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.
Data in the report is broken out by a broad range of institutional and personal chair variables, including country, type, size, tuition level and public/private status of the college or university, and – for chairs themselves -- by age, gender, academic discipline, years served as chair, and number of faculty in the department.
Just a few of the report’s many findings are:
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Canadian survey participants were significantly more likely than those from US institutions to feel that they needed more graduate students to assist in conducting research.
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Chair in psychology and social work were the most likely to say that the quality of graduate students had improved in recent years.
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Perhaps working against the stereotype, women, and younger faculty were less likely than men or older faculty to view diversity measures in graduate student recruitment and retention as useful and productive.