A Dissertation Is an Act of 1,000 Days

For to reach a port we must set sail—Sail, not tie at anchor. Sail, not drift.

—Franklin Delano Roosevelt¹

Scenario: You have just been admitted to a PhD program. You are elated. How will you break this news to your family? Will you say (joyously or apologetically), “See you in five years!”? Will you explain that you have to complete coursework (one to three years), exams (half a year), a prospectus (another half year), and only then commence the dissertation? And how long does it take to write a dissertation?

Funding agencies in the UK, Germany, and France all allocate initial three-year, post-master’s fellowships to PhD students. This conforms to the third-phase framework of the Bologna Process. In essence, American and Canadian institutions do the same, insofar as once other requirements are out of the way, typically three years remain on a five-year doctoral funding package. Field by field and institution by institution, what precedes being “all but dissertation” (ABD) can vary a lot, yet once that threshold is passed everyone faces the challenge of conceiving, researching, and writing a dissertation with the directive that this should take three years. What does a three-year dissertation plan look like?

Three years adds up to 1,095 funded days. There are 365.25 days per year, 52.14 weeks per year, and therefore 260.96 weekdays and 104.29 weekend days annually. It is unlikely that an ABD student will work every day, all day, on their dissertation, so in practice the funding paradigm is for something short of 1,095 funded days. If we allow for one day off per week plus a few holidays, this rounds down to an even 1,000 dissertation days. But making that mark is unlikely. If one works all weekdays (no sick days; no weekdays devoted to teaching, lab, or administrative duties; no part-time jobs; and no vacations), it will take 3.83 years to accrue 1,000 days. If one takes two weeks’ vacation, this leaves 250.96 weekdays per year and gives one a target date of 3.98 years to clock 1,000 dissertation days. Or, if one works 5 days per week on the dissertation and 2 days per week being a TA, RA, GA, or parent and allows oneself two weeks’ vacation (including statutory holidays), then 3.98 years will be the target for clocking 1,000 days. How can all those funding agencies and graduate programs be off by a year?

For some or all of their fellowships, most PhD students are expected to contribute teaching, supervisory, or administrative labor to their programs and/or advisors while working “full-time” on their dissertations. Table 1 puts the arithmetic slightly differently. If one spends 2 days per week teaching (and preparing to teach) for 30 weeks of the year and regards weekends as consecrated to leisure, only 201 days remain annually for the dissertation, so it will take 5 years to complete once one is ABD. If TAing takes 3 days per week, the additional time to completion stretches to 5.84 years (fig. 1).

The bottom line is that if it takes an ABD student more than 1,000 days to complete the dissertation, it is likely because they are not working on it all those 1,000 days. And given that it does take most ABD students more than 1,000 days to complete the process (indeed, data from 2003–12 US graduations show that the median period from first enrollment to graduation with the PhD is 5.7 to 5.9 years in all fields and 6.9 years in the humanities), they are probably doing the other things expected of them—supervising labs, attending colloquia, teaching, administering their advisors’ projects, and presenting their research at meetings—as well as everything else necessary to be a family member, mentally and physically healthy individual, and so on. If enrollment is part-time or funding is absent, the 1,000 ABD days stretch even further into the future.