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Ph.D. Production  Outcomes of a liberal arts education are often described in terms of alumni satisfaction with their eventual careers and achievements, enhanced understanding of societal and moral problems, and success in graduate school. A liberal arts education has long been praised for enhancing students' appreciation of and involvement in scholarly pursuits as well as for developing active and involved citizens. The pursuit of a graduate degree enables a graduate not only to develop more specific expertise in a particular discipline but also to enter leadership roles in education, research and industry. The strength of an institution's academic curriculum and educational processes can be demonstrated by considering the number of its alumni who pursue graduate study. Earlham’s undergraduate faculty are collaborators and mentors, who work alongside their students in empirical research in the natural and social sciences and in creative endeavors in the humanities and fine arts. The quality of the faculty's teaching as well as their disciplinary expertise and advisory influence is evident in the high numbers of Earlham graduates who complete graduate degrees: between 1975 and 2004 more than 10 percent of Earlham College graduates went on to earn Ph.D.s. Earlham is ranked 23rd among 1,469 institutions of higher learning in the U.S. in the percentage of graduates who go on to receive Ph.D.s. This fact, which compares 30 years of educational outcomes pursued by Earlham graduates with those of graduates of many larger, research universities as well as those of peer baccalaureate institutions, strongly demonstrates the quality of the teaching and learning experience at Earlham. View chart of weighed and percentile rankings of Earlham for Ph.D. completions in several disciplines from 1975-2004 based on information provided by the Higher Education Data Sharing Consortium. Earlham is one of the top three liberal arts colleges in the Great Lakes Colleges Association (GLCA) in overall production of doctoral degrees by alumni. View chart of GLCA Rankings of Ph.D. Completions in Selected Disciplines. Ph.D. Productivity in History Another study conducted by Robert B. Townsend and based on 40 years of data from the National Center for Education Statistics shows that 10 percent of Earlham history graduates earn Ph.D.s. How Important is Attending an Elite College? In The Atlantic Monthly’s recent “College Admissions 2004 Annual Survey” issue, Gregg Easterbrook, visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, cited research conducted by Alan Krueger and Stacy Berg Dale who “dropped a bomb on the notion of elite-college attendance as essential to success later in life.” Their study demonstrated that, on average, students who had been accepted at an Ivy institution and who attended a less well-known school made “the same income twenty years later as graduates of the elite colleges….the student, not the school, was responsible for success.” (Gregg Easterbrook, “Who Needs Harvard?,” The Atlantic Monthly, October 2004, pp. 128-9.) Easterbrook examines the importance of earning a college degree and expands upon the theme that many colleges, not just the “Gotta-Get-Ins,” are capable of preparing graduates for both economic and academic success. "The elites still lead in producing undergraduates who go on for doctorates (Caltech had the highest percentage during the 1990s), but Earlham, Grinnell, Kalamazoo, Kenyon, Knox, Lawrence, Macalester, Oberlin, and Wooster do better on this scale than many higher-status schools. In the 1990s little Earlham, with just 1,200 students, produced a higher percentage of graduates who have since received doctorates than did Brown, Dartmouth, Duke, Northwestern, Penn, or Vassar. (p. 130)" To read the whole article, visit …
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Earlham
College · 801 National Road West · Richmond,
Indiana 47374-4095 |