Progress! It was right about 2002 where the previous time limit of 10 years for MS/PhD completion was shortened to 7 years.
Note that the recent decline in page counts
is strongly correlated with a rise in the number of annual completions.
One could speculate that the abbreviated research and writing
schedules yield—shocking!—abbreviated works.
"Bin Low" meaning
that the column labeled "150" is the number of dissertations completed
with a page count between 150 and 200. Hopefully this will put to
rest the perennial bit of lore that we (the doctoral students in the
program) have really been expected to produce something in the 300- to
500-page range. Obviously, using a "target page count" is a
rotten way to shape your writing process, and quality and quantity are
two entirely separate concerns. But I think most would agree,
were this distribution flipped left-to-right, a candidate might want to
know that before submitting
their 220-pager! The simplistic "too-much/too-little work" dyad
too often gets mapped to high/low page counts, however ill-informed,
and this means that (like the concepts of male/female) they are not symmetric opposites!
Nothing real surprising here given that many job opportunities
stipulate "must have Ph.D. in hand by August [of whatever year]," and
August seems so far away at the beginning of the Fall term...
