This ongoing study employs a "roster approach," gathering data on enrollments in graduate physics programs along with degrees awarded. Although AIP has collected names of graduate students in physics departments for the last 20 years or more, it has only recently begun to collect names of Ph.D. recipients. It will be a few more years, therefore, before it will be possible to determine more precisely the numbers of those who are unsuccessful in obtaining the degree. The findings of the study so far provide "very rough aggregate numbers," according to the presenter. Looking at 10 years of data on entering U.S. students, a fairly steady number- ranging from 15 to 20 percent-come out with a master's degree two years after enrollment. About 45 percent of those entering with the aim of getting a Ph.D. actually come out with the doctorate six years later National Science FoundationNational Science Foundation, Division of Science Resources Studies, Summary of Workshop on Graduate Student Attrition, NSF , Project Officer, Alan I. Rapoport (Arlington, VA 1998).Division of Science Resources Studies This 1998 report said the following about AIP’s assessment of PhD attrition up to that time:

At the request of the AAPT/APS Task Force on Graduate Education AIP’s Statistical Research Center prepared a questionnaire and obtained information from 137 (out of 186) PhD granting departments enrolling 76% of all doctoral students in physics. These responses are collected and summarized in “Core and Breadth in Physics Doctoral Education.” The report of the Task Force on Graduate Education is based largely on this AIP report. There are items of interest in the AIP SRC report that are not found in the TFGE report. I recommend that you read the AIP report. You can download the report from

To have credibility among professional physicists and for its own self respect, a physics department must be able to prepare students to succeed in physics graduate school. Every physics department has a general education mission, particularly appropriate in a liberal arts college, to teach as many students as possible about the physical world and quantitative science. What Does the Undergraduate Physics Curriculum Need to Do?

The purpose of teaching physics should not be merely to clone ourselves and keep a few poor souls out of medical school. A solid education in physics is the best conceivable preparation for the lifetime of rapid technological change that our young people face. The undergraduate physics major should be the liberal arts education of the twenty-first century! Every physics department in the country ought to inscribe that motto on its walls and march under that banner. But to make that motto into a reality would take nothing less than a revolution in the way we do our jobs. The undergraduate physics major should be the liberal arts education of the twenty-first century

is a capable student at the end of her or his junior year able to score at least in the 25th percentile of the physics GREs; are students completing a year of physics able to read with comprehension a significant portion of the commentary paragraphs in Nature Objectively assessable measures of the efficacy of an undergraduate physics curriculum For example:

The profession of teaching physics at the college level in America today has only two purposes. One is to produce physicists, and the other is to act as a gatekeeper, keeping the unworthy out of certain other professions such as medicine and engineering. We will always need physicists, but not very many of them. And, indeed, the number of physics majors in colleges all across the country today is said to be at its lowest point since Sputnik, more than forty years ago. Our other role, as gatekeeper, is the dark side of our profession, and it is, frankly, unworthy of us. The simple fact is, if teaching physics were a business, we would be filing for bankruptcy.