Exploring Ways to Shorten the Ascent to a Ph.D.

Joseph Berger, writing in The New York Times, explores why it takes more than 8 years to get a Ph.D., and about efforts underway to speed the process up:

We even have a name for this sometimes pitied species — the A.B.D. — All But Dissertation. But in academia these days, that person is less a subject of ridicule than of soul-searching about what can done to shorten the time, sometimes much of a lifetime, it takes for so many graduate students to, well, graduate. The Council of Graduate Schools, representing 480 universities in the United States and Canada, is halfway through a seven-year project to explore ways of speeding up the ordeal.

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There are probably few universities that nudge students out the door as rapidly as Princeton, where a humanities student now averages 6.4 years compared with 7.5 in 2003. That is largely because Princeton guarantees financial support for its 330 scholars for five years, including free tuition and stipends that range up to $30,000 a year. That means students need teach no more than two courses during their schooling and can focus on research.