Toward a Global PhD? Forces and Forms of Change in Doctoral Education Worldwide, has been reviewed in the latest issue of Nature Magazine – “Doctorate Gets a Lesson in Management.”
To download this review, click here: Book Review. To read it in context, click on Nature Magazine
“In this beautifully rendered collection, we peer through so many different windows of American family life. Rural North Dakota parents reverently passing on farm values, if not the farm itself, to their children. Silicon Valley hi-tech family workers share long hours and high hopes in their electronic cottage. Affluent corporate executives and their stay-at-home wives still can’t control influences beyond the gates to their communities. Refugees from corporate life set up a small town pie shop hoping to find a better way to mix work and family life. The superb studies gathered here reflect the many ways families are trying to build the American Dream on an ever more eroded and shifting landscape.”—Arlie Hochschild, author of The Time Bind: The Commercialization of Intimate Life.
Rudd, E. & Descartes, L. (2008). The Changing Landscape of Work and Family in the American Middle Class: Reports from the Field. Lanham, MA: Lexington Books
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CIRGE has analyzed the history, structure, and its implication on doctoral education in the USA. Being the country that produces the largest number of PhDs in the world, CIRGE has examined in depth the structure and outcomes of Doctorate Education.
An overview of the history of graduate education in the United States, the current structure of graduate education at most US universities, recent challenges and changes within doctoral education and national responses to those challenges and changes.
Nerad, Maresi. (2008). Doctoral Education in the United States of America. In Maresi Nerad, Toward a Global PhD? Forces and Forms in Doctoral Education Worldwide, p. 279-296, Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Download: Doctoral Education in the United States of America
The Social Science PhDs—Five+ Years Out survey is CIRGE’s latest contribution to the PhD career path and retrospective program evaluation research. Funded by the Ford Foundation, Social Science PhDs—Five+ Years Out, surveyed PhD recipients who received their degrees between 1995 and 1999 from 65 U.S. universities in six disciplines—anthropology, communications, geography, history, political science, and sociology.
Investigators: Maresi Nerad, Elizabeth Rudd, Emory Morrison and Joseph Picciano
Download: Highlight Report
See note in Inside Higher Education
This CIRGE Spotlight focuses on the potential for gender equality in careers of social science doctorate holders using findings from Social Science PhDs–Five+ Years Out, CIRGE’s national study of recent graduates in six fields. We find surprising equality in early careers of men and women: men and women are equally likely to begin careers in a tenure-track position and equally likely to ever be on tenure track at Research 1 institutions. Yet we find that this equality of beginnings is unlikely to last over the course of these cohorts’ careers. Further, women seem to be “subsidizing” equality in PhD careers by paying higher personal costs than men do.
Rudd, E., Morrison, E., Picciano, J., & Nerad, M. (2008). Finally equal footing for women in social science careers? CIRGE Spotlight on Doctoral Education #1. CIRGE: University of Washington, Seattle, WA.
Download: Finally Equal Footing for Women in Social Science Careers?
Using a national survey of 508 art history PhDs including data on graduate school performance and careers 10-15 years post-PhD, this study investigates gender, family, and academic tenure in art history, the humanities field with the highest proportion of women. Alternative hypotheses derived from three perspectives–termed here clockwork, two-body, and synergy–are evaluated with multivariate logistic regression. Analysis finds that marriage increases men’s tenure odds and decreases women’s, but that some types of marriages do not decrease women’s odds, and some types dramatically increase men’s. This study calls for attention to male advantage in female-dominated academic disciplines and demonstrates the potential to better understand the interactions of gender, marriage, and careers by conceptualizing different types of marriages.
Rudd, E., Morrison, E., Sadrozinski, R., Nerad, M., & Cerny, J. (2008). Equality and illusion: Gender and tenure in art history careers. Journal of Marriage and Family, No 70, pp. 228-238.
Download: Equality and Illusion
The PhDs – Ten Years Later study, allowed us to provide detailed information about the actual employment patterns of nearly 4, 000 PhDs recipients in biochemistry, computer science, electrical engineering, English, mathematics, and political science. This report, offers a specific examination of the career paths of those who completed the PhD. in Political Science.
Surveying PhD recipients in political science ten years after degree completion provides rich information about the career paths, job satisfaction, and their retrospective evaluation of the usefulness of the PhD. Understanding the variety of educational outcomes and the high job satisfaction of PhD recipients outside academia, leads us to conclude that a too narrow focus on the academic job market in doctoral education leaves a large proportion of doctoral student unprepared for a variety of intellectually satisfying careers.
Download: Career Outcomes of Political Science PhDs
Center for Innovation and Research in Graduate Education – University of Washington, 2003. “Career Outcomes of Political Science PhD Recipients: Results from the PhDs–Ten Years Later Study. Report for Political Science Association.