Masters in Social Work as their terminal degree.

Yet, Williams produces considerably more PhDs per 1000 graduates than Dartmouth. Why?

mini · July 25, 2005, 1:02am

Whiter. Fewer engineers.

I don't doubt the capacity of mostly white faculty to reproduce themselves among mostly white, well-healed students who have a bias against business. Of course, in any case, its only a small proportion of students anyway.

As you know, I am a lover of LACs, but it seems for a wholly different reason that you are. I love them because they do so much more for the AVERAGE student, the one who is never going to go get a Ph.D., the one for whom the undergrad program is the capstone educational experience, the one who can go out and say, after four years, that s/he truly had an education worth cherishing.

The top, white, well-heeled students are generally speaking going to do just fine wherever they are. The data on them is wholly equivocal, if non-existent. There is very little data about where they to college (except that most don't go to LACs), how they do while there, and where they end up.

Nothing in this discussion, and certainly none of the data, has even remotely suggested to me that there's anything worth explaining.

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Hypotheses on LAC/Uni differences in Social Sciences

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