Graduate Student Placements

Figure 1: An infographic that reports placements for students earning doctoral degrees from 2015 - 2020. A detailed description of the infographic can be found under results.

Graduate Program Survey 2019-2020

Ph.D. granting programs were surveyed by the ACS Committee on Professional Training (CPT) during the 2019-2020 academic year. The comprehensive survey included a section that focused on post graduate school placements. The data below represent self reported data from 200 graduate programs.

Results - Time to Degree

The average time to degree for institutions with an R1 Carnegie classification (i.e. Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity) ranges from 4.1 to 7.2 years and averages 5.5 years.

For R2 (Doctoral Universities - High research activity) the time to degree ranges from 4.2 to 9.0 years with an average of 5.3 years.

R3 institutions (Doctoral Universities - Moderate research activity) the time degree ranged from 4.5 to 7.2 years with a 5.5 year average.

Results - Placements

Placements are organized into general categories and then broken down within those categories. The broad categories are post doc positions, academic positions, and industrial positions.

In these three categories, 46% of Ph.D. recipients went on to post doc positions, 38% to industry positions, and 15% into academic (non post doctoral) positions.

Post Doctoral Positions

  • 74% of the post doc positions were in academic institutions

  • 12% of the post doc positions were in government organizations (e.g. NIH, EPA, FDA)

  • 11% were industrial post docs, and

  • 3% were other types of post docs.

Academic Positions

  • 32% of the academic placements were faculty positions in primarily undergraduate institutions (PUIs),

  • 20% of these placements were instructional faculty positions at research institutions,

  • 13% of these placements were tenure track positions at research institutions,

  • 11% of these placements were visiting professor positions,

  • 9% were in 2-year colleges,

  • 7% were in K-12 education, and the remaining 8% were in other academic positions.

Industrial Positions

  • 75% of the Ph.D. recipients that found work in this sector were employed in standard industrial organizations (including in R&D, in law firms, or in non-governmental agencies).

  • 11% found work in other sectors including healthcare, family businesses, continuing their education in business school

  • 9% found employment in either local, state, or federal government positions

  • 3% of Ph.D. recipients found work as consultants, and

  • 2% found work in nonprofits.