There's still a few weeks of summer left, but I suppose it's time for jobless hopefuls to gear up for the job market. I'm afraid that this year will be just as bad as last. Anyway, a few students have already asked me about time to degree. How long is too long to be in graduate school? How long is too long to have been ABD?
My position has been that more than seven years overall in grad school may look odd, but is not a deal-breaker if the work looks good. However, anything over two years as ABD is bad, something which recommendation letters must address directly and in detail. Any views?
25 comments:
What do you mean, exactly, by ABD? Where I come from everybody is ABD after their second year (since they've finished all their requirements, save the dissertation). So I expect you have some other notion in mind if you really think more than two years requires a note from Mommy.
I would assume that by "ABD" Spiros means something like the time between passing preliminary exams and/or defending a dissertation proposal and defending one's dissertation. I gather this is a pretty common way of thinking about things...
I would like to hear more from Spiros, though, about why time spent ABD should be thought of differently--it would seem to me that many of the problems that would cause one to take an extra long time between defending a proposal and finishing the work (lack of motivation, vacillating about the topic, having an insufficient grasp of the literature, etc) could just as easily cause one to take an extra long time to come up with a dissertation proposal in the first place. So why is a long ABD period worse?
"since they've finished all their requirements, save the dissertation"
If they have finished all their requirements, why should it take more than 2 years to write the dissertation?
If someone can't write a dissertation in two years, they are going to have a tough time producing when they get a job and the work load is much, much harder.
I think maybe one important difference here might be whether a department requires a dissertation prospectus. While it might (maybe) be reasonable to expect someone to complete a dissertation two years after the approval of a completed prospectus, it seems to be expecting a lot to think a student needs to be done two-years after advancing to doctoral candidacy. In many department, this would mean that students should be done with PhD by the end of the fourth year. At the very least, this is not the norm. Maybe it should be (i.e. maybe we should be getting students through programs faster), but this would require some substantive revisions of both dissertation and job market expectations.
It seems as though the desirable comparison would be between how long the student took at each stage and how long the average student at the institution takes at each stage, or alternatively how long students are expected to take. Different programs have different stages, different emphasis on those stages, and different levels of work required at different stages, and it hardly seems reasonable to hold a student responsible for happening to enter a department that has a longer program.
"Different programs have different stages"
Yes, but there point here is that ABD means "all but dissertation," so it's the final stage. Regardless of how many stages a program has before that final stage, why should it take more than 2 years to write a dissertation (exempting those issues that need to be addressed in letters)?
I'm sensing that some people call themselves - or are called by their programs - "ABD" before actually getting to the point where they are writing a dissertation.
i'm at a top-10 program, and basically no one writes the dissertation in 2 years. yet we place quite well on the market. so i'm curious where this "no more than 2 years working on the dissertation" sentiment is coming from...
Anon 3:06AM: "so i'm curious where this "no more than 2 years working on the dissertation" sentiment is coming from..."
I think it applies only to those students who don't have sufficient institutional prestige to mask their incompetencies...
All so weird...
Here in the UK, your PhD is only dissertation...
Unless you are one of these new taught doctorate things - but that is rare...
My understanding is that 5 years in a doctoral program (U.S.) is seen as normal for the Humanities in general. 6 is okay, 7 is pushing it.
The first two years are taken up with coursework and the writing of an M.A. thesis (usually at the end of the 2nd year). Then, at the start of the 3rd year, the work on the proposal (hopefully in some way related to the M.A. thesis) begins, and this is done ideally by the end of Spring semester of the 3rd year and approved by the faculty and/or committee.
Then the 4th and 5th years are spent on writing the damn thing. So, really, I would say anything up to 2-3 years ABD (ie., from the time you finish your masters thesis) is kosher, especially if you have a teaching assignment of more than 1/1, or any kind of grant that takes you to an archive, or overseas, or whatever.
If you've come out of college at 22, and not taken any time off, you should be done with the Ph.D. by 27 or 28. Anything 30+ starts to look fishy, unless you can point to time off, or experience (held down an Instructor position with a 4/4 load, or whatever).
I find it odd that Spiros suggests addressing this in letters, though. I would never write a letter in effect pointing out that a student took longer than usual to finish: I would leave this up to the student to explain when asked by the hiring committee. I've never had to write such a letter, but still. Odd.
I teach at a university that hires a lot of philosophy PhDs.
I think it applies only to those students who don't have sufficient institutional prestige to mask their incompetencies...
I realize that was probably just a snotty throwaway, but I have to say that in my experience taking three years to write a dissertation isn't a kind of incompetence nor a sign of one. (I took three years, come to think of it, so maybe I"m just being defensive.) It's possible that it's perceived that way, but if so I think that's just a mistake.
The first two years are taken up with coursework and the writing of an M.A. thesis (usually at the end of the 2nd year).
The PhD programs I'm familiar with do not require an M.A. thesis.
