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I had an interesting conversation yesterday with a fellow who is one of our nation's great advocates for science and engineering training. He's testified before Congress, he's been quoted a zillion times, etc. In short, the fellow is a known expert.

He tells me that the length of an average biomedical PhD program is now at 8.5 years, and that when he had his PhD it was at about four years. It has "increased one month a year" for many years.

This led us to discuss the possibility of Professional Doctorate programs, done in conjunction with industry/academic collaboration. These programs would get the track back on the shorter PhD, with a move directly into industry after the degree is granted.

What are your thoughts about this? What would the reaction of traditional department heads and professors be to a sudden reduction in the number of available "cheap hands?"

Dave Jensen, Moderator

I don't buy it. Did anyone here spend 8.5 years in graduate school or even know anyone who did? I don't. The longest I know of (and it was a joke in my graduate program) was 7 years. And I'm in neuroscience, which is typically has one of the longer times to degree.

An average of 8.5 years should mean that half of the PhDs we see coming out took that long or much longer. I don't buy it.

Drew, it sounded long to me as well. But that wasn't the main point. The issue I wanted to hear about is whether or not the idea of Professional Doctorates makes sense,

Dave

I am at a Top 15 biomedical program and will be finishing my PhD in immunology later this year in just over 3 years total. No one has had a problem with this, committee members, PI, etc. I expected much more resistence from my committe when I asked permission to write my thesis but it never materialized. My PI is happy with my success and is now inundated with students interested in our lab. So maybe it can go both ways since there seems to be no shortage of incoming students all of whom seem to be looking for labs that will speed their time to degree. By the way our average is at about 6 years total, not anywhere near 8.5 years.

DJ: did your colleague cite any specific data on this? I seriously doubt that it truly takes over 8 years to be done with a Ph.D. (That means it would take someone 12 years for someone to get an MD/PhD in biomedical sciences, and I am not aware of that happening.) I have to check on the survey of doctoral recipients to be really sure about this, but that doesn't really make any sense. I think we have plateaued when it comes to American production of Ph.D.'s, but if the length of getting a Ph.D. has really grown by that much, I would expect our Masters conferral rates much be growing much faster than Ph.D.'s.

I do know that graduate education is trying to curtail the length of training tremendously. No one wants to gloat over their graduates getting terminal degrees a DECADE from matriculation.

The scary thing is that we are talking close to 10 years of one's life. How much in lost benefits, insurance, and "real life" time if this is the case?

Actually the idea of professional doctorates that are associated with industrial positions is quite intriguing. I know plenty of current PhD students would be interested in such a program. It seems as though it would benefit both the students interested in pursuing inductrial related careers and the industry by streamlining qualified candidates.

These already exist in the UK - they are called case studentships - more details here if anybody is interested.

http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/PostgraduateTraining/IndustrialCASE/FrequentlyAskedQuestions.htm

Dave,

I realize this is not the response you were looking for, but I have to agree with the other posters. I have heard of only 2 students taking longer than 7 years to finish their PhD.

My program had an average of 5. Everyone I knew personally finished in 4-6 years. If the motivation for the professional doctorate program is a concern that PhDs are requiring an average of 8.5 years to complete, the point may be moot. I just don't believe that PhDs are taking that long.

That said, I would like to hear more details about how the program would work. How would an academic/industry collaboration shorten the time to the degree?

I think that sounds high, the average for my program is probably about 7 years. However, I will likely spend about 8.5 years, while some have only taken 3 or 4 years, to obtain a Ph.D.

I think the Professional Doctorate program sounds like an excellent idea. However, I wonder if people would consider it a "real" PhD. I am not sure, but this sounds vaguely like some doctoral program's found in Scandinvaian countries, which I have heard Faculty in my department openly mock as glorified masters programs.

8.5 years sounds about right, actually. The data presented in the link below states that in 1991-1992 in the biomedical sciences, the registered time to degree (RTD) was 7.1 years. Add 13 to that (one month per year since then) and there's the 8.5.

I know quite a few 9th year students. My own department (where I graduated in just over 6 years) claims that 5 is the average, though no one remembered anyone ever graduating in under 6.

Anyway, to address the point, I don't think that the increase has much to do with the programs themselves, but the supply and demand. It's a similar vein to the postdoc holding pattern; if there isn't a job to move into above, then they're just going to hold you in a position below. Until there are more jobs for the PhD, the length of RTD will not fall, regardless of what the degree is called.


http://grants.nih.gov/training/career_progress/Chapter_3.pdf

Brendan wrote, "I am not sure, but this sounds vaguely like some doctoral program's found in Scandinvaian countries, which I have heard Faculty in my department openly mock as glorified masters programs.

