A Survey of Economics PhD Programs in
the
Lijun Chen
Henry Thompson
September 2004
This is a report on an email survey of PhD
programs sent in January 2004 to directors of graduate programs at 36 economics
departments in the “South.” A summary of
the 19 responses follows.
**********
Subject: Informal Survey of PhD Programs in the
“South”
To: Directors of Graduate Studies
From: Henry Thompson, Economics
Professor, Auburn University, thomph1@auburn.edu
Please answer the following
questions for an informal survey we are conducting of regional economics PhD
programs. The purpose is to help us plan our applied PhD program at
Please provide your “best
guess” answers to the following questions without feeling obliged to consult
records for exact answers. Use your estimate of averages for the past 5
years. If some Masters students transfer to PhD, include them when
appropriate. Please email responses by Reply.
**********
These are the 19 responding departments:
Emory
LSU ag econ
NC State
VA Tech
VA Tech ag econ
The departments
that did not respond are:
Clemson
George Mason
LSU econ
UNC
OK State
Rice
SMU
Tulane
Vanderbilt
The questions and the means of their answers across the 19
respondents are in Table 1, and summary statistics are in Table 2.
The programs are not small, with an
average size of 37 and cohort size of 11, but there is a high degree of
variation in size. Some programs are
much more selective in admission, and universities vary somewhat as well. There is high variation in tuition with a few
outliers. Graduate stipends also have
high variation with a few outliers. Tuition
discounts vary across departments. About
1/3 of the graduate students are on teaching assistantships and about 1/3 of those
teach their own courses. The rest of
their funding is about evenly divided between external, research, and
presumably internal funding.
Well over half of all the PhD
students are foreign but there is a high degree of variation across
departments. Most students pass their
first attempt at prelim exams but there is high variation across departments
here also. The average number of fields
is 5 and 2 field exams are required, although there is variation. There is high variation in the number of
electives across departments with a few outliers. Students finish after an average of just
under 5 years. About ¾ of the students
go into academics or research, perhaps a measure of success of the programs,
but there is high variation here as well.
Table 3
reports faculty salary and department ranking.
Faculty salary is the average salary of full professors across all
departments. The ranking variable is
from Tom Coupé’s webpage of worldwide economics
departments based on an average of 11 publication ranking schemes, and a lower
number means a higher ranked department.
Table 4 presents correlations across
key variables. Tuition is the average of
in state and out of state tuition. The
correlations are typically weak and fail to suggest any variables that would
explain rank of the department or success of the PhD program.
Multiple
regression analysis fails to uncover any significant influence on rank except
size of the PhD program and faculty salary.
If the success of a PhD program is placing graduates in academic or
research positions as in question #20, none of the survey responses has any detected
effect in multiple regression analysis.
There are no variables explaining department rank.
Table 1.
Questions and mean responses
1. How many total full time PhD students
are in your PhD program?
|
37 |
|
2.
How many full time first year PhD students are in
your typical cohort? |
11 |
|
3.
What % of PhD applicants that qualify at the university level does your
department admit? |
40% |
|
4. What is the yearly in-state tuition at your
university? |
$7,590 |
|
5. What is the yearly out-of-state tuition at
your university? |
$13,770 |
|
6. How much does your department pay first
year PhD students on full assistantship? |
$14,250 |
|
7. How much
do PhD students on full assistantship pay in tuition per year? |
$804 |
|
8. What % of accepted PhD students does your
program fund fully? |
68% |
|
9. What % of PhD student stipends are paid with university research assistantships? |
22% |
|
10. What % of PhD funding is
paid by external grants? |
22% |
|
11. What % of PhD students are on teaching
assistantships? |
35% |
|
12. What % of these PhD students on teaching
assistantships teach their own course? |
37% |
|
13. What % of PhD students are on foreign
student visas? |
62% |
|
14. What % of PhD students pass all prelims on
their first attempt? |
60% |
|
15. How many fields (a year of related courses)
does your PhD program offer? |
5.2 |
|
16. How many field exams does your PhD program
require? |
1.9 |
|
17. How many electives does your PhD program
offer? |
6.7 |
|
18. How many PhD degrees does your Department
award per year? |
3.9 |
|
19. What is the average length of years (full
time) to completion of the PhD? |
4.8 |
|
20. What %
of your PhD graduates go into academic or research positions? |
74% |
Table 2. Descriptive statistics of responses
|
Question # |
Mean |
Std dev |
Min |
Max |
Skewness |
Kurtosis |
|
1.
students |
37.1 |
28.9 |
7 |
107 |
1.41 |
1.34 |
|
2.
cohort |
10.8 |
9.4 |
2 |
41 |
1.81 |
6.15 |
|
3.
% admit |
40% |
30% |
3% |
100% |
0.41 |
1.81 |
|
4.
tuition-in |
$7,590 |
$6,630 |
$2,000 |
$27,000 |
2.18 |
6.43 |
|
5.
tuition-out |
$13,770 |
$5,430 |
$6,000 |
$27,000 |
0.94 |
3.37 |
|
6.
stipend |
$14,250 |
$6,030 |
$7,250 |
$36,000 |
2.38 |
9.15 |
|
7.
tuition-disc |
$804 |
$1,637 |
$0 |
$5,100 |
2.13 |
3.55 |
|
8.
% full fund |
68% |
32% |
10% |
100% |
-0.60 |
1.87 |
|
9.
% research |
22% |
25% |
0% |
80% |
1.23 |
3.36 |
|
10.
% external |
22% |
28% |
0% |
100% |
1.72 |
4.98 |
|
11.
% teach |
35% |
17% |
0% |
100% |
0.58 |
-0.43 |
|
12.
own course |
37% |
35% |
0% |
100% |
0.94 |
2.40 |
|
13.
% foreign |
62% |
17% |
16% |
85% |
-1.09 |
1.81 |
|
14.
pass 1st |
60% |
18% |
25% |
83% |
-0.67 |
2.42 |
|
15.
fields |
5.2 |
3.1 |
2 |
15 |
1.7 |
5.70 |
|
16.
field exams |
1.9 |
1.5 |
0 |
6 |
0.89 |
3.95 |
|
17.
electives |
6.7 |
6.7 |
0 |
30 |
2.22 |
8.19 |