Surprises in Undergrad Schools Producing Doctorates: Punching Above Their Weight

College Search & Selection
1

In a different thread, @Mwfan1921 shared these resources that shows which undergrad colleges were producing students who ended up earning their doctorates. In browsing through some of the data (only a tad…there’s tons available!) there were some schools that surprised me. Rather than derailing the other thread, I thought to start a thread here.

If, by the way, anyone knows if any if this data is available that controls for the size of the undergrad institution, I’d love to see it. To try and get a sense of proportions, I’ve divided the current undergrad population to the number of doctoral recipients.

So, to start us off, here are a few surprises I had when doing just a cursory glance at the number of doctoral recipients from 2010 through now:

Kalamazoo is often mentioned as a good midwestern liberal arts school that supports its undergrads a lot, including in research. But Hope, which we hear much less about academically (but have heard a lot about the general welcoming kindness of), actually produced significantly more doctoral recipients. Kalamazoo had 257 while Hope had 309. And Calvin , which we hear very little of here, on CC had 381. But, since I just looked up the current undergrad enrollments, the other schools have more than 2.5x as many undergrads as Kalamazoo, so perhaps Kalamazoo is still punching above its weight, but Hope & Calvin seem like they could get more attention than they currently get here.

  • Kalamazoo (1241 undergrads), 257 doctoral recipients, .207 proportion
  • Hope (3132 undergrads), 309 doctoral recipients, .098 proportion
  • Calvin (3068 undergrads), 381 doctoral recipients, .124 proportion

Switching to a different “M” state, I looked at Mississippi.

  • Millsaps (637 undergrads), 145 doctoral recipients, .227 proportion
  • U. of Mississippi (16,092 undergrads). produced 348, .021 proportion

Proportionally, it looks like Millsaps is producing about 10x the rate of doctoral recipients as Ole Miss. In fact, it seems to have the biggest proportion numbers so far.

Comparing Millsaps to another small liberal arts college in a neighboring state, Centenary has 523 undergrads and produced 70 doctoral students (.133 proportion), so more than Hope & Calvin, but not as much as Kalamazoo. So it appears that Millsaps is another school punching above its weight in the doctoral department.

Switching to a more populous state, I went over to New Jersey, and these are the top 11 ranking schools.

  • Rutgers New Brunswick: (36,152 undergrads), 1642 doctoral recipients, 045 proportion
  • Princeton: (5,231 undergrads), 1,443 doctoral recipients, .275 proportion
  • The College of New Jersey: (6959 undergrads), 457 doctoral recipients, .065 proportion
  • Montclair State: (16,093 undergrads), 197 doctoral recipients, .012 proportion
  • Drew: (1,634 undergrads), 176 doctoral recipients, .107 proportion
  • Rowan: (15,119 undergrads), 175 doctoral recipients, .011 proportion
  • New Jersey Institute of Technology: (9,183 undergrads), 142 doctoral recipients, .015 proportion
  • Rutgers - Newark: (8334 undergrads) 135 doctoral recipients, .016 proportion
  • Rutgers - Camden: (4856 undergrads), 130 doctoral recipients, 026 proportion
  • Stockton: (8392 undergrads) 120 doctoral recipients, .014 proportion
  • Seton Hall: (6,063 undergrads), 110 doctoral recipients, 0.18 proportion

Of the publics, The College of New Jersey seems to have the highest proportion going on to earn a doctorate. Rutgers-Camden appears to be punching above its weight among New Jersey’s secondary publics. But Drew definitely appears to be punching above its weight the most here, with nearly 2x the proportion as at TCNJ. And Princeton is about 50x more selective than the other schools mentioned so far, but Kalamazoo and Millsaps are not far off Princeton’s proportion of students getting their doctorates. How many times do we see those three schools in the same sentence? And let’s not forget that Calvin in Michigan has a higher proportion than all of New Jersey’s colleges, apart from Princeton, and that Hope is higher than all but Princeton and Drew.

What are some other schools that surprise you in the data? What other schools seems to be punching above their weight?

Edit: There were some meandering conversations that diverged from the proposed topic in this initial post. If you are uninterested in those posts, you may want to focus your attention on posts #1-22, 65, 139, and then from 195 onwards.

11 Likes
2

I guess I do not see getting a doctorate as necessarily a desirable outcome for graduates.

