Indicator 32
Time to Degree for Ph.D. Students, UC and Comparison Institutions, 2003-04 to 2005-06
Time to degree for Ph.D. students is measured from the time students enter their doctoral programs until the time they complete their Ph.D. degrees; it is based upon a rolling average over a three-year period.
On average, Ph.D. students at UC take about the same amount of time to complete their degrees as students at other AAU research universities.
However, Ph.D. students in the arts and humanities take longer to complete their degrees than Ph.D. students in other fields. This may be due to a number of factors: the additional time arts and humanities students spend as teaching assistants, the more individual nature of their dissertation research, the fact that they must often meet significant language requirements depending on their major and the fact that they more often interrupt their studies for financial or other reasons.
Click an image to enlarge.
Source: National Science Foundation Survey of Earned Doctorates. The survey is conducted on behalf of NSF and five other federal agencies (National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Education, National Endowment for the Humanities, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration). Additional information can be found at: http://www.norc.org/projects/survey+of+earned+doctorates.htm.
You may view or download a table of the raw data used to generate these charts in CSV files, which can be opened in spreadsheet programs such as Microsoft Excel or OpenOffice.