Grad Stats

Published 21 December 06 02:29 PM | robyn.owens 

Ever wondered what UWA gets up to in the higher degree by research area? Well, this year, 2006, we had at the peak period 2045 enrolled students. That's now down to 1820 as various among you have submitted for examination, completed, suspended or withdrawn. I'm hoping we can get up to at least 2200 sometime early in the New Year as all the new scholarship holders come on board.

Our enrolled students are mostly doing PhDs (1311) but others are doing Masters by Thesis (159), Professional Doctorates (195) and Masters by Thesis and Coursework (155).

As of yesterday, we have registered 255 completions this year, with 14 of those being awarded a Distinction. Distinctions are given to candidates who, in the opinion of their examiners and the Board of the Graduate Research School, fall into the top 5% of all research students internationally. It's a pretty elite group. The best PhD thesis in any calendar year is also awarded the Robert Street Prize.

At the moment there are 154 theses submitted for examination. This number is pretty constant throughout the whole year, oscillating between about 120 and 170. It means the examination office is always busy.

Official statistics on enrolments and completions are compiled and reported to the Federal Government office DEST on the 31st March each year, and are used in the Government's formulae for distributing research and research training funds. Since this year we had a substantial increase in the number of scholarships we could offer, both for domestic and international students, we should see some increases in our numbers next year. There have certainly been some pretty exciting research proposals among the applications.

 

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# Sanna said on December 21, 2006 3:39 PM:

If funding is in part based on these results all unis would obviously have an interest in awarding as many Distinctions as possible.

Considering that establishing something ranks in the top 5% in the entire world cannot be objectively done (unless the same group ranks everyone in the world according to the same standards) are there any more tangible limitations placed on the board to prevent an inflation in Distinctions?

# robyn.owens said on December 21, 2006 10:39 PM:

Distinctions are not something that DEST uses in its funding regime. Currently, they just use our share of total load (which is not quiet the same thing as the total number of enrolments, because some people are part-time, and some have gone past 4 years and so are no longer counted as "on load"), and our share of total completions. Other things they use are our institution's share of all publications, and our institution's share of all competitive grant monies won. These latter two are meant to be a measure of the institution's research environment in which we do the research training. Things will change in the next year or two though as the government brings in the research quality framework (the RQF).

Actually, not all universities award distinctions. Some have a "Dean's List" for acknowledging high quality PhDs and Masters (usually the top 10% or so). Many have no way of acknowledging really high quality outcomes.

Of course, you are right: there is no objective way of knowing whether something is in the top 5% internationally or not. It is a matter of judgement. However, that is what academics do about lots of things, and it is pretty impressive when a top Professor from Harvard or Oxford says "this is the best PhD thesis I have ever seen in my 30 years as an academic!"

If you are worried about inflation I'd say the opposite is probably the case: in 2005 there were 295 completions with 27 Distinctions (218 PhDs with 24 Distinctions); in 2004 there were 192 PhD completions with 26 Distinctions.

# robyn.owens said on December 22, 2006 5:49 PM:

They all come in in a rush just before Christmas! Yesterday it got up to 270 completions with 17 Distinctions. There will be one more data update tonight for all those last minute completions that were handed in today as the office staff were trying to drink some champagne and then go off to do their Christmas shopping.

# robyn.owens said on December 23, 2006 8:11 AM:

One last completion submitted yesterday, so we got to 271, with 17 Distinctions.

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About robyn.owens

I started my academic life doing a BSc (Hons) in Mathematics at UWA before going to Oxford to complete an MSc and a DPhil, also in Mathematics. I then spent three years in Paris at l'Université de Paris-Sud, Orsay, continuing research in mathematical analysis and going to lots of movies before returning to UWA to work as a research mathematician. I have lectured in Maths and Computer Science at UWA, as well as for short periods at Berkeley, The University of Canterbury in Christchurch, and Prince Songkla University in Thailand. My research has focussed on computer vision, including feature detection in images, 3D shape measurement, image understanding, and representation.