6 Likes
3

Nice detailed analysis. It is quite well known that LACs in general produce more per capita PhDs. Reasons could be:

  1. In general they are from richer class, so they don’t have to work immediately.
  2. Close professor relationships and more direct research opportunities. Names on research papers.
  3. Colleges work more diligently towards the outcome since these are small closely knit communities.
7 Likes
4

In the tableau links (thanks to Jon Boeckenstedt) you can search by Carnegie Classification…so you can pull up just baccalaureate institutions which will give you all the LACs. Of course you would still have to do the math to get PhDs/number of undergrads, or whatever metric you want to calculate.

4 Likes
5

Swarthmore did a study with per capita numbers. PDF of top 100 PhD productive organizations in 8 disciplines available here:

5 Likes
6

and, 4) they attract different types of students. The Big Unis also offer many ‘terminal degree’ majors, such as engineering, business, education, and health sciences. Run the math using a denominator of saying, the U-Michigan’s liberal arts-focused college, The College of Literature, Science and the Arts. (which is where a pre-PhD biology student would likely study.).

yeah, I get that the data accuracy is not available, but if one is comparing “proportions” of pre-PhD students by undergrad college, one has to consider the accuracy of the denominator

7 Likes
7

Swarthmore has done it by taking average of student population from previous 10 years. I think it is reasonable. Ideally we should divide it by stem and non-stem majors etc. I think someone has done basic research on that I will share if I can find.

1 Like
8

BTW one interesting finding in a these W&L is top 100 only in 2 categories and is fairly low in rankings. Not sure what is the reason for that!

Kalamazoo is top 100 for 7/8 :-).

9

I don’t know for sure, but would guess because there is a relatively high proportion of pre-professional type students at W&L.

7 Likes
10

You mean Business and Marketing? Social science heavy is almost all LACs.

11

I don’t think that getting a doctorate is a necessity for college graduates, but I don’t think it’s undesirable, either. Additionally, when looking beyond the Big Names and/or (and mainly and) highly rejective schools, it can sometimes be hard to suss out what the academic atmosphere of a school is, particularly when visits are not feasible, or feasible in the near future. A higher proportion of students going for their doctorate is likely to indicate a more intellectually curious student body as compared to a a school where a lot of students are there to just punch their ticket.

9 Likes
12

Pre-professional in the sense that many W&L students want to go immediately into the work force and work in jobs in finance, corporations, international relations and such in DC, jobs of that nature. Those with grad school plans would be looking mostly at law or ultimately business school. They publish some good data here Student Outcomes : Washington and Lee University

7 Likes
13

It might. Or it might indicate students were unable to find acceptable jobs and hoped a grad degree would improve their luck. It depends upon what university they enroll in for their doctorate. I am not sure a doctorate from Sam Houston State, for example, really improves anyone’s marketability, or is a sign of intellectual curiosity.

6 Likes
14

Btw there is a PhD thesis considering this phenomenon. Kind of old but if interested :slight_smile:

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Essays-on-PhD-Output-at-U.S.-Undergraduate-Coffman/b5b6b949c2a18619ccd35bd6abaead7a132dcb8b

15

There’s lots of interesting data here.

Education
It looks like the HBCUs are definitely punching above their weight in the number of education doctorates they’re getting, perhaps less surprising when considering that the teaching profession was one of the main fields for economic advancement among blacks in the U.S. for many decades. Tougaloo, Spelman, Fisk, and Alcorn State took 4 of the top 5 spots. Jackson State was #8, Alabama State #13, Southern was #21, Hampton at #25, and many more as the list goes on.

Engineering
Webb Institute (#4) was a surprise for me on this list, particularly since I may have heard of it, but know virtually nothing about it. Definitely doesn’t get a lot of love here at CC. U. of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez was another surprise for me at #26, with more students getting doctorates than a number of other colleges that get named fairly frequently here. I don’t know if the language of instruction is in English or Spanish, but it’s a school I’d be interested in learning more about.

Humanities & Arts
St. John’s is definitely punching above its weight, as its two campuses (in Maryland and New Mexico) both rank in the top 5! Thomas Aquinas is another school that we don’t hear much about here on CC and it’s coming in at #9 and the beleaguered New College of Florida is #15.

Life Sciences
Schools #11-13 were surprises for me: College of the Atlantic, New College of Florida, and SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry. Hendrix and Earlham have higher numbers than Amherst, Bowdoin, Colby, Williams, or Wellesley.

