Graduate students push for funding

In the past nine years, Theresa McReynolds has been divorced, learned to cope with a chronic illness and spent countless hours in the library.

But she has yet to receive the doctoral degree in anthropology that brought her to UNC in the first place.

McReynolds’ experience is consistent with a trend in higher education for doctoral students to take seven years or more to receive their Ph.D. degrees.

Doctoral students say the time it takes them to complete degrees is lengthened by a policy at UNC that only funds them for 10 semesters. The lack of funding in later years forces them to take on other jobs, distracting them from research.

The Student Advisory Committee to the Chancellor, a group of students that regularly meets with Chancellor Holden Thorp, is compiling data to determine the time it takes students to complete their degrees.

McReynolds, a committee member, said the group is hoping to show that students need more time and funding to get their degrees.

“Limiting our funding and encouraging us to rush through lowers the quality of the degree,” she said. “And I don’t think it’s beneficial for the University to look like it’s a degree mill.”

Steve Matson, dean of the Graduate School, said tuition assistance is only provided to graduate students for 10 semesters.

But according to the National Science Foundation, the national average to complete a doctoral degree is about 20 semesters.

“What they’re doing is becoming experienced in the area they’ve chosen to study, and that requires some amount of classes and original research,” Matson said.

But he said the tuition limits are important to have in place.

“It’s not in place because we think all students should complete their degrees in 10 semesters but so that we can fairly allocate funding to all the students,” he said.

Funding doctoral students for the entire time they take to complete their degree would generate high costs for the University.

According to the National Science Foundation, the time it takes to earn a doctoral degree varies widely by discipline. It takes an average of 6.8 years to receive a doctoral degree in chemistry while it takes 11.9 years on average to complete an anthropology degree.

“A student who takes chemistry gets almost full funding, while an anthropology student only gets five years,” McReynolds said.

Matson said UNC encourages students to complete degrees in a timely manner for their own benefit.

“The quicker they complete their degrees, the sooner they can go out on the job market and put their education to use, doing research or teaching others,” he said.

McReynolds said she thinks increasing funding would help students graduate sooner because it would remove financial demands that often force students to become distracted from their studies.

The National Science Foundation supports her claim, showing that the average time-to-degree for doctoral students is lower for students who receive monetary support.

McReynolds said the committee wants to show similar data to Thorp and Matson once it is compiled.

“We’re hoping that what we’re going to show is that a Duke student who receives full funding graduates in eight years but a UNC student who does not graduates in 12,” she said.

Earning a degree

Average time to complete a Ph.D., according to the National Science Foundation:
Chemistry: 6.9 years
Mathematics: 7.9 years
Anthropology: 11.9 years
Psychology: 9.1 years
Humanities: 11.3 years
Education: 18.2 years

Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.