12/2005 MEMO: The Process of Setting Allotments for Graduate Admissions
Updated: June 1st, 2011
December 20, 2005
To: Deans, Directors, Chairs
From: Joseph J. Duggan, Associate Dean
Toward the end of each calendar year, the Graduate Division sets in motion the process of allocating admission slots to departments, schools, and graduate groups for the following fall semester. The purpose of this memo is to inform you about the principles and procedures behind the allocations.
Departments, schools, and graduate groups have been assigned target enrollment figures as well as upper and lower graduate enrollment bounds. The target and the bounds were originally based on the size of the units’ graduate populations in the early 1970s, when the system was first introduced, but they have changed considerably over the years as units have requested modifications. In some fields, the job market for holders of the doctorate has deteriorated, leading faculty to downsize their programs. In others there has been increasing demand. Some new programs have been introduced, while others have been disestablished.
If a program requests a permanent increase in the number of graduate students, the request must be accompanied by: 1) an account of the placement situation in that field and the record of doctoral placements over the past three years; 2) the availability of financial support for graduate students; 3) the relevant faculty resources; 4) the program’s time to degree; and 5) an account of efforts to maintain and increase the diversity of the graduate student body. The Graduate Division will seek advice from the cognizant divisional or professional school dean. In some cases, the Graduate Council is consulted.
Each year the Berkeley campus receives from the Office of the President an allocation of the number of graduate students that state funding will permit. This is the basic number with which the allotment algorithm begins. On the basis of the allocation from the Office of the President, the program’s target enrollment and bounds, the number of graduate students enrolled in the current fall semester, and a productivity factor, the allotment algorithm generates a target for new enrollments for the following fall semester. In keeping with the program’s show rate, that is to say the rate at which applicants have accepted offers of admission over the most recent three-year period, an admission allotment number is also generated.
The productivity factor is based on the program’s success at having students reach their degree goals. Into its calculation go positive elements, namely the number of stages that students have reached in degree programs, and negative elements, the number of students dropping out without having reached their degree goals. A student who has not been advanced to doctoral candidacy is considered to have dropped out if unregistered for a period of three semesters without having received a degree immediately prior to departure. Students advanced to doctoral candidacy are considered to have dropped out only if their candidacy has lapsed. The time frame for these elements is the preceding three years.
Credits are assigned to each degree recipient in the productivity calculation as follows: one credit for a certificate, two for a master’s degree, three for advancement to doctoral candidacy, and five for a doctorate. No credit is given for a lapsed candidacy.
Debits are assigned to each pre-candidacy dropout at the rate of one per registered semester between the last career milestone and the last semester of registration. Milestones are entrance to graduate status at Berkeley and the award of any degree. No debits are assigned, however, if a student has dropped out within one year of entrance to graduate standing, and no debit is assigned for the last registered semester. These exceptions allow for initial faculty judgments and take into account that the effective date of dropping is usually well within the final semester rather than at its end. Debits are assigned for students advanced to doctoral candidacy at the rate of two debits per academic year for the period from advancement to lapsing, and then at the rate of one debit per registered semester back to initial registration. Debits are only assigned for semesters spent in the major, and the first two semesters do not count if the student drops in that period.
Each department, school, or graduate group is assigned a score based on credits minus debits. The algorithm works in such a way that as the graduate enrollment approaches the upper or lower bound, progress toward that bound is slowed. If the score would make a program’s enrollment exceed the bound, the enrollment is stopped at the bound.
A department, school, or graduate group’s total enrollment target is thus affected incrementally by its success or failure in seeing through to the completion of their degree goals those students who remain in the program after the first year. The increment is on the order of up to three percentage points a year, but if it moves in one direction over a period of years it will eventually have a pronounced effect on the unit’s total graduate enrollment target.
Students who, in the opinion of the faculty, are not going to achieve their degree goals should be encouraged to leave within the first year. This makes sense on educational and economic bases, and the productivity factor of the algorithm gives faculty an incentive to apply the principle from year to year.
The next step in the process is that the Graduate Division estimates the number of graduate students who are expected to continue in the following year or to return from withdrawal status.
The estimated number of continuing and returning students is subtracted from the total enrollment target, producing a tentative new student target to which the productivity factor is applied, yielding the new student target. I review these targets each year and may at times adjust them to dampen the “wave effect” in graduate admissions in a given unit. If this were not done, certain units would experience radically fluctuating admission targets from year to year, which makes planning for introductory courses and seminars quite difficult.
The campus target for graduate enrollment has remained fairly steady over the years, but recent increases have resulted in a campus population of around 10,000 graduate students. The overall economy of graduate enrollments is, however, a closed one in that yearly changes in the enrollment in one department, school, or group have an effect, albeit at times a small one, on all other units. The establishment of new graduate degree programs brings about similar adjustments.
Cc: Dean Mary Ann Mason
Members of the Graduate Council
Graduate Assistants
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