Mathematics and Computer Science
New College of Florida (#14), Yeshiva College of the Nations Capital (#18), St. John’s (#27), Bard College at Simon’s Rock (#28), and U. of Tulsa (#29) were the surprises here for me.

Other non-S&E
Not sure which degrees come in here, but Swarthmore is #1, Harvard #6, U. of Chicago is #7, and Cal Tech is #10, so it seems as though this category definitely has some of the Big Names in it. But the other schools in the top 10 were Fisk, New College of Florida, Florida College, Maharishi International University, Spelman, and Goddard. I’d never heard of two of the schools, and there are at least two HBCUs in the top 10.

Physical Sciences & Earth Sciences
Whitman (#11), Juniata (#17), and the ever-present New College (#18) were among the surprises (New College should stop surprising me by now). It was also interesting that some of the Colleges That Change Lives like Lawrence, Hendrix, & Allegheny were in the top 35, too. Westminster was another surprise at #32, as it’s very rare that I hear that name on CC. U. of Minnesota - Morris came in at #41, too.

Psychology and Social Sciences
Last category, so I guess I’ll mentioned that I was surprised by…wait for it…New College at #3 and Bard College at Simon’s Rock at #4. St. John’s made the list at #21 & #29 and Hampshire came in at #22. (Hampshire’s also made some other lists, but didn’t seem as noteworthy at the time.)

Also, as a general trend, I noticed that many of the Colleges That Change Lives schools were overrepresented on the various lists, even if they weren’t always popping up in the top 20-30. Perhaps it’s not just a marketing gimmick, as some seem to feel.

Among the colleges I mentioned earlier:

Drew was #92 in Humanities and Arts, #97 in the Life Sciences, #85 in Psychology and Social Sciences

Kalamazoo was #49 in Education, #60 in Humanities & Arts, #17 in Life Sciences, #46 in Mathematics & Computer Science; #31 in Other non-S&E; #31 in Physical Sciences & Earth Sciences; and #50 in Psychology and Social Sciences.

Hope was #71 in Physical Sciences & Earth Sciences.

Millsaps was #22 in Education, #74 in Mathematics and Computer Science, #35 in Other non-S&E, and #41 in Psychology and Social Sciences.

5 Likes
16

For what it’s worth, Calvin and Hope are both religiously-affiliated schools. Calvin sends a lot of grads into Ph.D. programs, especially Philosophy and Religion, as my humanities professor spouse has shared that Calvin students frequently apply for Ph.D. admission to my spouse’s department. Perhaps students who self-select a small school with a religious affiliation are more likely to be interested in deeper exploration of those sorts of ideas.

W&L may not send a lot of students into Ph.D programs because it has an undergrad Business school. That may attract a higher percentage of students interested in a more professionally-focused educational experience.

Finally, my spouse and I have seen that many faculty members come from wealth – not all, but many. That financial cushion may be what creates the flexibility to pursue a “life of the mind” in academics, softening the blow of the difficulty of finding a tenure track job with long-term lower pay than other professionally-oriented fields. Plus, wealth allows a recent Ph.D. to stack visiting roles and fellowships for a number of years while waiting for tenure track position, thereby staying in academics. Without that cushion, people give up finding an academic job and move into another profession.

7 Likes
17

Yeah New College of florida has amazing representation. Why do you say it is beleaguered?

I think the only caveat to this is it doesn’t use denominator which is different for different categories. So a college with small % of a major but lot of phd production will get under represented.

Btw Grinnel has similar publication but only top-10 are showcased. There chemistry is represented separately.

Grinnell College
https://www.grinnell.edu › filesPDF
PhD Productivity.pub

2 Likes
18

This thread can provide some insight: DeSantis seeks to transform Sarasota's New College with conservative board takeover.

Although I understand the discussion about the government’s cost per student and thus why a closure/consolidation could occur, the governor is trying to take the school in a very different direction.

4 Likes
19

Fair, but I suspect that most failed job-seekers enroll in Masters programs (MA/MS/MBA/MEd), not PhD programs. And of those who do enroll in PhD programs, the drop out rate is high (somewhere along the road to a 5-8 year PhD program, the non-serious often wash out).

Since these stats are only looking at completed PhDs, I think it is not unreasonable to use them as a crude proxy to stand in for the prevalence of intellectual curiosity and exposure to undergrad research.

I know, I know - some of the most intellectually curious people in the world do not end up in PhD programs (or necessarily even finish college). Outliers, I think.

6 Likes
20

This list adjusts for institution size.

6 Likes