{"id":4072,"date":"2013-05-10T11:25:24","date_gmt":"2013-05-10T18:25:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chemistry_news\/?p=4072"},"modified":"2014-03-18T10:14:42","modified_gmt":"2014-03-18T17:14:42","slug":"the-phd-phactory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chemistry_news\/2013\/05\/the-phd-phactory\/","title":{"rendered":"The PhD Phactory"},"content":{"rendered":"

Where do science and engineering (S&E) Ph.D.’s come from? That’s a question that the National Science Foundation has been asking for a long time and the answers may surprise you. Last month, the NSF published its most recent answer online in a free-to-the-public report, Baccalaureate Origins of U.S.-trained S&E Doctorate Recipients<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

The report summarizes the data in several interesting ways, but the most interesting table might be Table 4<\/strong><\/a>, Top 50 Institutions [ordered by] institutional-yield ratio<\/strong>. The data shown here answer the question, Starting with 100 bachelors degree recipients, how many go on to earn an S&E PhD?<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Caltech 34.9%<\/li>\n
  2. Harvey Mudd 24.4%<\/li>\n
  3. MIT 16.0%<\/li>\n
  4. Reed College 14.2%<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Yup, that’s right. Reed, which has no engineering program and which asks every incoming student to spend a year contemplating Homeric epics, is the #4 PhD factory in the entire country.<\/p>\n

    Which leads to another question: just how many Reed students even earn degrees in science? That answer (and many other interesting tidbits about Reed) can be found here<\/strong><\/a> in Facts About Reed<\/strong>. 413 Reedies (26.2%) have received science degrees in the past 5 years out of 1579 total. Combining* the two figures suggests that about 54% of our science grads earn PhDs. Take that, Caltech! \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

    *disclaimer: I obtained 54% by comparing NSF and Reed data from different time periods, but the Reed percentages have been very consistent for decades<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Where do science and engineering (S&E) Ph.D.’s come from? That’s a question that the National Science Foundation has been asking for a long time and the answers may surprise you. Last month, the NSF published its most recent answer online … finish reading The PhD Phactory<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alumni","category-exciting-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chemistry_news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chemistry_news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chemistry_news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chemistry_news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chemistry_news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4072"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chemistry_news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4072\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4258,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chemistry_news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4072\/revisions\/4258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chemistry_news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chemistry_news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chemistry_news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}