Optimizing Graduate School: How Long is Too Long?

They say a few of the defining characteristics of a “person” are the high-level thought processes of rationality, wisdom, and self-awareness. As scientists, we should be willing to turn the microscope on ourselves and our own career path to see if a rational person would deem it wise to enter a graduate school process that can take up to a decade for some folks. Are our current educational and career development pathways truly optimized for students’ benefit, or have we let other factors slowly pull our profession out of balance?

To date, our research career introspection has addressed the ideal format of classes in graduate school as well as the optimal length required for a new professor to setup a lab. In this installment, we take a look at the the foundation of most researchers’ careers – graduate school. The first question we have to ask ourselves is – is there actually anything wrong with graduate school as we know it? Given that a majority of students would likely describe their graduate experience as follows,

Year 1: Optimism
Year 2: Motivation
Year 3: Frustration
Year 4: Depression
Year 5: Apathy
Year 6: Apathy
Year 7: Apathy

we’d have to say we’re probably not training the next generation of enthusiastic researchers the way we’d hope. Beyond anecdotal experience, graduation and dropout statistics also suggest we’re failing our graduate students. Wouldn’t we be better off as a profession creating the following educational experience for young scientists?

Year 1: Optimism
Year 2: Motivation
Year 3: Excitement
Year 4: Passion
Year 5: Passion
Year 6: Passion

To be clear, we are certainly not suggesting that the timeframe of graduate school is the sole variable responsible for the mental well-being of researchers. Graduate school is a complex system of moving parts, any one of which may impact a student’s experience and ultimate success as a scientist. However, by individually examining the various factors, we hope to identify areas where the educational and career processes may be optimized.

Before answering this question, take a moment to set aside any emotional baggage (we’ve all got it) related to your own graduate experience. Take an honest look at how long it should take to properly train a PhD. We’ll loosely define a PhD as someone who is an expert on their project (literature and techniques included), understands the the cutting edge questions the field is addressing and is capable of performing independent research (generate and test hypotheses, then publish them). While various fields may take longer than others due to the length of average experiments, try to imagine an “average student” in an “average field”.

At some point in graduate school, the law of diminishing returns kicks in and the student has basically learned everything they’re going to learn. Sure a third year grad student should be more proficient than they were as a second year, but is a 9th year significantly smarter than they were as an 8th year? We don’t think so either. When does that switch take place?

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Just entering graduate school? We probably won’t be able to change the system in the next few months, but here’s a graduate school survival guide that might help!

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