At Rowan, we are in the early stages of collecting (and reporting) time to degree. I wanted to know if others are already collecting those data? Are you reporting internally only or also externally? Are there any nuances to the data collection that we should be aware of? {Note, I see that UNC, Duke and UCSF provide this information on data dashboards that are public facing. Thank you for that.}
UMBC has a report in PeopleSoft that anyone with data access (deans, department chairs, graduate program directors) can access to track retention, graduation rates and time to degree. They can sort based on several demographic and program categories. The PhD data is made public but is not updated every year.
Some challenges are definitions of starting date (First enrolled in any graduate program? First enrolled in this specific program? If switch from master’s to PhD does the time clock also reset? If switch to another similar program does the clock reset? If switch to a very different program does it reset? How do you draw the distinction between similar and different? Same department or college?). Or how you treat leaves of absence (stop clock or not?). It’s not always clear what other universities are using so comparing data can be challenging.
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