A Survey of Economics PhD Programs in the US “South”
Lijun Chen
and Henry Thompson
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:
Alabama Auburn Emory Georgia State
Houston Kentucky LSU
ag econ Miami
Middle TN State Mississippi NC State New Orleans
Oklahoma South
Carolina Tennessee Texas
A&M
Texas Tech Virginia VA
Tech VA Tech ag econ
The departments that did not respond are:
Arkansas Clemson Florida Florida International
Florida State George Mason Georgia LSU
econ
Maryland Mississippi State UNC OK
State
Rice SMU Texas 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 |
|
18. degrees |
3.9 |
2.3 |
1 |
10 |
1.01 |
3.67 |
|
19. years |
4.8 |
0.7 |
3.75 |
6 |
0.05 |
1.99 |
|
20. % aca-res |
74% |
25% |
5% |
100% |
-1.20 |
2.98 |
Table 3. Faculty salary
and ranking
|
|
Mean |
Std
dev |
Min |
Max |
Skewness |
Kurtosis |
|
Fac salary |
$87,850 |
$3,675 |
$56,600 |
$121,800 |
0.22 |
0.15 |
|
Ranking |
122 |
55 |
39 |
201 |
2.13 |
3.55 |
Table 4. Correlations
|
|
size |
teach |
foreign |
success |
rank |
cost |
tuition |
fac sal |
|
size |
1 |
0.310 |
-0.096 |
-0.258 |
-0.586 |
-0.191 |
0.009 |
0.550 |
|
teach |
|
1 |
0.161 |
-0.333 |
0.056 |
-0.366 |
-0.356 |
0.123 |
|
foreign |
|
|
1 |
-0.102 |
0.244 |
0.391 |
-0.537 |
-0.329 |
|
success |
|
|
|
1 |
0.453 |
0.206 |
0.301 |
0.017 |
|
rank |
|
|
|
|
1 |
-0.043 |
-0.099 |
-0.515 |
|
cost |
|
|
|
|
|
1 |
-0.302 |
-0.308 |
|
tuition |
|
|
|
|
|
|
1 |
0.559 |
|
fac sal |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
1 |