They would be exactly like those, or like a PharmD. The people who have those Professional Doctorate degrees are laughing at your faculty, having gone directly into high-paying jobs in their local bio/pharma industries as opposed to lagging behind financially in postdoc after postdoc,

Dave

How would the training be different, other than just being shorter? What would be cut in order to slice the time to degree by 50%?

"How much in lost benefits, insurance, and "real life" time if this is the case?"

Article from Women in Science looked at this about three years ago. Answer: it costs you a million dollars in lost wages and benefits to become an independent scientists and this is based on only those that landed in tenure track positions eventually. The bulk of the loss is that 5 years of graduate school and 5 years of post-doc. If you are taking longer you lose even more.

I think any program or mechanism that moves people through the process more quickly (including weeding some out), reduces the amount of time with low wages and uncertain prospects is worth a try. I think the academic-industry connection is probaly the best "proving ground."

BTW: My PhD was from a top 10 medical center setting and average time to PhD was about 8 years (did mine in 4.5 but I got lucky in terms of my first project working and going somewhere).

ps:

that 8 years to PhD was about 10 years ago. may peace be with those there now.

Dave,

I think it is a good idea in general (the professional doctorate), but I don't think it will fly with the hiring managers in biology and chemistry (in big pharma companies) in the near future. Many of these managers consider themselves to be "academically oriented" and expect people to follow the traditional PhD/postdoc path (that they and all those working for them have followed). I'm afraid these new expedited doctorates would be seen as being more like MS degrees than PhD's.

That PharmD degree, I think, is underrated. There is room for more PharmD's and maybe more degrees like it. For some reason, at least at the company for which I work, the PharmD seems to be perceived as a higher degree than a masters for non-laboratory positions (med writing, regulatory, project management, competitive intelligence, med information, etc.). Folks with the PharmD do well in these fields.

By the way, I took just a few months less than 8 years to finish my PhD back in 1996. Perhaps I helped to start this trend of long PhDs. Sorry.

Jim

So how does this professional PhD programs work? They just happen parallel to the regular program? that a PI can have a 'regular' PhD student and a professional Phd stuent in the same lab, but their focus, and funding sources are different?

Many schools, like the University of California, have put limits on the length of PhD studies. I think at UC it is 7 years. After 7 years, the students would no longer get any financial supports.

Okay, so we all agree that the 8.5yr number might be off...but as to Dave's real question -

The company I'm with has been having conversations with the nearby research university on whether having a "professional doctorate" program is a good idea.

The general premise that they're discussing is that it would be silly for some of the people here with a decade of so of research experience to go back to grad school with the straight-out-of-college kids to earn a PhD. They have more research experience than most PhDs, have lead their own projects, and published manuscripts and patents. What they might lack is the coursework - so they would take the graduate courses and write up their company research as a dissertation of sorts.

It's a win for the school, because these people (unlike the "regular" graduate students) would pay tuition - or rather, the company would pay their tuition.

The question is really whether this benefits the would-be PhDs. Officially there's no glass ceiling here, though unofficially it's harder to climb through the ranks without one. Would this degree solve that, or would it be viewed as masters? And would going through this program make these people any better at their jobs? I think there's skepticism, but it's being discussed.

no I don't agree that the 8 years might be off and if it were, its not off by that much. I think the last hard numbers I saw were 6.5ish years for PhD and that was about 3 years ago.

My contact said that the information is directly from the National Academy, but is traveling and couldn't give me the specifics. I'll get them, I'm sure. He says that it is always disputed based upon people's individual experience.

Dave

Brendan: "I am not sure, but this sounds vaguely like some doctoral program's found in Scandinvaian countries, which I have heard Faculty in my department openly mock as glorified masters programs."

Hmmm... Maybe those doctoral programs exist. However, at least in Sweden and Finland PhD programs are rigorous. You need 3 - 4 first author papers to graduate. I had 4 for my thesis and I had a Masters degree to start with.

If your faculty members want to mock foreign PhD programs, how about the British system where you get out after 3 years, without necessarily needing any publications? I have talked with many British postdocs and they acknowledge this.

This is a very interesting discussion. Coming from Australia, our doctoral programme also takes 3 years or so to complete. Perhaps the difference is that we don't have as much or no coursework and our research plan is focused from the start. Also most Australian postgraduate award scholarships are for 3 years only. Recent legislation penalizes research students who take longer by asking them to pay full fees for any subsequent years.

