Hello all,

Does anyone have access to statistics about pass rates of PhD's and stats on drop outs, etc. Would be interesting to see.

Thanks

I haven't come across any statistics, but I don't think the number of failures is very high at all - it looks bad on universities and supervisors if PhD's fail.

I'm not sure about drop-outs. I know in our department they are fairly rare - I can only think of a couple that I know who have dropped out and I've been here 2 and a half years now

http://www.npc.org.uk/media/press/PhDfailurerevealed

Higher than I think most people think! It looks like the full figures should be here:
http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/hefce/2007/07_28/

I don't think it's going to be very high; there's been a guy in my lab who never finished, but usually if you're doing sloppy work they'll try to give you a MPhil and push you out after 2 years. It looks bad if the PhD students don't pass!

======= Date Modified 05 Aug 2011 20:22:19 =======
I've seen data somewhere and I'll have a dig around. Might be Times Higher Education Supplement. However, for starters, the last year I saw number expected PhD passes for was 2005.

1) 9640 UK domocile passes;
2) 2065 EU (excluding UK) passes;
3) 4070 passes from student outside the EU;
4) 15780 total passes.

(Source - UK Grad PhD Trends 2007)

If the UK domocile passes are compared to the number of births per year, which stands at 722,000 average between 2001 and 2008 (Wikipedia) then you could argue 1.3% of UK domociles can expect to end up with a PhD.

However, given the birthrate previously was lower, then that value may be a little higher. As people take PhDs at different ages, then this makes the value a little fuzzier again. Also, there will be a little 'natural wastage' before people are old enough and in a position to take a PhD, which may push the figure up towards 2%.

The problem is no proper figure exists estimating PhD holders as percentage of population. Sorry about the rough calculation.

======= Date Modified 05 Aug 2011 20:53:37 =======
Reet, Times Higher Education Supplement article here from 2010 and more recent than the NPC link below (both are interesting reads):

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=412628

Now for the statistics, I knew I'd seen them somewhere. 80% of 2001 starters passed (UK and EU within English Universities) and the below gives a breakdown by University. However, some Universities have not provided full data.

http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/hefce/2010/10_21/

The page may take a little to load mind.