Surveys
Graduate Student Life Survey
1997
- Introduction
- Motivation and Rationale
- Method and Implementation
- Results
- Section I: Respondent Data
- Section II: Academic Issues
- Section III: Departmental Issues
- Section IV: University Community Issues
- Section V: Respondent Final Comments
- Suggestions for Future Surveys
- Conclusions
Introduction
What follows is the web-based version of the Report of the ASSU's Committee on Academics, Research, and Evaluation on its survey of graduate student life. A text version of this document was sent to 15 different University administrators as well as The Stanford Daily and The Stanford Report. The figures described in the report are available here. Many thanks to those who contributed to this survey.
Motivation and Rationale
There has long been a need for concrete, rather than anecdotal, information regarding the satisfaction of graduate students with various aspects of their academic and social lives here at Stanford. (For the remainder of this document, "graduate students" shall refer to all students in a non-undergraduate program, including masters, coterm, doctoral, and professional students. To remedy this shortcoming, the members of the ASSU's Committee on Academics, Research, and Evaluation undertook a campus-wide survey of graduate students. By obtaining such information, we hope to identify issues of importance to all graduate students, as well as those issues affecting specific subsets.Method and Implementation
The survey was web-based, available from April 3 through May 3, 1997. Budgetary considerations prevented flyer and newspaper advertisements of the survey. However, press releases were distributed to The Stanford Daily, The Stanford Report, the Stanford Review, KZSU, and SCBN. In addition, multiple announcements were sent via the Graduate Student Council's e-mail distribution list, which, in principle, reaches all graduate students with leland accounts.
The survey consisted of several sections; each section contained a few multiple choice questions and a free response area for more lengthy comments.
Results
Sample Size
Total number of respondents: 592 (approximately 8% of the total graduate student population).
Figure 1 shows a breakdown of respondents by their school while dividing the data from Humanities and Sciences into humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences.
Figure 2 is a measure of sample bias. It shows, for each school, the ratio of the percentage of respondents in that school to the percentage of graduate students in that school. As is apparent, Business and Law are severely underrepresented, Earth Sciences and Medicine to a lesser degree. Engineering is slightly overrepresented, as well.
What follows is a section-by-section summary of the survey responses. Rather than appending the lengthy complete text of all the comments submitted in the free response areas, we present a brief summary of the main points raised therein. We also append a few representative comments, particularly when the impact of the respondents' statements would be weakened by paraphrasing. When interpreting such remarks, one must consider that a selection effect is certainly at work here: Only people with strong opinions bother to write lengthy supplements to their multiple choice answers.
Section I: Respondent Data
This section was intended as general demographic information necessary for meaningful analysis of the responses to other questions. For example, it was important to distinguish masters from doctoral students when considering answers to questions about advising.
Figure 3 shows the breakdown of respondents by degree program.
Figure 4 shows the breakdown by year (i.e. 3rd year student, etc.).
Figure 5a presents career plans of respondents by school, while Fig. 5b shows the breakdown within Humanities and Sciences. It is interesting to note that a higher percentage of H&S students are undecided about their career plans than any other school.
Most of the comments in the free response portion of this section focused on career plans and the need for a separate category for professional degrees such as J.D. and M.D.
Section II: Academic Issues
There are a number of academic issues which are central to graduate education here. In particular, the survey asked about mean times to degrees, the existence of qualifying examinations, the quality of required and non-required coursework, methods by which advisors are chosen, and whether advisors are concerned with the career development of their students.
Figure 6 shows the distribution of time-to-degree responses for doctoral students, by school (and subfield within H&S). Note that '6 years' in fact means '6 or more years'; these longer times were reflected in the comments submitted at the end of this section.
Figure 7 summarizes the qualifying exam requirements for doctoral students, broken down by school.
Figures 8 and 9 give the summary of satisfaction with required and non-required coursework, respectively.
Advisor selection methods are so widely varied across departments, even within schools, that interpretation of the multiple choice responses to that question is very difficult. Rather than present these results in graphical form, we briefly summarize: In the natural sciences and engineering doctoral programs, "rotation" processes, in which students try two or more research groups before settling on a thesis advisor, are common. In the humanities, social sciences, and some other areas, it is typical for students to be admitted to Stanford with the understanding that they will work for particular faculty members. Frequently, students are assigned an academic advisor upon admission; this person is not necessarily the student's thesis or research advisor.
Figure 10 presents student responses when asked "Is your advisor concerned with your career development?", broken down by school.
Commentary in this section chiefly discussed advisor selection methods, (dis)satisfaction with advisor's concern for student's development, and general discussion of coursework. It is significant that, despite the low number of responses from the Law School, there were several comments suggesting that law students need advisors.
Typical comments:
- I'm very happy with my academic environment. As I expected, Stanford is tops!
