Baccalaureate Origins of Doctoral Recipients Diane Saphire, Institutional Research March 2009 Summary. Over the past twenty years, Trinity University has made tremendous strides in the number of graduates going on to earn doctoral degrees. Among students earning a bachelor s degree from Trinity between 1982 and 1986, about 2.9% went on to earn a PhD. At that time, Trinity ranked 328 th in the nation among colleges in doctoral degrees earned per graduate. In contrast, among students earning a bachelor s degree from Trinity between 1997 and 2001, about 8.5% went on to earn a doctorate. During this time frame, Trinity ranked 38 th in the nation for doctoral recipients per bachelor s degree. In the span of 20 years, Trinity moved from a rank of 328 th to a rank of 38 th in the nation. Data and sources. The Survey of Earned Doctorates is conducted annually by the University of Chicago National Opinion Research Center for the Federal sponsors of the survey: the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the U.S. Department of Education (USED), the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA). The resulting data set contains data on all earned doctorates granted by regionally accredited United States universities, in all fields, from 1920 to the present. One variable collected in this data set is the institution from which the doctoral recipient earned a bachelor s degree. Approximately 92% of all doctoral recipients participate in the survey. (Professional degrees such as the M.D., D.D.S., O.D., D.V.M., and J.D. are not covered by the Survey of Earned Doctorates.) Results of the Survey of Earned Doctorates are publicly available at http://webcaspar.nsf.gov/. From this data set it is possible to obtain counts of doctorates awarded broken down by the recipient s baccalaureate institution and by the year of the doctoral degree. Such data do not reflect the size of the baccalaureate institution larger institutions will naturally tend to produce larger numbers of doctoral recipients. Thus some measure of the number of graduates of an institution must be added to these doctoral data for comparisons to be meaningful. All institutions receiving Title IV funds must complete an annual report providing the numbers of bachelor s degrees awarded. This completions report is submitted to the National Center for Education Statistics. Results of these reports are publicly available at http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/find_data/peer_analysis_summary.asp.
Unfortunately, the Survey of Earned Doctorates data does not include the year in which the bachelor s degree was earned, so precise values of doctorates per student receiving a bachelor s degree in a given time frame is not possible. But to estimate this figure, the member institutions of the Higher Education Data Sharing (HEDS) consortium have assembled the numbers of students earning doctorates in a given five year period divided by the number of students completing bachelor s degrees in the preceding five year period. So, for instance, from 1997 through 2001, 2525 student earned bachelor s degrees from Trinity. Between 2002 and 2006, 215 of Trinity s alumni earned doctoral degrees. Thus we estimate the percentage of students graduating between 1997 and 2001 who went on to earn doctorates to be 215/2525 = 8.5%. Similar computations may be made for other institutions as well. The Higher Education Data Sharing (HEDS) consortium has assembled such data for all institutions receiving Title IV funds. These institutions can then be ranked by the estimated doctoral degrees earned per baccalaureate degree awarded. For doctorates granted between 1997 and 2001 divided by bachelor s degrees awarded between 1992 and 1996, Trinity ranked 32 nd in the nation. Similarly, for doctorates earned between 2002 and 2006 divided by bachelor s degrees awarded between 1997 and 2001, Trinity ranked 38 th in the nation. The chart below shows Trinity s increasing percentage of students earning doctorates (left axis) and corresponding decreasing national rank (right axis) over time. Doctoral Recipients per 100 Bachelor's Degrees 12.0 10.0 8.0 6.0 4.0 2.0 0.0 Trinity University Doctoral Recipients per 100 Bachelors Degrees Awarded in Preceding 5 years and National Rank 1972 1976 1977 1981 1982 1986 1987 1991 1992 1996 1997 2001 2002 2006 450 400 350 300 250 200 150 100 50 0 National Rank Doctoral Recipients per 100 Bachelors Degrees National Rank
The tables below show the institutions ranked above Trinity in 1997-2001 and in 2002-2006. 1997-2001 rank institution 1997-2001 doctoral recipients per 100 bachelor s degrees awarded between 1992 and 1996 1 California Institute of Technology 35.7 2 Harvey Mudd College 26.2 3 Reed College 20.3 4 Swarthmore College 19.7 5 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 18.7 6 Carleton College 17.3 7 Bryn Mawr College 17.1 8 Cleveland Institute of Music 16.7 9 Oberlin College 16.7 10 Yale University 15.4 11 University of Chicago 15.3 12 Haverford College 15.2 13 Grinnell College 14.5 14 Princeton University 14.3 15 Pomona College 14.2 16 St John's College (Annapolis, MD) 13.8 17 Amherst College 13.6 18 Williams College 13.4 19 Rice University 13.3 20 Harvard University 13.3 21 Wesleyan University 12.0 22 Stanford University 11.7 23 Kalamazoo College 11.4 24 Juilliard School 11.3 25 Wellesley College 10.9 26 Brown University 10.7 27 Curtis Institute of Music 10.2 28 New England Conservatory of Music 10.2 29 Earlham College 10.2 30 Beloit College 9.7 31 Vassar College 9.6 32 Trinity University 9.6
2002-2006 rank institution 2002-2006 doctoral recipients per 100 bachelor s degrees awarded between 1997 and 2001 1 California Institute of Technology 34.1 2 Harvey Mudd College 21.5 3 Swarthmore College 19.8 4 Reed College 18.2 5 Carleton College 17.2 6 Grinnell College 15.3 7 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 15.3 8 Oberlin College 14.4 9 Princeton University 14.0 10 Harvard University 13.9 11 University of Chicago 13.2 12 Yale University 12.8 13 Bryn Mawr College 12.8 14 New England Conservatory of Music 12.5 15 Pomona College 12.5 16 Williams College 12.4 17 Haverford College 12.4 18 Amherst College 12.3 19 Wesleyan University 12.0 20 Rice University 11.9 21 St John's College (Annapolis, MD) 11.1 22 Juilliard School 10.9 23 Brown University 10.5 24 Lawrence University 10.3 25 Stanford University 10.1 26 Earlham College 10.1 27 Kalamazoo College 9.9 28 Macalester College 9.9 29 Wellesley College 9.4 30 Hendrix College 9.3 31 Vassar College 9.2 32 Occidental College 9.1 33 Smith College 8.8 34 St Olaf College 8.6 35 Duke University 8.6 36 Curtis Institute of Music 8.6 37 Hampshire College 8.5 38 Trinity University 8.5
The map below shows the locations of the 38 institutions with at least 8.5% of graduates going on to earn doctorates in the 2002-2006 time frame. The only other institutions in the southcentral region of the country producing as many doctoral recipients as Trinity are Rice and Hendrix. Trinity Possible explanations. How did Trinity manage to achieve this remarkable change? The large increase in the percentage of graduates going on to earn doctorates from 1987-1991 to 1997-2001 corresponds to a substantial increase in the quality of incoming students as measured by standardized tests between roughly 1980 and 1987 as shown on the accompanying graph. (Note that the SAT was rescaled in 1996. Scores in Trinity s typical average range increased by roughly 70 to 75 points as a result of this rescaling.) 1400 SAT Scores of Incoming First Year Students 1300 1200 1100 1000 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 old SAT Recentered SAT
Along with increasing student quality, Trinity has striven to recruit talented faculty members who mentor and encourage students in their pursuit of graduate education. For instance, essentially all current full time faculty have earned the terminal degree in their field.