With regard to the professional doctorate, you could say I have some experience there as my Phd project is primarily based at our industry partner instead of my university. I go to university once a week to meet with my supervisor, however the bulk of my work has to be done at the company where I have access to the resources I need and not available in my school (this company specialises in proteomics and my school is biomedical engineering). In terms of the funding, my project is federally funded with a partial contribution from the company (and some from the university as well). It would make sense that the duration of a Phd based in industry would be shorter than one based at university because I think there is more focus when I'm working within the company environment and the fact that I have ready access to the latest and best equipment/reagents/consummables for my research while at university I could be slowed down by bureaucracy.

We already have at least one in Chemistry. Its at the University of Texas - Dallas and its called DChem (Doctor of Chemistry). I think some of the moderators know people from there. I spoke to the chair, Lynn Melton, at a conference a few years back. They have a lot more breadth requirements, require an industry internship, and reduce the research requirements somewhat. I think they get people out in 4 years. They claim to have nearly 100% placement in industrial positions after graduation. I agree, though, with the poster that said most of the industry is filled with people that are very academically oriented and it might be a tough sell to some of them.

If you want to keep it shorter, pick your advisor carefully and maybe considering sticking on the engineering side of the equation. In biochemical engineering, a Ph.D. normally took around five years irrespective of advisor. Four to finish if all your ideas worked the first time and six if you wandered a little too much. On the same campus but in biochemistry, Ph.D.s took from 6 to 8 years. I really enjoyed graduate school so five years was perfect. Plus, I would propose to people considering a Ph.D. that graduate school should be something that you want to do (and will likely enjoy) rather than something you think that you can endure as a means to an end (8 years is too long to be professionally miserable and financially poor).

Having said all that, I think the most disturbing trend is not the Ph.D. but the ever lengthening postdoc commitments. Engineering used to be industry straight out or a faculty appointment straight out with maybe a intevening year of postdoc. It is creeping so that postdocs are pretty regular in engineering (NSF etc are starting to fund more engineering postdocs). I really don't see the value for industry. And what are industry postdocs other than a cheap way to screen candidates. For faculty, one postdoc might be worth it but beyond that? Now take biochemistry. I have met numerous people who spent 4 years as postdocs before landing their first industry job and 6-8 years before landing a faculty position. Financially, that is just too long even if you like the lifestyle.

So do professional Ph.D. programs have a place. Perhaps but you have to be careful how they are designed. Another way to approach this is what makes a Ph.D. valuable (to industry/academia) and what programs test/produce the most valuable personal skills. Some advisors create cookie cutter projects and micromanage their students. The program may go faster (MD/Ph.D.'s in our program took this route for the most part due to time) but have you tested whether the graduates are strong researchers in the end. I don't think so and I think most of us in industry know a few who fall into this camp. Now compare that with a Ph.D. who started with a vague focus and pushed their own project. Now you have a Ph.D who is likely disciplined and self-motivated and who overcame unpredictable failures to discover new solutions. Their capabilities that make a Ph.D. valuable have been tested. My guess is that any professional program would tend towards the cookie cutter, fixed timeline, predictable response project. I might be wrong not knowing the proposed structure of any of them. I just think you have to be careful about removing the value from the Ph.D.

I'm going to throw in a short mention... the Sigma Xi postdoc survey Duke showed that (within the same institution) engineers in postdoctoral training general spend 1 fewer year in training (around 2 years median) and work 10 hours fewer per week (roughly 40 median) compared to the non-science, physical, and biomedical postdocs in the poll. The upper 50% of the engineering postdocs (albeit relatively small sample) also tended to have higher salaries than any other postdoc group.

As for the topic at hand, I reserve my judgement on it. I don't know how acceptable PSM's are, so having a PSD seems a little odd. I would be more inclined to think people would be more accepting if there were general curricular standards and expectations for this population in the same way there are curricula for professional medical doctors (i.e., M.D.'s).

Can we make a distinction between a working degree vs an academically-oriented degree?

This isn't too suggest one should look down the nose at the other. In several fields, there is a distinction bewteen Masters (e.g., a Masters by course work to help someone's application for medical school vs. a Masters by Thesis as a prelude to a PhD).

Agreed but what would be the point of a program like the one that UT-Dallas has in chemistry. Maybe the person who introduced it could explain what UT-D, graduates, whatever think the advantages are.

I can't actually believe that the training makes anyone more prepared for industry than would a professional Master's program (As opposed to a thesis Masters program). It just seems like excessive training to an end that isn't clear to me?

