Since its peak in 2009, Ph.D. programs in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences have experienced a decline in the number of students enrolled due to cuts in funding from the University after the economic downturn.

According to Associate Dean for Enrollment and Marketing at GSAS David Cotter, the Curriculum and Academic Restructuring Steering Committee, otherwise known as CARS, chaired by the then-Dean of Arts and Sciences Prof. Adam Jaffe (ECON), assessed the Ph.D. programs during the 2009 to 2010 academic year and set new target numbers for enrollment. These departments had until this year to begin using these reduced target numbers, according to Cotter.

"In effect, there has been an overall reduction in doctoral students. There's absolutely no way around that. There definitely has been. It was strategic, and it was pointed," said Cotter.
Target numbers are defined as the desired amount of Ph.D. students within a program during one given year. For example, if a target number for a specific department is 10 students, about two to three students could be accepted in one year, depending upon how many students are currently enrolled in the program and will remain for the following year, due to the fact that students do not have to complete the degree in a set amount of years. However, according to Cotter, in the sciences, the average amount of time it takes to receive a Ph.D is five to five and a half years, while in the social sciences and humanities the average is about six and a half to seven years.

Cotter said that GSAS had previously been working under a set of target numbers established in 2000, and that these target numbers are generally reassessed every 10 to 12 years.

In fiscal year 2008, 85 Ph.D. students were enrolled in GSAS, and in 2009, 104 were enrolled. By 2010, GSAS enrolled only 66 students as a financial ramification from the economic crisis. That year, the CARS numbers were put in place, and in 2011, enrollment increased to 92, and to 95 in 2012. However, that number decreased again to 83 in 2013 and 84 in 2014. The numbers, according to Cotter, increased briefly in 2011 and 2012 as remaining at the enrollment numbers after the major decrease in 2009 would "obliterate the Ph.D. reputation," Cotter said.

Deciding funding for Ph.D. students
According to Cotter, the economic issue with maintaining Ph.D. programs is that students are generally fully funded, receiving "a tuition scholarship, a fellowship that varies based upon the field of study they're in, and health insurance benefits" from the University.

Ph.D. students receive full funding from the University to cover the cost of attendance from the first to third years of their fellowships, and the University waives the continuation fee for Ph.D. students in their fourth and fifth years. The only cost that Ph.D. students must cover, according to Cotter, is a continuation fee of $1,378 should they exceed five years in the program. The lowest stipend that the University provides is an annual stipend of $20,400, according to Cotter.

However, there are also Ph.D. students who receive all of their funding external to the University, such as through outside grants or the government. These students, according to Cotter, are not taken into account when meeting target numbers.

The GSAS typically does not accept unfunded students who pay their own tuition, according to Cotter. Often times, when unfunded students are accepted, it takes them longer to complete their doctoral degrees because they often have to get a job or take out more loans, said Cotter.

The decrease in the Ph.D. programs at GSAS "was done as a cost-saving measure during the financial downturn," Dean of Arts and Sciences Susan Birren wrote in an email to the Justice.

"These budgets are set each year through a process involving the Integrated Planning and Budget Committee ... in which the finances of the masters and Ph.D. programs are assessed and a budget is set based on the needs and costs," Birren wrote.

Cotter explained that in an economic downturn, as people lose their jobs, "they reshuffle their life priorities," and a lot of them return to school. However, according to Cotter, this downturn has lasted for so long that universities across the country are starting to see a negative impact to enrollment.

Cotter said that the Ph.D. in humanities has been "particularly hard-hit across the country." While many Ph.D. candidates will be looking for full-time tenure-track faculty positions at colleges or universities after they complete their degree, "we have a situation in which universities have decreased their hiring in certain humanist areas, and colleges, quite honestly, are concerned about flooding the market with too many Ph.D. students that don't have a place to go," said Cotter. Such factors were taken into account by the CARS committee when readjusting target numbers and deciding how many Ph.D. students the University should fund.

The effects on teaching fellows
Regardless of the source of students' funding, all Ph.D. students must have taught or been a teaching assistant for a minimum of two courses in order to receive a doctoral degree; however, this number varies based upon the program. According to Cotter, students in the social sciences, humanities and the creative arts are required to assist in teaching or teach at least six times.

"What that [requirement] does for us is it allows us to project out to say that you are going to be here for five years and you are going to teach six times, so it allows us to figure out how many teaching assistants are going to be here within a given semester," Cotter said. Cotter added that departments do hire additional course assistants to cover their courses, often utilizing the same pool of doctoral students.

A Ph.D. student's work as a teaching fellow or teacher is always compensated, even if it is a part of the minimum requirement for receiving the degree, Cotter said. After the minimum requirement is reached, however, Ph.D. students are granted additional compensation if they continue to teach or assist in teaching.

