There are two very different pictures of the students roaming the hallways and labs at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering. At the undergraduate level, 80 percent are United States residents. At the graduate level, the number is reversed: About 80 percent hail from India, China, Korea, Turkey and other foreign countries. For graduate students far from home, the swirl of cultures is both reassuring and invigorating. “You’re comfortable everyone is going through the same struggles and journeys as you are,” said Vibhati Joshi of Mumbai, India, who’s in her final semester for a master’s degree in financial engineering. “It’s pretty exciting.”

The idea that a Ph.D. can prepare you for diverse careers — not just for the professoriate — is now firmly with us. Most doctoral students in the arts and sciences start out with the desire to become professors. But that’s not where most of them end up. By now, most graduate advisers understand that their doctoral students will follow multiple career paths. And increasing numbers of professors and administrators are trying to help students do that. The number of Ph.D.s who pursue nonfaculty careers varies by field, of course. But the reality in many disciplines is: If you’re teaching a graduate seminar with eight students in it, only two of them, on average, will become full-time faculty members. What happens to the rest? And as important, how do they feel about where they end up?

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Contact: Katherine Hazelrigg | (202) 461-3888/khazelrigg@cgs.nche.edu

Project will Help PhD Programs Strengthen their Professional Development and Mentoring Efforts

Washington, DC – Twenty-nine universities have been selected to participate in a collective effort to gather and use data about the careers of PhD students and alumni, the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) announced today. Grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF grant #1661272) and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will support data collection about PhD careers in STEM and humanities fields.

The universities and consortia that have been selected to receive awards to participate as funded project partners are:

These universities collectively awarded over 8,000 PhD degrees in 2013-14 alone. CGS is expanding the scope of data collection by inviting other CGS doctoral institutions to participate as affiliate partners.

Over the course of the multi-year project, universities will collect data from current PhD students and alumni with surveys that were developed by CGS in consultation with senior university leaders, funding agencies, disciplinary societies, researchers, and PhD students and alumni. The resulting data will allow universities to analyze PhD career preferences and outcomes at the program level and help faculty and university leaders strengthen career services, professional development opportunities, and mentoring in doctoral programs.

Universities will also be able to use the data to communicate the career trajectories of PhD alumni to current and prospective students, helping them to make more informed selections of PhD programs.

“Today, universities recognize that PhD students aspire to a wide variety of careers, including academic research and teaching,” said CGS President Suzanne Ortega. “Knowing what your alumni do— and how well they are prepared—is becoming the new paradigm, and our university partners are leading the way for the entire community of doctoral institutions.”

CGS will study the processes of survey administration and identify promising practices for implementation that will be shared with graduate schools nationally. Universities from across the country will be able to compare their data on PhD career preferences and outcomes with the national dataset analyzed by CGS.

Rush Holt, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), noted that the project will expand the country’s understanding of the U.S. STEM workforce. “We already know that PhD-trained scientists contribute to the STEM workforce in every sector. One of the important things this project promises to give us is a better picture of the skills needed to be successful in the wide variety of careers available to today’s and tomorrow’s graduate students.”

The initiative will also provide a deeper understanding of PhD careers in the humanities. “The initiative meshes well with comparable work on expanding career horizons and opportunities for humanities PhDs,” noted Jim Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association and a member of the committee that advised CGS on survey development. “This work will give us critically-needed information about diverse career pathways among humanists, many of whom pursue careers beyond the professoriate. Its results will empower doctoral students and alumni working to understand and expand the career options available to them.”

The first wave of the survey will be sent to PhD alumni in Fall of 2017, and CGS will begin publishing the first wave of survey findings the following Fall.

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The benefits of treating PhD students as university employees, an issue under consideration by some institutions in the UK and US, have been spotlighted by the recent completion of reforms in Sweden. In the US, some universities are now making it possible for PhD candidates to join unions that can fight for better terms and conditions. A spokeswoman for the US Council of Graduate Schools said that most universities have viewed graduate students as students first and foremost as US doctoral programmes involve coursework, not just research.

American colleges and universities’ ability to attract international students is in decline...‘Our deans describe it as a chilling effect,’ said Suzanne Ortega, president of the Council of Graduate Schools. The numbers are provoking anxiety in some programs that rely on international students, who bring more than $32 billion a year into the U.S. economy˘ Slumping graduate school applications can now be seen at universities ranging from giant Big Ten public universities like Ohio State and Indiana University to regional programs such as Portland State.”

According to a three-year study conducted by the Council of Graduate Schools in conjunction with TIAA that concluded in 2016, 60 percent of master’s students and 55 percent of doctoral students feel stressed about their finances.

A new report from the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) observes, “the majority of PhDs gain employment outside the academy.” What will really matter for these doctorate holders is how well they understand and navigate the quite different processes that lead to nonacademic employment.

A 2016 report by the Washington, D.C.-based Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) underscores the importance of a holistic review of applicants to master's and doctoral programs in fostering diversity in higher education, as well as improved student outcomes.

At that moment the only information I had to work with was from the Canadian Association of Graduate Studies (CAGS) - a group that had already been in significant discussions with the US Council of Graduate Schools (CGS).

Nearly 40 percent of colleges are reporting overall declines in applications from international students, according to a survey of 250 college and universities, released this week by the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. The biggest decline is in applications from the Middle East. Many officials cited worries among prospective students about Trump administration immigration policies. “International student recruitment professionals report a great deal of concern from students all over the globe,” the study said.

Graduate schools appear to be feeling the worst pinch, with nearly half reporting drops. “Our deans describe it as a chilling effect,” said Suzanne Ortega, president of the Council of Graduate Schools.