Interesting People mailing list archives
IP: "Median Years to Degree" in the recent Conference Board study
From: David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>
Date: Tue, 26 Sep 1995 15:10:39 -0400
Date: Tue, 26 Sep 95 14:47:18 EDT To: farber () central cis upenn edu (David Farber) From: rick () cra org (Rick Weingarten) Subject: Dave, FYI. Use as you wish. A number of you have commented that the "Median Years to Degree" reported for your program in the recent Conference Board study ranking CS departments is significantly higher than your own data indicates. Ed Lazowska of the University of Washington, with help from a number of others, has diagnosed this. A full description of the issue is available at: http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/lazowska/myd.html The data, itself, for CS is available in searchable form through CRA at http://cra.org/cgi-bin/RankCS. In a nutshell, the measure labeled "Median Years to Degree," which is widely interpreted to be "the median number of years that students spend in this graduate program," is in fact best described as "the median number of years from when the student first enrolls in any graduate program anywhere, until the student receives his/her Ph.D." Suppose, for example, that a student enters a Masters program immediately after receiving his/her Bachelors degree, and graduates from this Masters program in 2 years. Then the student enters the workforce for 5 years. At this point, the student enrolls in a Ph.D. program, from which s/he graduates 4 years later. The Ph.D.-granting institution probably feels pretty good -- cranked this student out in 4 years! But in the Conference Board study, this student will weigh in at 2 + 5 + 4 = 11 years! Other factors also are at play; full details are included in the web page referenced above.
Current thread:
- IP: "Median Years to Degree" in the recent Conference Board study David Farber (Sep 26)