Competitive doctoral programs can be supportive of women

[Christina Sormani]

I was recently having a discussion with a few women in mathematics regarding ways that doctoral programs could be more supportive of women.   It was suggested that programs admit fewer students and have less of a weeding out process through the qualifying exams.   Is there any evidence to support such a suggestion?  

I have always felt admitting more students and giving them a year or two to prove themselves was a more open process.   My own experience at a competitive doctoral program was very positive.  The competition pushed me to work very hard.   All three women who entered with me graduated within five years.   In a less competitive program, I might have taken longer.   I would venture to say that setting higher standards of admission might well have eliminated one of us from being in the program in the first place.

I do know women who were eliminated by the qualifying exams at competitive institutions.   I know some who left for industry and others who went on for a doctorate somewhere else.   I do know two women at other competitive programs who had very negative experiences in such programs in the 1990's due to sexism and sexist implementation of the exams.   One was pregnant and asked to postpone an oral qualifier when she was put on bed rest but was told she shouldn't have gotten pregnant.   Another was told she was out of a program because she had failed the written qualifiers and, after arranging to transfer to another doctoral program, found out that the official policy was that she could have had a second chance.   In both cases, an individual sexist professor speaking on his own deliberately pushed the woman out of the program.     Other professors at the same institution might have been supportive if they had known what was going on.   The problem was a lack of transparency and a lack of oversight.

A competitive program with an elimination round of qualifying exams can help build a cadre of highly successful women mathematicians.   The question is whether the program implements these exams in a fair and equitable manner.   I believe that if the exams are graded blindly, using numbers on the covers of the booklets rather than names, and the policies regarding retakes are publicly known to everyone and include exceptions for health and possibly even parental leave, then there is no reason for such a system to be considered unsupportive of women.  

Universities with intense oral qualifier exams where multiple professors grill a student standing at a blackboard can also be supportive of women by ensuring such an exam is administered fairly.   I believe both women and men benefit from having one professor in the room play the role of the supportive encouraging faculty member whose goal is to calm them and push them to their best.   I wouldn't go so far as to suggest that a woman professor should be in the room since, in my own case, I tend to be one of the harshest grillers in my department.   However, it is possible some women students would prefer the presence of a woman on their committee.   Certainly no woman student wants an openly sexist faculty members on their committee.  Since departments are not always aware which of their faculty have been making comments to students, I would suggest that students be allowed to submit the names of a few faculty members who they prefer not judge their qualifying exam no questions asked.    Note the distinction between allowing a student to quietly avoid being judged by someone versus requiring an actual accusation of sexism.   I am sure that all students in the program will appreciate also the opportunity of avoiding judgement by certain professors they have had difficulties with as well.  I am sure some students in my own department would ask to avoid me and that is fine.   

Finally there is the dissertation stage.   It does seem that women disappear from doctoral programs at this stage even after successfully satisfying all their qualifiers.   There seems to be a difficulty with finding advisors and earning their respect.   This has come up repeatedly at women in mathematics meetings over the past few years.   I know a number of women who chose advisors outside their own department.   There have been suggestions to women to speak to possible advisors before even choosing a doctoral program to get a sense if they will be treated with respect.   Of course, this presumes that the potential students know what field they will ultimately enter.    What can doctoral programs do to ensure that women in their program survive this stage?   

Does anyone else have any suggestions as to how a highly competitive doctoral program can ensure that its exams are implemented fairly and provide equal opportunity for all their students?   What are your experiences and what techniques have you seen work well?

Best Regards,

Christina 

[Jean Taylor]

Christina,

I have never thought of the Ph.D. qualifying exam as something intended to reduce the number of graduate students. That is, I am not aware of any university that deliberately enrolls more students than it can handle, with the intent of "weeding out" a certain fraction of the class in the qualifying exams. 

I think rather that each department at each university has some idea of what type of knowledge or thought processes is the minimum for the student to be fairly likely to complete a Ph.D. Coupled with this is a desire to make sure that anyone who eventually emerges with a Ph.D. from their institution will know enough mathematics not to be a disgrace to the institution.

That said, in my personal experience of taking and passing three different Ph.D. qualifying exams and studying for but not taking a fourth, and of being a faculty member at yet another institution, the idea of what "qualifies" one to pursue a Ph.D. differs wildly from institution to institution. (Why so many? a change in field, then following the man in my life around.) In chemistry at Berkeley, the exam was at least half about the specific problem I proposed to research for my thesis. In math at Berkeley, it was supposed to be a written exam with a huge scope (though I left Berkeley before taking that exam). In maths at Warwick, it was two three-hour sessions, at the end of the first year, and was a joint final exam for the six courses I'd taken during that year. (I also had to write a master's thesis to qualify.) And at Princeton, it was an oral exam where the faculty basically threw up their hands at the huge holes in my knowledge and passed me because I was already well into my thesis work and getting results.

