Is there any source to determine what % of students entering a PhD program actually complete it and get their doctorates? My D’s advisor told her that one program is easy to get into, but hard to get out of (a lot of students drop out). Other than word of mouth, any thoughts on how to determine this? Or advice on how to try to calculate it ourselves?
It depends on the school, the field, the location, and the availability of “other opportunities.”
My D once mentioned to me that the EECS PhD completion rate at UC Berkeley, and similarly at Stanford, was about 40%. One of the main reasons of dropping out was the “temptations” offered by Silicon Valley.
some schools publish the data. For example, Duke:
https://gradschool.duke.edu/about/statistics/all-departments-phd-completion-rates
Hmm, maybe some of the schools show it on their general grad school site. I will look for that. Other suggestions welcome!
Phd study on Math.
http://www41.homepage.villanova.edu/klaus.volpert/PhDStudy/PhD_Study.htm
I lost the links for other majors now.
If you find the Physics link, please post it. Thanks!
The American Institute of Physics has a lot of general data on PhDs in physics but not the dropout rate. My impression is that over the years, graduate programs in physics have changed their attitude about graduate students. They care much more about their students staying than in the past when I started graduate school and the department chair told us on the first day that 1/3 of us would be gone by the next year. A PhD student is an investment and if that person drops out or otherwise does not finish, it is a loss of that investment.
Yes… but have they all changed that attitude? 
I found that great AIP GradSchoolShopper site, but it doesn’t have completion rates or average length of time to complete a doctorate.
I’m not a PhD student, but when I went on campus visits for MA programs, I mingled a lot with the PhD students and was present during their Q and As. In my humanities field, it all seemed kind of “hush hush.” The DGS of one program mentioned a couple PhD students deciding to stop their studies, but she glossed over it and changed the subject immediately to their PhD placement rates. Another program never mentioned it either.
Maybe it’s field-dependent, because at least a couple programs I considered really did not want to share that information, which felt a little shady to me (like they had something to hide?).
Maybe people could contact the department secretaries and maybe they’d have it on record/would be able to share? Or a general person in the graduate school who keeps records? I mean, don’t schools make their enrollment numbers in each department public? My undergrad institution did
I’ve understood from my DS, who is 1 year from completing his PhD at Caltech, that 30-40% of PhD candidates, on average, drop out.
The 3 other students in his area of study who started when he did in 2011 all will get their PhD’s- quite the exception at Caltech.
Check the school’s “Institutional Research” website. Some school’s publish their entering graduate enrollment by program and their doctoral degrees awarded by program and then you can make an estimate of the PhD completion rate.
The website www.phds.org has some older data from the NRC on doctoral completion rates. Choose the Field of Study, Select School, then click on the “Outcomes” tab. Here’s the PhD completion rate for Physics for the California Institute of Technology (Click on “Outcomes” tab):
http://www.phds.org/university/caltech/program/ranking/physics/2160
In my experience, all departments collect the data, but some departments are reluctant to share the data publicly, especially if the stats aren’t good. When I was applying I asked about completion rates and time to degree and all of the departments I asked had the information, but in some cases I had to be persistent about getting it from them and sometimes the information was shared with chagrin.
The Council of Graduate Schools got a 7-year grant to run a project investigating PhD completion rates: http://www.phdcompletion.org/index.asp