December 17, 2007

A Neat Policy for Graduate Students

Posted by Eric at 2:29 pm | Category: Academia, Links

Via Marginal Revolution, apparently Harvard has a policy for Ph.D. students, which is that for every 5 graduate students in their eighth or higher years of a Ph.D. program, the department will lose a slot for new admits. This is a great idea! No Ph.D. student needs to take longer than 8 years, and this policy makes sure that professors are motivated to keep the pipeline flowing instead of simply accumulating students.

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3 Responses to “A Neat Policy for Graduate Students”

  1. Ben Says:
    December 17th, 2007 at 6:41 pm

    Holy hell, 8 years? I’ve got 1.5 under my belt, and I’m already starting to feel like 2 more years or so is an eternity.

  2. Eric Says:
    December 17th, 2007 at 7:49 pm

    Well, considering that (per the article linked to from Marginal Revolution) most (50.9%) of humanities graduate students take longer than 10 years…I’d definitely take 8 years over 10 years. Of course, I wouldn’t go into graduate school for the humanities, but that’s another issue entirely.

  3. The Real Ben Says:
    December 17th, 2007 at 9:32 pm

    I think I like money too much to go to grad school…

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