Some people seem to want a shorter more straightforward path to a Ph.D. caliber degree. Honestly, I don't think you can have an MD like path (and please don't impose a ninternship/residency as that is truly a miserable existence.) to a Ph.D. degree. In the end, the professional doctorate wouldn't mean as much for the reasons I posted earlier.

My only experience with these professional doctorates is by watching those who have them in Scandinavia (I'm a columnist with Scandinavian Life Sciences). They seem to work great for these people, who work with the best of mentors in both academia and industry, and then go almost universally into PhD positions in industry.

I think they make a great deal of sense here, because the two different career tracks for PhDs are indeed SO different. The academic career track demands certain things that the industry career track doesn't, and a professional doctorate like this may be the answer we need for many young scientists who want to work for industry.

Professional Masters programs have been a mixed bag. Sadly, many of them go out into the world and take BS level jobs. Most employers lump jobs into the PhD category and OTHER, meaning BS/MS level. But a professional doctorate, if it were accepted by industry, would take people directly into those PhD positions. The big thing, as others have mentioned, is whether or not the hiring managers would accept these degrees, since the current crop of hiring managers comes up through the usual academic route. My guess is that if their companies were involved in the program development, they would. So it would take a few big companies like Amgen, Genentech, Biogen-IDEC, etc, to get behind this.

Dave

I think these programs sound like a great idea. We need to do SOMETHING different in the training process. We have too many people who have worked too hard that are ending up "homelss." It is a waste of talent and education.

I have considered in the context of my folks what to do differently. I try to get people to look at the bevy of options early and put some effort into figuring out what they are good at and what they enjoy doing. We get locked into this "academics only" mode. We train students in this "academics only" mode. We fail to cultivate skills for any otehr than this outcome and for most people this is not the outcome.

I think these types of programs are at least worth a try. Now until these are formalized, how would one work for someone in a basic science/biomedical lab with work that has no relationship to drug making? In short, what's my assignment for monday?

Industry managers complain about Ph.D.s not being prepared to work in industry and that there are few qualified people for the jobs they need to fill. At the same time we know there are lots of Ph.D.s waiting in postdocs for a job. Lots and lots of them. So, there appears to be a disconnect somewhere.

Specifically what hiring managers complain about is that the Ph.D.s they see from school do not have adequate non-technical skills (speaking, writing, teaming) nor do they often have the right technical skills either. They are often the world?s expert on some technique while knowing little to nothing about most others, with the result that they are useless for problem solving (if all you have is a hammer?.). They also often have never worked on a messy system. Academics often ask complex problems of simple systems (how do you develop a multiple-quantum sequence to measure cluster size in salt crystals?) whereas industrial folks ask simple questions of complex systems (how do you develop a method for measuring the polyol content of a softgel formulation with 8 unknown components?).

The idea of the D-Chem program was to provide some exposure to students of real industrial systems and a breadth of problem-solving tools while at the same time maintaining the rigor of the Ph.D. program. I have no idea how well it works as I?ve never met anyone that graduated from the program. But that?s the philosophy anyway.

I would be concerned about lessening the value of the Ph.D. as a research degree by changing it dramatically, which is why I like the idea of a separate program. Still, there are probably some things one can do within a Ph.D. program that can mitigate the concerns somewhat.

Andrew... have you ever tried to do any molecular biology work--talk about the complexity there... (!) and having to edge your way out of every single situation until it becomes a hand-waving issue. There is a lot of problem solving going on there and the interdisciplinary nature of many of the life sciences programs also adds to the breadth of the scientists trained in the programs. (I do think that chemistry is different--look at the time to graduation; that's not everything.)

Yes, chemistry is different. So is Engineering. I had to generalize and I realize there are a bunch of exceptions, but the program I mentioned was a chemistry program.

I'm still generally conflicted by the idea.

In medicine, there are many "professional" allied health degrees out there. You don't need an MD to do any of the following: dentistry, pharmacy, optometry, physical therapy, or nursing. There are specialized medical degrees and schools that specifically cater to those needs in the health care industry. There are specific certifications for each degree and a series of professional exams to take for each of these (not to mention MD's as well).

So that said, I don't know whether those additional degrees are really what we want. I agree that the advantage is there is more specific training for the people in those programs to go for non-academic positions, but I think it is to help the fulfill the current supply of positions that are out there in industry. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but I'm just saying that for the long run, will any of the people in these positions be preferred when it comes to hiring an Executive Director for Research?