In Canada, almost every single PhD programme requires that you apply with an MA (+thesis, obviously) in hand (there are two or three exceptions who will take a couple of UG students directly, but not many. McGill and U of T will, as well as Guelph, I think. One or two others might as well, but again, not many: the expectation is that you've already got an MA.). You then spend about two years doing coursework (or, in a few cases, one year of coursework and one year of comps), and then move on to the dissertation phase.
The PhD programmes I'm familiar with in the UK also require that applicants have an MA in hand, and bypass coursework for a three-year dissertation phase. The exception, as mentioned, is for taught degrees.
Finally, many of the American programmes I'm familiar with hand out an MA along the way, although IIRC they don't require a thesis, as Gorgon said.
In 2003, the median registered for a PhD in the humanities was 9 years.
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf06312/
Anon 11:54 PM:
Actually, as has already been pointed out in other comments, some places will consider someone ABD when they're done with their coursework, and others when they're done with their prospectus. Are the specifics even identifiable in a given application packet? I wonder.
This concern strikes me as amounting to "this is what my program did/our program does, so everyone who takes longer must be lame". Its amazing how philosophers can pick apart the logical problems in an argument in one context, and then serve up a heaping pile of unsupported BS in another.
So, I have a question I'd love to hear people talk about.
I spent 2 years in one program, but do to a variety of factors (especially the fact that the professors I was planning to write my dissertation weren't going to be there), I decided to apply to other programs and transfer. I spent three years overall in the first program.
I went to the second program and they basically said I had to completely start over and do ALL of their class requirements, despite the fact that my first program was ranked.
So, I am hoping to be finished in 4 years at this program, but that adds up to 7. I might take the full five (again, I had to start completely over) and that would be 8.
How does this look? What questions would come up if you were looking at my dossier? Should I include an explanation?
folks, let's put this into perspective: if you've got the right stuff, search committees aren't going to be counting the years you've spent on coursework, etc. My bet is that this sort of counting comes up only when they are looking for an excuse not to hire you, because you don't have the right stuff. This really isn't going to be a deal breaker.
On the advice of my advice sources, I hung around as an ABD for two extra job cycles in order to maintain my appearance of freshness. It worked for me. Nice research job.
I published and adjuncted for those two years.
Here's a question: why would an answer to this question generate valuable information for anyone? As a graduate student, shouldn't the goal be to finish something great as quickly as possible? And if there arises some reason to delay finishing your degree, shouldn't that be considered on a case-by-case basis? This issue sounds like one dwelt upon by graduate students who are procrastinating. Get back to work!
I took 9 years to get my PhD from a very highly ranked program (clearly too many). The department hiring me didn't care, but the dean did. S/he required an additional letter from my dissertation supervisor explaining the length of time to PhD. I guess the lesson of this, insofar as anecdotes can contain lessons, is to keep in mint that time to degree can matter a lot to administrators who might not care about the quality of the work.
Not more than 7 (and not to worry about anything up to 7) seems like a good rule of thumb for US institutions. Anon 2:18--7 or 8 years including a program change is, I think, not a big deal.
"The department hiring me didn't care, but the dean did."
While we can all disagree about what is or isn't (or should or shouldn't be) important, the lesson here is that one really can't assume that what's important to hiring committees. Enough experience on the market or on such committees demonstrates that you cannot ever prepare for everything. However, there are certain issues that are likely to come up. Time to completion is one of them, and I'm sure we can all list others that come up regularly (even if unfairly). The best advice I can give anyone on the market is to have a keen eye for what others may find as problems (or at least raise questions about), and then either address them or have an answer ready. Deciding that time to completion shouldn't matter is of no help when faced with a dean to whom it does.
Can't 2.18 just refrain from mentioning the first program? Especially given he had to start from scratch at the new place... I'm in a similar position so would like to know...
This is totally irrelevant (unless it is something obscene like 10 years). No one cares.
Do good work, even if it takes 7 or 8 years.
Just do good work. Be at a good program. Get great letters of recommendation. Have some teaching experience. Express how you've done all of this in a cover letter. Have some idea of what you want to do next. Publish a few pieces in the best journals you can.
If you can do all of that and *get lucky* you might end up with a job.
Has anyone noticed we've been in a recession since 2008? And that because of the recession there have been significantly fewer jobs than was typical annually for, say, 2002-2007? And that people who would've finished in, or under, 7 years are now taking a little longer because of the dearth of jobs? Oh, right; I forgot: just screw them. Because economic casualties don't fit the narrative.
What do you expect these people to do? Go ahead and defend and then watch their PhDs go stale? And if they defend, where are they going to go? You think the number of VAPs hasn't declined significantly over the past several years? Check out the JFP for May of 2009 and 2010, respectively.
3:17,
Yeah... that's exactly what's being suggested. If you're taking longer to complete your degree due to this kind of reason, you'd be well advised to have your adviser explain this in his or her recommendation letter.
Oh, right--this is why I stopped reading this blog for awhile.
"Let's whip the jobless people into a paranoid frenzy by suggesting that they should go f--k themselves if they took longer than six months to do their PhD, or are over the age of 30!"
Glad that gets some people's rocks off. I'm going to go back to working on my cv now; thanks for the uplift.
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