- The general attitude towards teaching among the faculty in my department is one of apathy. Teaching is regarded as a chore, and it shows.
- Law students should have advisors.
- My advisor is barely concerned with my research let alone my career.
- My advisor is a very nice professor. In this year I learned from him a lot not only in academic knowledge but also in life. He cares a lot about the progress of my research and course work and always gives me some helpful suggestions.
- I have never heard of an instance in my department in which a faculty member expressed explicit interest in taking part in the dissertation of a specific student. They seem to avoid as much work as possible; some of my peers are made to feel like they are imposing upon professors when they ask for basic involvement, like attendance at required university meetings.
Section III: Departmental Issues
This section was intended to focus on issues within the student's department, particularly questions of funding, workload, and teaching. What follows are answers to questions about sufficiency of financial support (if any), means of funding (RA'ing, TA'ing), TA training, teaching requirements, and the presence of role models within the department.
Figure 11 breaks down by school the answers to "Is your pay sufficient for your needs?". Notice in particular that only 4% of students in the humanities find their pay adequate, compared with substantially larger numbers in other programs.
Figure 12 shows the distribution of means of financial support. A response of "Not Applicable" means no such support is available; "Other" may refer to outside fellowships, etc.
Figure 13 displays the responses to "Do you feel you are given appropriate training to be a TA?", broken down by school.
Figure 14 shows the distribution of students required to teach for their degrees.
Figure 15 shows answers to: "If interested in academia, do you feel that you are given appropriate training to become a future faculty member?".
Figure 16 shows the responses to "Do you feel that you have adequate role models in your department?"
Lastly, Figure 17 shows a breakdown of whether students want more, less, or don't care about student involvement in departmental policy.
Commentary in this section's free response area focused on finances, teaching, and role models.
There were many statements claiming that a fundamental inconsistency exists between the salaries paid for RA'ing and TA'ing, the availability of graduate housing, and the cost of renting an off-campus apartment in this area. For example:
- With the rising cost of housing, the graduate stipend is barely enough to live on. The university should address this issue (better grad housing or higher stipends) if it hopes to keep attracting the best students.
- Pay would not be enough to live on if I had to live off campus.
- My income barely meets my needs and that is because my spouse works. Graduate student compensation needs to be adjusted because this area is unreasonably expensive.
On TA training:
- As far as T.A. training goes, the CTL does an excellent job with their seminars, but there is NOTHING in written form in our department about formal expectations or requirements for T.A.s. And, the CTL seminar isn't until the beginning of the quarter that one actually T.A.s. There needs to be training BEFORE one becomes a T.A.
Several students complained that the official estimate for time spent in a 1/4-TA position is absurdly low:
- Friends of mine with 25% TA's spend 4 times the max time on their work knowing that if they complain, someone else is getting the position.
Finally, regarding role models:
- The role models we see are the new professors who work like dogs for five years only to be denied tenure.
- If you're not interested in acadamia, there are no role models.
- Where are the tenured female faculty around here?
- Regarding role models: there is only one female professor in my department!
Section IV: University Community Issues
This section was intended to acquire information about interactions between the graduate studen body and the University environment.
Figures 18 through 20 compile information about housing and vehicle parking. Not surprisingly, those students who live off campus are more dissatisfied with parking than those who do not.
Figures 21 and 22 show overall student response to "Are you satisfied with the services of the registrar?" and "...of the bursar?", respectively.
This section generated some of our most colorful commentaries. Clear themes are present. Students find the services in the Old Union bureaucratic, the hours inconvenient, and the workers rude. Further, the requirement that TGR students file quarterly study lists for zero units or be subject to a late fee was mentioned repeatedly as a ridiculous concept. Also, the bursar's accounting system was decried multiple times for being arcane. Regarding parking, students seem to want more, cheaper parking, and more enforcement of parking rules in the residences.
Typical comments are appended:
- The people who work at the registrar and information windows in The Old Union are usually unhelpful and rude.
- The bursar's accounting system is completely inscrutable. It is impossible to tell what you owe, if anything, and late fines are applied to accounts you didn't know you had. Please give us one statement, for all quarters, that has everything on it.
- I think it is ridiculous that TGR [Terminal Graduate Residency] students and Phd students who are finished with classes have to file a study list with "00 units" or pay a fine. You guys are BIG JERKS (I would prefer a profanity here, but I'll refrain) for charging late fees for study lists for TGR students repeatedly registering for 802, zero units. I'm going to reduce my future donations to the Alumni Association by $1000 for every such list I've ever filed, and $10,000 for every time I've paid a late fee. AND IF YOU THINK I'M KIDDING ABOUT THIS, GUESS AGAIN.
- Bursar keeps sending bills even though I'm on R.A.-ship where my biweekly checks get deducted; I'm just supposed to "ignore" the bills, but I'm responsible for any late fees if they make a mistake.
