TY  - JOUR
AU  - Ehrenberg,Ronald G.
AU  - Jakubson,George
AU  - Groen,Jeffrey
AU  - So,Eric
AU  - Price,Joseph
TI  - Inside the Black Box of Doctoral Education: What Program Characteristics Influence Doctoral Students' Attrition and Graduation Probabilities?
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 12065
PY  - 2006
Y2  - March 2006
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12065
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12065.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Ronald G. Ehrenberg
Cornell Higher Education Research Institute
271 Ives Hall East
Ithaca, NY  14853-3901
Tel: 607/255-3026
Fax: 607 255 4496
E-Mail: rge2@cornell.edu

George Jakubson
Cornell Higher Education Research Institute
257 Ives Hall
Ithaca, NY 14853-3901
E-Mail: George.Jakubson@cornell.edu

Jeffrey Groen
Bureau of Labor Statistics
2 Massachusetts Ave NE
Suite 4945
Washington, DC 20212
Tel: 202-691-7392
E-Mail: Groen.Jeffrey@BLS.gov

Eric C. So
E-Mail: ESo@Stanford.edu

Joseph Price
Department of Economics
Brigham Young University
162 FOB
Provo, UT 84602
Tel: 801/422-5296
Fax: 801/422-0194
E-Mail: joseph_price@byu.edu
AB  - The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's Graduate Education Initiative (GEI) provided over $80 million to 51 treatment departments in the humanities and related social sciences during the 1990s to improve their PhD programs. Using survey data collected from students who entered the treatment and 50 control departments during a 15 year period that spanned the start of the GEI, we use factor analysis to group multiple aspects of PhD programs into a smaller number of characteristics and then estimate which aspects of PhD programs the GEI influenced and how these different aspects influenced attrition and graduation probabilities. From these analyses, we identify the routes via which the GEI influenced attrition and graduation rates and also indicate which aspects of PhD programs departments should concentrate on if they want to improve their programs' performance.
ER  -