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  3. American Economic Review
  4. May 2011
  5. Completion Rates and Time-to-Degree in Economics PhD Programs (with comments by David Colander, N. Gregory Mankiw, Melissa P. McInerney, James M. Poterba)

American Economic Review

ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)

Completion Rates and Time-to-Degree in Economics PhD Programs (with comments by David Colander, N. Gregory Mankiw, Melissa P. McInerney, James M. Poterba)

  • Wendy A. Stock
  • John J. Siegfried
  • T. Aldrich Finegan
American Economic Review
vol. 101, no. 3, May 2011
(pp. 176–88)
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Abstract

This paper describes the progress, eight years after matriculating, of 586 individuals who entered one of 27 economics Ph.D. programs in fall 2002. By October 2010, 59 percent of the fall 2002 entering cohort had earned a Ph.D. in economics at the university where they initially matriculated, 37 percent had dropped out, and 4 percent were still writing their dissertations.We examine student outcomes by Ph.D. program tier and investigate factors associated with completion and time to degree. We document and describe the rise in median time to degree from 5.0 to 5.6 years during the period 1996-2010.

Citation

Stock, Wendy A., John J. Siegfried, and T. Aldrich Finegan. 2011. "Completion Rates and Time-to-Degree in Economics PhD Programs (with comments by David Colander, N. Gregory Mankiw, Melissa P. McInerney, James M. Poterba)." American Economic Review, 101 (3): 176–88. DOI: 10.1257/aer.101.3.176

JEL Classification

  • A23 Economic Education and Teaching of Economics: Graduate