How long does a PhD take?

The question of how long a PhD takes to complete is important for:

• Grant agencies, to know how much funding to provide PhD students
• University professors, to advise students about degree expectations
• Seniors and alumni, to be better informed when considering grad school

• Many people believe a PhD is like other degree programs, with a set start and end date.
• Many funding agencies and universities only guarantee a student funding for their first five years of graduate school, suggesting this is a reasonable time to degree.
• The reality is that the average registered time to degree across disciplines is over 7 years (and increasing)!

• First, choose the broad discipline you're interested in. For example, if you're in biology, choose “life sciences.”
• Next, choose the measure of time: time to degree (the time between undergraduate graduation and PhD graduation), registered time to degree (the time enrolled in a PhD program), or age (age of the PhD recipient at graduation).
• Finally, you can optionally choose a color!
• The app will automatically update with a new graph.

• This example shows “life sciences” as the discipline, “age” as the measure of time, and “green” as the color.

You can investigate how long a PhD takes for yourself by visiting https://wugology.shinyapps.io/DataProduct/