UD grad students better qualified, better funded than ever

4:25 p.m., Nov. 6, 2003--Assessing the state of graduate education at the University in a talk before the Faculty Senate Nov. 3, Provost Dan Rich said that growth in the scope and quality of graduate programs has been dramatic in recent decades.

UD has emerged as an institution of choice for high-quality graduate students in many fields, he said, and today there are more full-time graduate students who are better qualified and better funded than ever before.

“To put the information in context,” he said, “UD’s first master’s degree was offered in 1895, but the enterprise remained modest for many decades afterwards. Only fairly recently has graduate education expanded.”

The University is now categorized as a doctoral/research university-extensive institution under the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, Rich said, a designation granted to less than 4 percent of U.S. universities. This category itself requires a comprehensive range of graduate doctoral degrees.

Today, the University has 3,300 graduate students in five program categories, including arts and humanities, social sciences, physical and life science, engineering and mathematical sciences and professional programs. “The University now has graduate programs of national and international distinction in all of these program categories,” Rich said.

The statistical presentation by Rich and Vice Provost Bobby Gempesaw will be available soon online at [www.udel.edu/facsen/] at the link Information from the Provost.

Presenting an historical overview, Gempesaw noted graduate enrollment at the University rose from a handful of students in 1936 to 128 in 1946, with an average of seven students graduating per year in the 1930s and ’40s. “In 1960, there were five doctoral programs, and seven years later, there were 30 master’s and 12 doctoral programs. Today, there are 105 master’s degree programs and 43 doctoral programs available,” he said.

Last year, UD awarded 619 mater’s degrees and 136 doctoral degrees.

One of the first paperless graduate application systems in the country, the University’s web-based graduate admissions process is decentralized, Gempesaw said. Application information is sent to any of the 97 graduate admissions programs within 48 hours of receipt. He noted that a new, interactive web-application process will be introduced this month, allowing the applicant to complete the form in several sittings. The form also will have pop-up links that alert the applicant to deadlines for specific programs.

Using comparative charts, Gempesaw showed an increase in graduate school applications from 4,940 in 1999 to 7,243 in 2003. Engineering and mathematical sciences had the biggest increase over the five-year period, followed by the physical and life sciences programs.

“We accepted 28 percent of the 7,243 applicants,” Gempesaw said. “And 60 percent of those accepted enrolled at UD. The University has become a very highly selective institution for graduate admission.”

Gempesaw’s presentation noted that students entering a UD master’s degree program in the last five years had an undergraduate grade point average of 3.22 and a graduate record exam (GRE) score of 1146. Students in a UD doctoral program had an undergraduate grade point average of 3.40 and a GRE of 1208. Academic averages for the five graduate studies programs also are available.

“Three-fourths of UD graduate students are full-time,” Gempesaw said. “This is greater than the average for all national Research I institutions, which is 66 percent full-time.”

The average UD master’s student completes a degree in about six semesters and the average Ph.D. student takes about 11 semesters to complete a degree, Gempesaw said. For master’s students who enrolled during the 1997-2001 period, the average completion rate for master’s degree was 67 percent. For doctoral students who started their program in 1995-96, the average completion rate for a doctoral degree was 49 percent.

“But these completion rates will continue to increase as there are still active students who enrolled in their respective programs,” he said. “The time to completion at the doctoral level varies significantly across program categories with arts and humanities having the longest time to completion and engineering and mathematical sciences the shortest.”

Pointing out that the University has made a significant investment in graduate education, Rich said that graduate student funding has more than doubled since 1991, and 86 percent of full-time eligible students are funded.

“The minimum stipend is $11,000 for 2003-04 and, in the future, it will increase at the same rate as faculty and staff salaries,” Rich said. More competitive fellowships are offered, and health insurance benefits have expanded to include mental health coverage and increased drug prescription benefits, he said.

Rich concluded with three major academic priorities for graduate education. A focus on quality over quantity remains foremost, he said, and UD will be selective in the development and expansion of graduate programs.

Rich emphasized that UD has comparative advantage over larger institutions in that its graduate programs can more effectively cut across disciplinary and college boundaries. The University’s programs also will continue to respond to state, regional and national needs. “For example, graduate programs in education and nursing and many other fields are critical to meeting the needs of our state,” he said.

The second priority is for the University to remain an institution of choice for high-quality students, including minority students, he said, while improving graduation rates, time to degree completion and job placement for grads.

Rich said the third priority is continued support for excellence in graduate education by maintaining competitive stipends and benefits, improving faculty recognition in graduate student supervision, improving recruitment strategies and using best practices in electronic admissions processing.

Article by Cornelia Weil

E-mail this article

To learn how to subscribe to UDaily, click here.