Missing Minority Ph.D.s

*The Phd completion rate for Latinos is 51%. Disappointing, given the number of efforts that have been started to improve that percentage. VL

By Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed

ATLANTA — The Institute on Teaching and Mentoring, whose annual meeting just concluded here, gathers 1,300 minority Ph.D. students and postdocs, and some of their advisers in what is billed as the largest annual gathering of minority doctoral students. Many here talk about the challenges created for black and Latino students who end up — as doctoral candidates or later as junior faculty — with few colleagues who share their backgrounds.

The institute celebrates the success of new minority Ph.D.s in a ceremony in which they put on their doctoral robes, but what of those who didn’t make it to the finish line?

Data presented here by the Council of Graduate Schools suggest that higher education could significantly diversify the Ph.D. pool by holding on to more of those black and Latino students who start programs but do not finish. Only 44 percent of black and Latino Ph.D. students in STEM (with STEM defined to include behavioral and social sciences) earned a doctoral degree within seven years, according to the new study.

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