Many math departments try to ensure that all of their students have financial support, from some source, for at least a few years, and this is the limiting factor on how many students they can enroll.  So "admitting more students and giving them a year or two to prove themselves" may not be an option.

Finally, no one benefits from having graduate students who have been around for ten years and still not written a thesis. It creates a great deal of frustration all around. That is really what the qualifying exams should do -- to "weed out" those students who don't have much of a chance of actually writing an excellent thesis, and to do it in a way that is fair both in practice and in appearance. The fact that qualifying exams vary so much from program to program indicates that it is far from obvious how to accomplish this.

Jean

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WomeninMath" group.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/womeninmath/-/3yl28213jsQJ.
To post to this group, send email to women...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to womeninmath...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/womeninmath?hl=en.

[Judith Roitman]

A committee I chaired did a study of our graduate program in which we compared ourselves to a number of peer institutions --- about a dozen or so.

No two had anywhere near the same system (# of levels of exams, # of exams in each level, fields in which examinations were help…)

"I like not to know for as long as possible because then it tells me the truth instead of me imposing the truth." Michael Moschen

[Christina Sormani]

Dear Women in Math Group,

I should clarify that the proposal that programs should "admit fewer students" and have less "weeding out" through qualifying exams was a suggestion made to me by multiple other women mathematicians.  I agree that qualifying exams are not officially used to deliberately cut down on numbers of students, but rather to do as Jean Taylor describes: to avoid retaining students who are not progressing towards a doctoral degree at the level expected of the particular institution.     

 I chose not to challenge the phrase "weeding out" and rather to focus on whether institutions that admit far more students than succeed on their exams need to change such a policy to be more supportive of women.   I gave suggestions as to how programs of this sort might be more careful to ensure that the there is no gender bias in the elimination of students through these exams.   I'm curious if others have further suggestions.

Sincerely,

Christina

[Dina Taiani]

Dear Jean and company,

Although I do not know how many schools do this, when I was accepted into grad school I chose CUNY over NYU precisely because NYU told me that since I would have my education paid for, they expected me to finish. However, they made it quite clear that many people were accepted in the Courant program just to pay for those they thought talented enough to finish. This quite bothered my 1960's sensibilities.  Of course this was many years ago.  I have no idea what the policy is now.

Dina

Geraldine Taiani

Chair, Department of Mathematics

Pace University, New York

(212) 346-1786

[Christina Sormani]

Geraldine brings up another issue of admitting some students with support
and some students without support. Some doctoral programs only admit
students that they can support. Both CUNY and NYU admit more students
than they have fellowships for, and both programs encourage students with the
fellowships to progress more rapidly towards their degrees. Students without
fellowships need to work and cannot be expected to progress as quickly as
those who have research or teaching assistantships. I have not heard anyone
bring this up as a gender issue. However, if there are concerns among anyone
that this is a gender issue we can certainly discuss this more. I have heard
quite a number of women complaining about competitive programs and qualifiers
as damaging to women so I do hope some people will give suggestions as to
how to avoid sexism in the implementation of such eliminating exams.

[j...@math.columbia.edu]

Dear all,

After 8 years in industry and 7 as a mom with (one at a time) 3
children, I was admitted to Courant as a part-time student without
support. Several years later (when I had slowly caught up, done well,
and applied for it) I was offered the support I needed to pay for
daytime help at home, if I could manage the full time program. I
understood then, and have never forgotten, that Courant gave me the
chance, after a 15 year detour, to recoup a career in mathematics. I
needed the extra time as a part-time student to start slowly and work
at my own pace.

Times have changed, and my own needs were unique, and I would not
recommend to anyone to put off grad school, even though no other route
could have worked for me. Later, as a Math Prof, I had a fair number
of non-traditional students who audited my classes, and I always
welcomed them. Some succeeded, some did not. This is not a gender
issue, although women are often the ones who need to do things
differently. A few weeks ago I was very touched when, at a reception
for new members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of
new inductees (in the Physics Dept at Princeton) introduced himself
and asked me whether I remembered him. He explained that he had been
such an auditor, newly arrived as in NY as a young Russian refugee,
and he wanted to thank me for my help in making that transition year a
good one. He said, in particular, that welcoming his participation
and treating him as if he had been paying tuition, was essential.
Well, since he had the interest and ability, why not?

Best,
Joan Birman

[Christina Sormani]

Joan Birman's situation is not so uncommon today. Two of my top undergrad math majors in the past five years were parents. Commuting to a public university is a an option for parents young and old. A few of the doctoral students at CUNY are also parents. Some do choose to go part time for awhile. It is not necessarily harder to have children at these stages than when you are tenure track in terms of workload. However it is critical that the students have enough money in stipends to put the children in daycare and to feed them. Some will wait until the kids are old enough for school to go fulltime again. The two particular parents who were top students that I mentioned earlier were both admitted to doctoral programs but ended up leaving when they landed good jobs.