The advantage of the Ph.D. is the presumption that you have the ability to innovate and create a new line of research in the academic world. It is this innovation that is cherished and desired by industries so I would presume. It also does not address the insufficiencies in current graduate training; rather it just surrenders the problems of bad mentoring to more of a "suck it up... or you should just apply for a PSD program and start over again". As of yet, I do not see that a degree like this is going to really address the problems with the Ph.D. productivity problem, given that we don't know how these students could get funded or supported on other grants.

I do think that a PSM though is extremely useful and serves an advantage in job searches. There are many types of masters degrees including psychological counseling, genetic counseling, and other more "professional"/allied areas.

I think everyone would agree we are simply producing too many PhD for too few jobs in academics. People have been saying for years this will change and it hasn't. I don't think it is going to change.

Ten years ago we had a critical problem in provision of health care in rural settings. The PA programs have helped this situation. People who did not have access to primary care now have this without driving 60 miles with broken arms.
People were against PA programs when they first started but it has worked.

Why not at least try professional doctorates? We have to do something different, soon and should have done years ago. There is no incentive for cutting back on students entering standard PhD programs, which in my mind is the only real solution.

I will be starting my phD program this september and already know that I want to go into industry rather than academia. I think the idea of a professional doctorate sounds good, since there is no industry training in a traditional phD program. If you dont want to deviate from the traditional phD, maybe there can be some type of industry internship as a fourth rotation or something, but that will just further extend the time to degree so a professional doctorate program that focuses on people intending to go into industry sounds beneficial. I am entering a top 5 program and they claim time to degree is 5.5years....i am now really scared of 8.5 years! From what i hear what makes the difference in someone graduating in 3.5 to 8.5 is a combination of good luck and hard work. Any advice for an incoming student so i dont end up spending a decade on a phD?

Alana -

My biggest piece of advice is to have committee meetings early and often.

The thing that keeps people in PhDs for so long in my experience is projects that don't work out. You can waste easily a year on something that isn't working and might not ever work (no matter what your supervisor tells you). You can spend years going from dead end project to dead end project. This is generally what accounts for the people in for 8-10 years; too many false starts.

I have a couple of "rules." The over-arching premise is that I as good as the next person (no better no worse).

For any new methodology or project: I try for about 6 months. If the method or protocol isn't working or the project is not data-ready (which means ready to start generating a data set) in 6 months, I drop it. Like a rock. And move on to something else.

For any project where you are picking up something maybe someone else in the lab started or are doing the next project: get the experimental notes and read them YOURSELF. If you find that only "useable" results were obtained 50% of the time, you are going to spend a lot of time generating nothing, no matter how hard you work. A project with a 50% return on effort is no good. Always use the experimental notes, pull them yourself and read them. These are your owner's mannual for the project. make sure you didn't get a lemon.

This is my bias, but I don't think method development or implementing new protocols in the lab are the job of a graduate student. Their projects should be centered around well established methodologies in the lab (not gee someone else did this in the literature why don't you set this up for us) with a well defined question (building on lab story not developing a new area) that leads to a next project independent of what the outcome of the first project is.

This gives you a year for full time class work and rotations. A year to get your feet wet in your lab home. Two years to really generate data and about a year to write up thesis and get the papers accepted before leaving.

Alana--great advice from Kelly and Ken!

(Kelly, where were was your advice when I needed it? You could have saved me several years.)

As I mentioned much earlier in this epic thread, I took nearly 8 years to complete my PhD. The problem: a failed project. (See Kelly's post above.)

The bigger problem for me (that lead to the failed project) was my attitude. I was so enthusiastically into science as I entered grad school that I took on a project that was aimed more at winning a Nobel prize than getting a PhD. Instead of "plugging into" the tried and true techniques of the lab I was entering (that consistently produced data), I tried to adopt some completely different techniques, that nobody in the lab had experience with. Had I entered grad school with a more appropriate attitude--one of a student trying to get trained, get educated, and get out--I would have undoubtedly finished my degree faster.

(Note -- this is not intended as a complaint. Things have certainly worked out well for me!)

Good Luck!

Jim

Another good idea is the use of 'master plans'. I find it incredibly helpful if I spend a little bit of time trying to figure out what I need to do in order to complete a project. I then give myself a series of deadlines. In the academic arena, it is incredibly easy to get distracted by minor issues...to lose focus on the end result. I find that not only am I more productive in the long run, but that I have to be at work less hours. I usually don't let myself go home until I've met my daily goal...some days that means crazy long hours, but also it means less time wasted. It also gives you a sense of accomplishment. It also empowers you...which is a good antidote to the impending sense of doom (too much to do, no idea where to start much less ever be able to finish) that can be associated with graduate school.