Outcomes for Recent Graduates — Philosophy, Claremont Graduate University

A short time to degree can mean lower expenses for you and less time away from employment.

High placement rates may mean that a department does a good job of helping students find jobs or that its graduates are perceived as more employable.

Postdoctoral positions are typically one- to three-year positions in which a recent doctorate recipient obtains additional training in preparation for independent research. Postdoctoral positions pay modest stipends.

If your ultimate goal is to obtain a position at an educational institution, you might want to consider a program whose graduates find such employment.

If your ultimate goal is to work in the private sector, you might want to consider a program whose graduates tend to find jobs there.

If your ultimate goal is to work in government (e.g., a government research lab or a funding agency), you might want to consider a program whose graduates tend to find jobs there.

Recent graduates' job responsibilities should give you a sense of what kinds of things they are doing with their degrees.

In 1993, the National Research Council asked faculty members to rate the educational effectiveness of doctoral programs at other universities on a scale of 0 ("Not Effective") to 5 ("Extremely Effective"). (Note that the resulting effectiveness ratings were found to be almost perfectly correlated (r=0.99) with ratings of "faculty quality," which suggests that the ratings may simply reflect the overall reputation of a program rather than any specific educational achievements.)