The decline in Ph.D. students, however, has been visible in the number of TA and graduate teachers placed in undergraduate classes in departments such as the History department, for which, according to department chair Prof. Jane Kamensky, students in their second and third years serve as teaching fellows. In the History department in particular, only Ph.D. students may serve as TFs, according to Kamensky. Not all departments, however, have implemented such a policy, although those departments that do uphold such a policy have experienced the effects of the decline in Ph.D. students.

"A declining number of Ph.D. students on campus will certainly affect undergraduate education, as Ph.D. students add immensely to the intellectual life of our campus, stimulate faculty research, and support large classes as teaching fellows," wrote History graduate program director Prof. Michael Willrich in an email to the Justice.

"It's very much on the radar screen of our office and in the Arts and Sciences' dean's office that there is an increase in the undergraduate population and there is a decrease, and now a leveling off, of doctoral enrollment," said Cotter. "It's very clear that we need to be providing more than adequate instruction and service to Brandeis undergraduates because that is Brandeis, and that is what undergraduates come here for."

Concerns about program size
The Ph.D. in History is one of the programs that Cotter suggested "should be larger." According to Cotter, multiple factors were taken into account when deciding target numbers for each specific program.

He explained that the English program, for example, is larger than the History program because English doctoral students help teach undergraduate writing courses such as the University Writing Seminar. Cotter said that Chemistry and Biology also require a higher number of Ph.D. students due to the fact that the University has to staff a lot of teaching fellows for introductory courses.

"We have a very strong [History] program and it's, in my opinion, much too small. ... [W]e all agree the program needs to be larger, it's just we don't know where to find the money for it because it's a costly, costly venture to do it," said Cotter.
According to Cotter, the size of the faculty was also taken into account when setting the new target numbers, as well as research publications of the faculty, as Ph.D. students often serve to assist professors with research. In addition, the state of the job market for doctoral candidates and the number of undergraduate courses needed to be served by doctoral candidates are taken into account.

According to the Registrar's website, for fall 2013, there are currently 18 undergraduate History courses taught by 14 professors. Ten additional courses are cross-listed in History. There are about 100 total undergraduate History majors, according to Kamensky.

According to Cotter, there is an insignificant difference between the number of doctoral students funded by the University in the sciences and the humanities.

According to Cotter, several smaller departments in the social sciences, such as Anthropology, Sociology and Politics, average about 10 students each, while in the life sciences as a whole, which lumps together programs such as Biochemistry, Biophysics, Molecular Cell Biology and Neuroscience, the average amount of Ph.D. students is about 21 to 22. While these average numbers for University-funded spots in the Ph.D. program do not take into account students accepted using outside funding from grants, "our programs across the board are too small to notice a level of inequity," Cotter said.

Reviewing current programs
This year, GSAS will begin reviewing Ph.D. programs in tandem with the Dean of Arts and Sciences departmental reviews, according to Cotter. The reviews will assess each program in terms of how modern and up-to-date the curriculum and course work is, student advising and mentoring, recruitment, placement, success in the workforce and outcomes for the students in the program, degree completion rate and attrition rate, benefits and burdens for the faculty and revenue and costs.

"Personally, I believe that, with our doctoral programs, we're in a state in which we can't continue. We have to do something," said Cotter. "I think that Brandeis needs ... to start seriously looking into what a Ph.D. means, and to realize that we're not just creating future faculty, that there are a number of other really solid, positive and successful outcomes for a Ph.D. student that don't involve becoming a university faculty member."

According to Birren, the GSAS budget is part of the overall arts and sciences budget, and "many resources (including faculty) are shared between the graduate school and the undergraduate component" of arts and sciences.  

The same decrease in Ph.D. enrollment did not apply to the Heller School for Social Policy and Management or the International Business School. Both the Heller School and IBS are independent from GSAS and rely on tuition revenue and donors to function, according to Senior Associate Dean at IBS F. Trereny Dolbear and Heller School Assistant Dean Lynn Davis. Neither school receives funds from the University, according to both Dolbear and Davis.

At IBS, 27 Ph.D. students are currently enrolled, and enrollment has remained relatively consistent, although it has increased slightly over the past four years, according to data provided by IBS Communications Coordinator Adam Conner-Simons.

At Heller, 131 Ph.D. students are currently enrolled, according to Davis. In 2010, there were 141 Ph.D. students enrolled, 144 in 2011 and 137 in 2012.

According to Davis, Ph.D. students receive three years of funding through training grants, fellowships or foundation awards. Davis wrote in an email to the Justice that Ph.D. students are in residence for two years, although the amount of time to complete a dissertation varies by student. Students who do not complete their dissertations by the third year "would only be charged a post-residence fee, not tuition," she wrote. This post-residentce fee is $685 per year.

The strategic plan, which was adopted by the Board of Trustees at their May meeting, noted that strengthening the graduate programs at Brandeis was a vital objective.

"I hope that [University President Frederick Lawrence] and [Provost] Steve Goldstein ['78] are successful in working with donors to have them understand how important doctoral education is to be able to bring these programs up to a level at which they can really thrive," said Cotter.