- There is almost never parking for those w/ a "C" permit on the West side of campus, anywhere.
- It is truly a waste to have "A" parking spaces left empty while students are forced to walk up to twenty minutes to their places of work after parking somewhere they can afford. Inertia is preventing the initiation of a better system. And, where does the Transportation program get the statistic that each parking space costs $1000 per year in upkeep? That is just outrageous.
Section V: Respondent Final Comments
This was intended as a wrap-up section, giving the respondents a chance to make any remaining points they wished, and for them to suggest possible questions that we should have asked.
Suggested questions mostly centered on graduate student social lives, a sense of University community, and the perennial "Would you do it over again, knowing what you do now?". For example:
- Questions about social life - adequate opportunities, support groups etc.
- You totally ignored graduate student SOCIAL life!!!! Graduate students here are totally isolated from each other.
- How are the campus athletic facilities? Other facilities?
- How connected to the university as a whole do we feel as graduate students (i.e., loyalty/sense of community and belonging)?
- Overall, how would you rate your experiences at Stanford?
General comments frequently mentioned inadequacies of athletic facilities and of health and child care for students:
- You should have asked about the athletic facilities.......which SUCK. Pathetic!!!!! I can't believe how bad the facilities are here for the recreational athlete. Horrendous! Arryaga has few hours, there is always a wait to use the equipment, the machines are old. I can't believe how good the varisity athletes have it when everyone else pays tuition and get crap.
- What is the quality of athletic facilities? Arrillaga has outdated equipment which is totally unsuitable.
- yes: availability of (affordable) child care is an issue for many (female) graduate students.
- Affordable child care is a huge issue for women graduate students (who, even if married, generally are responsible for the majority of child care time...)
- Questions about Health Care.
Suggestions for Future Surveys
We recognize that web-based surveys have an inherent sample bias, favoring those who are more familiar with, or have more access to, campus network resources.
During the course of this survey, it became clear from technical inquiries and submitted responses that access to computing resources varies greatly between departments. Given the increased reliance of the University on the Web for handling student administrative matters (e.g. course registration, housing, etc.), it is unacceptable that some departments remain in the technological equivalent of the Stone Age. For example, the Sociology department has only one computer capable of running graphical web-browsers, and most of their equipment dates from the Reagan administration. At a University located in the heart of Silicon Valley, this is absurdity of Kafka-esque proportions.
There are several improvements that should be made in this survey, should anyone ever want to offer it again.
- More publicity and outreach to the professional schools, or possibly specially tailored questions for such students.
- More questions about social life issues.
- Careful structuring of questions so that their intended audience is clear.
Conclusions
Based on the above information, we make the following observations, which we hope will be addressed, both by the Office of the Dean of Graduate Policy and through the ASSU's liason with elements of the University administration:
- While most students are fairly satisfied with their coursework and advising, those who are not are generally very dissatisfied.
- Those law students surveyed think law student advising needs to be reformed.
- There is a very serious problem, for many graduate students, because of the combination of low stipend and TA pay, lack of sufficient graduate housing, high off-campus rents, and inadequate parking. Possible helpful moves include: building more housing, raising pay scales, ensuring equity of pay across departments, and reforming the abysmal parking situation.
- Many TAs feel inadequately prepared for their teaching experiences; while CTL is a valuable resource, there are no enforced cross-department guidelines to ensure uniformly high standards of training.
- The Bursar and the Registrar must re-examine their treatment of graduate students. The Bursar should consider restructuring its accounting to eliminate the absurdities associated with TGR; it should also rethink its Byzantine billing system, which is obfuscating when it should be informative, and not remotely related to the graduate student schedule. The Registrar, too, should allow graduate students whose course schedules are fixed (e.g. TGR) to submit study lists for more than one quarter at a time.
- Athletic facilities available to non-athletes are in dire need of improvement.
- Many graduate students feel socially disconnected from each other, the undergraduate community, and from other University support systems. While no program or amount of money will teach people to make friends, increased programming directed at graduate students can only help.
Finally, we would like to point out the usefulness of surveys such as this. The University administration and departments frequently make decisions which affect large numbers of graduate students; yet, the University spends a vastly smaller fraction of its information-gathering resources on determining the status of, and the impact of such changes on, the graduate community. The non-undergraduate students here are frequently treated like the Silent Majority, but surveys like this show that (a) there are common issues among graduate students which cut across diverse departmental cultures; and (b) such students are not silent by choice, and will gladly expound at length when given the opportunity. The value of the information gathered by methods such as these, and the psychological benefits of the verbal release offered through this process, should not be underestimated.
Respectfully submitted,
1996-7 ASSU Committee on Academics, Research, and Evaluation
Diogo Rau
Elizabeth Kerr
Sun-Young Kim
Douglas Natelson, Chair
Harris Shapiro
Mallory Roberts
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