When sixth-year English Ph.D. candidate Anna Foy enrolled at Penn, she planned to be here for at least seven years before finishing her dissertation.
Now, about a year from completing her dissertation on 18th-century poetry, she finds herself facing pressure from the University to hurry up or pay up.
Last week, the University standardized tuition across Penn's nine Ph.D.-granting schools, creating an increase of $2,222 per year for School of Arts and Sciences students beyond their sixth year of enrollment. One goal of the standardization is to provide incentive for students to graduate in what the University deems a reasonable amount of time, a goal that is complemented by a new University-wide 10-year cap on Ph.D. programs.
But some say the tuition increase for SAS students will do just the opposite: More financial burdens may require students to take extra jobs and teaching posts to make ends meet, disrupting their dissertation work and delaying graduation.
The dispute falls into a larger debate over the length of time Ph.D. students should take to complete a degree.
Foy said the tuition increase seems like part of a broader trend of punishing students who are taking longer to complete their degrees.
This is a "hard pill to swallow" because seven years was an accepted program length when she enrolled at Penn and she was expecting additional financial support that has not materialized.
Tuition is often not an issue until the fifth year, up until which time most students are covered by University funding packages.
Some internal and external fellowships are available past the sixth year, but they are competitive and not guaranteed, SAS Associate Dean for Graduate Studies Jack Nagel said.
Students whose work takes more than five years - 27 percent of SAS Ph.D. students are in their sixth year or higher - and who do not secure extra funding often enter what department chairman of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations Roger Allen calls a "vicious cycle."
"The more work you're doing to earn a living, the less time you can spend on a degree," he said.
According to a SASgov report, advanced Ph.D. students are often concentrated in five fields that require time-intensive fieldwork and language training.
Two of them, NELC and Anthropology, house more than half of the 4 percent of Ph.D. students enrolled past their 10th year.
Other reasons cited for long enrollment include poor advising, scarce funding and family obligations.
"Graduate students don't just linger around the University because they have nothing better to do," Foy said.
The report suggested increasing funding packages in programs with longer times-to-degree and implementing measures to ensure coursework and dissertations are reviewed on time.
Sixth-year English Ph.D. student Joseph Drury said Penn needs to hold slow and unresponsive faculty accountable rather than just try to "whip students into shape."
Nagel said the administration is not "punishing" students, but encouraging them to finish their degrees within the span of available funding, as well as urging departments to examine policies that may slow down graduation rates.
"A Ph.D. is not a lifetime's work," he said. "It's a preparation for a lifetime's work."
Graduate students are valuable but expensive and reduce the time professors can spend on undergraduates, Nagel said. Shorter time-to-degree is important for school ratings and more appealing to applicants, he added.
The 10-year cap on Ph.D. programs provides a "clear-cut signal" to keep students and faculty on track, he said. Students approaching that mark will be told that they have two years to finish or be dropped - which avoids "agonizing negotiations" over how to deal with long-term students.
He added that the cap also curbs an "under-the-surface phenomenon of some students lingering for the wrong reasons," such as remaining eligible for student health insurance or retaining visas.
Though Allen said pushing shorter times-to-degree "has the tendency to encourage scholarship that is less detailed and thorough," he understands the University's intent given the high cost of financing students.
However, he said schools must be flexible in understanding the demands and complications of certain disciplines.
Allen said the 10-year cap is reasonable for NELC because of a new system of communicating obligations and an in-the-works timetable of what students are expected to achieve each year.
Foy said she still aims to finish her dissertation next year - but not without sympathy for classmates set back by high fees and frustration for being urged to go faster.
"My priority is precisely what the University wants it to be: finishing my dissertation," she said.
*This article was edited at 7:21 p.m. on Friday, May 2, 2008. We initially stated that Anna Foy was a seventh-year PhD student; she is a sixth-year student.
