Survey of Academic Department Chairs, Graduate Student Recruitment, Retention & Diversity Policies

Survey of Academic Department Chairs, Graduate Student Recruitment, Retention & Diversity Policies

50% said -- about the same -- while 17.21% said it was better and 9.02% worse with 4.92% saying it was much better and 0.82% much worse. Department chair in the biological sciences and engineering and mathematics were the most likely to say that the quality of graduate students had fallen in recent years. Chair in psychology and social work were the most likely to say that the quality of graduate students had improved.

It was much more likely for chair from the USA than Canada to say that the quality of graduate students had improved; only 4.55% of Canadian chairs believed that the quality of graduate students was better or much better vs. 26% of chair from the USA.

This study presents data from 122 department chair from colleges and universities about their views of departmental and general college efforts to recruit and retain graduate students, and about the use of diversity efforts in these areas. The report gives highly detailed data on assessment of the need for more graduate students as research assistants, and on views of the quality of graduate students now compared to the recent past. The study also looks at efforts to diversity the grad student roster by characteristics such as gender, ethnicity or race, and the evaluation of the need for and success of such policies. Survey participants also look at efforts of department chair to recruit new graduate students, on the impact of the pandemic on relations with graduate students, and at overall levels of satisfaction with graduate student recruitment efforts, with data specifically on departmental and university-wide efforts.