Master’s and Doctoral Degree Research Expenditures

Support for the research of graduate students is critically important in engineering education. In AY2001-02, the total support for engineering graduate research programs in the US was about $4 billion. This support covers expenses such as graduate student stipends and tuition, research equipment and supplies, released time for faculty, fringe benefits and overhead. Primarily, this funding results from research proposals written by faculty members and submitted by universities to various funding organizations (governmental, industrial, foundations, etc.).

Determination of Degree Costs for Engineering as a Whole

An engineering college considering an expansion in the number of master’s and doctoral degrees may wish to analyze programmatic changes necessary to achieve a successful transition. One consideration should be the increase in research support necessary. Determination of the costs associated with the desired increases in numbers of degrees requires information on the research costs of master’s and doctoral degrees.

The graph below shows the research expenditures per faculty member as a function of doctoral degrees per faculty member for AY2001-02. The data points are for each engineering college reporting faculty numbers, doctoral degrees and research expenditures.

The data scatter may appear surprising, but much of it results from the year-to-year statistical variations in doctoral degrees awarded by smaller programs. Differences among universities in tuition, support of teaching assistants, overhead rates, etc. also contribute to the data scatter.

The slope of the trend line on the graph above is the average research expenditure for an engineering doctoral degree at the universities represented. The slope multiplied by the number of doctoral degrees gives the research expenditures for a doctoral degree. The intercept is the average research expenditure per faculty member for non-doctoral research. Most, if not all, of this is, arguably, for master’s degree research. Thus, the intercept multiplied by the number of faculty provides the upper limit of research expenditures for master’s degrees . (For the purposes of this report, this amount will be considered to be the expenditures for master’s degrees.) Total research expenditures for master’s degree research divided by the number of master’s degrees provides the research expenditures per master’s degree.

The graph below shows the variation of research expenditures for master’s and doctoral degrees in US engineering colleges since AY1990-91.

Over the period covered by the graph, both master’s and doctoral degree expenditures have doubled. However, it is shown that doctoral degree expenditures remained relatively constant until the mid-1990s and doubled thereafter.

These data also indicate that, from AY1990, about 73% of engineering research expenditures in graduate programs were directed toward doctoral research.

Research Expenditures for Engineering Disciplines

The same type of analysis used for engineering was employed for engineering disciplines. It was found that limiting the data to disciplines reporting data for faculty numbers, doctoral degrees and research expenditures resulted in excessive data scatter except for just four disciplines (civil, chemical, electrical and mechanical engineering). Even for these disciplines, data scatter was a bit troublesome. However, the differences among these disciplines are significant, especially so when compared to engineering as a whole.

All four of these engineering disciplines showed increases in research expenditures for both master’s and doctoral degrees that are not unlike those of engineering as shown in the two graphs below.

However, for AY2001-02, chemical and civil engineering had the largest expenditures (of the four) per master’s degree and electrical and mechanical engineering had the largest expenditures per doctoral degree. These ratings are not a function of the relative numbers of degrees awarded. The ratios of master’s to doctoral degrees for AY2001-02 for civil, chemical, electrical and mechanical engineering were 4.4, 1.4, 3.8 and 3.4, respectively.

It is also noteworthy to observe the distribution of research expenditures between master’s and doctoral degree research for these four disciplines. For civil, chemical, electrical and mechanical engineering in AY2001-02, the fractions of their research expenditures assigned to doctoral research were 34%, 66%, 64% and 59%, respectively.

Acknowledgment

The data for this study came from the annual surveys of the American Society for Engineering Education. Engineering Trends acknowledges their efforts in providing credible data and expresses its gratitude for their services to the engineering profession.

Footnotes

American Society for Engineering Education survey data for the period AY1993-94 through AY1998-99 were handicapped since the number of universities providing information was somewhat lower than in other years. However, this underreporting did not influence in any significant manner the ratios analyzed in this study and the graphical data presented in this report. Data for faculty numbers were not reported for AY1997-98 (Fall 1997).

Engineering Trends data are compiled from information submitted by universities to the annual surveys of EWC and ASEE. On the very rare occasions where errors in data appear, Engineering Trends corrects the error, if possible, or deletes the data if the error is large enough to alter significantly the trend of the university or the US total.