The goal of this paper is to estimate the impact of labor demand on time to the doctorate. Empirical investigation of this relationship in previous research was hampered by the difficulty of measuring labor demand. I construct a measure of labor demand in seven fields in the humanities and social sciences based on the annual number of job listings…

This paper considers the influence of labor demand for new PhD recipients on time to the doctorate. I use student-level data on all doctorates awarded by U.S. universities in seven humanities and social science fields together with the annual number of job listings by field from 1975 to 2005. An increase in the number of job listings in a field…

Despite the worldwide prestige of America's doctoral programs in the humanities, all is not well in this area of higher education and hasn't been for some time. The content of graduate programs has undergone major changes, while high rates of student attrition, long times to degree, and financial burdens prevail. In response, the Andrew W. Mellon…

Doctoral programs in the humanities and related social sciences are characterized by high attrition and long times to degree. In 1991 the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation launched the Graduate Education Initiative (GEI) to improve the quality of graduate programs and in turn reduce attrition and shorten time-to-degree. Over a 10-year period, the…

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's Graduate Education Initiative (GEI) provided funding to 54 departments in the humanities and related social sciences during the 1990s to improve their PhD programs. This article estimates the aspects of PhD programs the GEI influenced and how these aspects influenced attrition and graduation probabilities. It uses…