There's quite a thread developing at Invisible Adjunct on the subject of graduate school attrition. The occasion for the thread is Scott Smallwood's Chronicle of Higher Education piece on the subject, "Dr. Dropout," and the comments range from the searching to the bemused. In a nutshell: nationwide, attrition rates for Ph.D. programs hover at about 50%. In some humanities programs, that number is edging toward 70%. The article notes that between the long time-to-degree of Ph.D. programs (usually 6-7 years, often longer) and the slim job prospects in many disciplines, an attrition rate that is higher than that found in medical or law schools is to be expected. But it also raises the perennial questions: Can attrition rates as high as these be responsibly understood as anything other than a scandal? And why are so many people still enrolling in Ph.D. programs when the odds of finishing, not to mention the odds of finding decent employment afterward, are so minuscule?

Research suggests that the natural selection argument so often invoked to justify the status quo is utter hogwash. The snobbish argument that graduate school "separates the wheat from the chaff" (or the men from the boys), that it "allows the cream to rise to the top," that it is a "sink or swim" environment in which only the most talented survive, just doesn't hold. Speaking in terms of populations, there is no demonstrable difference in intellect between those who leave graduate school and those who stay to the (often bitter) end--grades and scores are largely the same for both groups.

Smallwood reports that college administrators are finally talking about doing something about the waste of time, money, and life that the attrition numbers bespeak. Trouble is, what they are talking about doing is talking more about the problem. Study and discussion are of course necessary adjuncts to effective action--but it's disturbing and frustrating, if not at all surprising, to learn that this really is where most administrators are at this point. The problem is old--but as many, many grad school dropouts will tell you, it has just never mattered to anyone but the dropouts themselves. We won't know what the attrition rates mean--about the shape of graduate student life, about the culture of different disciplines, about the environment at individual schools and the atmospheres of particular departments--until study and discussion have taken place.

But one worries that talking about the problem may become a substitute for doing something about the problem. One worries too that the truth about attrition just won't come out. It will be too damning--of particular schools' funding schemes and exploitative actions, of particular departments' pathological microcultures and irresponsible admissions practices. There's a reason most departments and schools don't keep data on attrition--the numbers and the reasons behind the numbers are truths they just don't want to know. My guess is that if and when real information about attrition is gathered, a great many departments will just doublethink their way around them. Their righteous belief in their own prestige and their own entitlement (not to change, not to reassess their comfortable assumptions) is simply too strong. (For a telling account of how casual exploitation is built into English departments, go here).

I'm the last person to claim to have answers. I'm the beneficiary of a system I have ceased to believe in, and because of that I occupy a position I have a hard time seeing as ethical. I do what little I can not to abuse the position I am in--I now steer clear of my school's graduate program, I do not use graduate students as graders or researchers or clerical help (in other words, I do all my own work), I devote myself as fully as I can to teaching undergraduate courses that offer rigorous and thorough training in both literary history and writing. I'm also actively looking for work outside the academy. In the meantime, I write Critical Mass in the hope that I can do my small bit to make somebody somewhere change. Longtime readers will know that I have serious doubts about whether the academic humanities can survive their own efforts at self-immolation.

Not having answers, I'd like to pose more questions. This is a call to readers to write to me about their experiences in graduate school. I'd love to know how current and prospective graduate students regard the attrition problem, and would particularly like to hear from people who left their graduate programs before finishing. I'd like to hear your broad theories as well as your personal anecdotes. What made you leave? What made you stay? What did you and others think of people who left? How do your department and your school treat those who leave? What would you tell someone contemplating going to graduate school? What would you like say to your professors, advisors, and deans about why you left?

I'll post responses as they come in, name withheld on request, unless otherwise specified.