Product Description

Graduate schools have faced attrition rates of approximately 50 per cent since 1960. They have tried to address the problem by focusing on student characteristics and by assuming that if they could make better, more informed decision attrition rates would drop. Yet high attrition rates persist. This study examines what is wrong with the structure and process of graduate education. Based on evidence drawn from a survey of 816 completers and non-completers, interviews with non-completers, high- and low-Ph.D productive faculty and Directors of Graduate study, the study aims to locate the root cause of attrition in the social structure and cultural organization of graduate education.

Product Details

• Published on: 2001-04-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 336 pages

About the Author
Barbara E. Lovitts received her Ph D. in sociology from the University of Maryland. She is currently a senior research analyst at the Pelavin Research Center of the American Institutes for Research.

Customer Reviews

If you are going into, or are in PhDship, you need to read and accept that this might be where you are heading
Lovitt is well positioned to talk on this having dropped out of 2 inadequately sourced and orchestrated programmes and used number 3 to found her thesis which is IT ISN'T YOU that's at fault, IT'S THE SYSTEM.

I stumbled on this book during my own PhD and took great solace in it.
The US method in some ways is more supportive and conducive to genuine scientific and humanistic inquiry but can be in many ways more OUTPUT led. We in the EU are not far behind. Lovitt tells a bear all truth of what lies behind the sanctity of gaining a PhD. It's going to be painful, it will crush your confidence and it will undermine you at every stage. Lovitt is no weak spirit, but she is a deliverer of the uncomfortable truth about US grad school and global PhDship.

If you are thinking about it, if you are underway, if you are honest about looking back to yours, read this and admit to yourselves and those in a position to improve doctoral education that it is not lack of talent, but lack of ingenuity and freedom of expression that holds back this most revered credential.

She hits the nail on the head time and time again. If you want the fantasy don't clutter up your ideology. If you want the facts, here they are.

It is right for some but not all. Find yourself first and decide.