Placement and Time to Completion

People considering a career in political science often have basic questions about their prospective department—questions like, "Where am I likely to end up if I come here?" or "How long am I likely to be here?" or "What are the odds that I will complete my program?" Many graduate programs, surprisingly, either don’t publish that information at all or publish it in disaggregated form as a way of hiding information in plain sight.

Our commitment to transparency begins before students even enroll at our University. Graduate students who are deciding whether or not to choose our program should have the clearest possible answers to these questions. Those answers are below.

Ph.D. Placement

The OSU Department of Political Science has an excellent placement record. Our graduates have been very successful in securing positions in major research universities and liberal arts colleges, while others have pursued non-academic careers in government agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and private industry.

Rather than providing a sample of notable placement successes, we provide below a comprehensive list of our placements. This includes all the data we have regarding where all of our Ph.D.s since 2004 were placed or are currently employed. All academic positions are tenure-track unless otherwise noted.

Department of Political Science Placement, 2004 - 2011

View Political Science, The Ohio State University Placement in a larger map

2011 Ph.D.s
	Quintin Beazer		CP		Post-Doc, Yale University
	A. Burcu Bayram		IR		McMaster University, Canada
	Soundarya Chidambaram		CP		University of Arkansas – Fayetteville (visiting)
	Christopher Devine		AP		Mount Vernon Nazarene University
	Erin Graham		IR		Post-Doc, Princeton University
	Marcus Holmes		IR		Fordham University
	Todd Makse		AP		Susquehanna University
	Steven Nawara		AP		Valdosta State University
	Scott Powell		CP		University of Tennessee – Knoxville
	Allyson Shortle		AP		University of Oklahoma – Norman
	Dana Wittmer		AP		Colorado College (Colorado Springs, CO)
2010 Ph.D.s
	Daniel Blake		IR		Post-Doc, Princeton
	Dino Christenson		American		Boston University
	Eric Grynaviski		IR		George Washington University
	TongFi Kim		IR		Purdue University (visiting)
	Kyle Kopko		American		Elizabethtown College
	Daniel Langfield		Comparative		College of Wooster (visiting)
	Todd Makse		American		Radford University (visiting)
	Sarah Sokhey		Comparative		University of Colorado-Boulder
	Byungwon Woo		IR		Oakland University
	Christina Xydias		Comparative		Union College (visiting)
	Kadir Yildirim		Comparative		Post-Doc, Princeton
2009 Ph.D.s
	Richard Arnold		Comparative		Muskingum College
	Lakeyta Bonnette		American		Georgia State University
	Tom Dolan		IR		Rochester; Univ. of Central Florida
	Delia Dumitrescu		Comparative		Post-Doc, Univ. of Montreal
	Nanaho Hanada		Comparative		St. Olaf College (visiting)
	Erin McAdams		American		College of Charleston
	Zachary Mears		IR		Analyst, Private Sector
	Banks Miller		American		University of Texas-Dallas
	Dag Mossige		Comparative		Davidson College (visiting)
	Autumn Payton		IR		Post-Doc, European Univ. Inst.
	Tina Pierce		American		Denison University (visiting)
	Amanda Rosen		IR		Webster University
	Michael Reese		IR		Univ. of Chicago/CIR (visiting)
	Yusuf Safarti		Comparative		Illinois State University
	Anand Sokhey		American		University of Colorado-Boulder
	Konstantin Vossing		Comparative		Humboldt University (Berlin)
2008 Ph.D.s
	Kuskridho Ambardi		Comparative		Gadjah Mada University
	Samuel DeCanio		American		Yale University
	Ryan Kennedy		Comparative		University of Houston
	Katja Michalak		Comparative		American University of Bulgaria
	Christopher Moore		IR		Bethel University
	Bradley Nelson		IR		Analyst, Private Sector
	Eric Russell		American		Auburn University
	Anna Shadley		Comparative		The Ohio State University (Administration)
	Corwin Smidt		American		Michigan State University
	Yohanes Sulaiman		IR		Analyst, Ctr for Dem., Int. Peace and Sec. Stud. (Jakarta)
	Srdjan Vcetic		IR		Post-Doc, Cambridge; Univ of Ottawa
	Sean Williams		American		Analyst, Private Sector
	Unislawa Wszolek		IR		Spelman College
2007 Ph.D.s
	Dinissa Duvanova		Comparative		SUNY Buffalo
	Roman Ivanchenko		American		Analyst, Joint Welfare Analysis Center
	Natalie Kistner		Comparative		James Madison University
	Nathan Toronto		IR		Analyst, Foreign Military Studies Office, Ft. Leavenworth
	Linda Trautman		American		Ohio University, Lancaster
	Dinna Wisnu		Comparative		USAID, World Learning Respect Program, Deputy Director
2006 Ph.D.s
	Brandon Bartels		American		Stony Brook Univ; George Washington Univ.
	Ray Block		American		Florida St. Univ.; Wisconsin -- LaCrosse
	Jong Kun Choi		IR		Post-doc, Yonsei University, South Korea
	Bridget Coggins		IR		Dartmouth College
	Paul Fritz		IR		Hofstra University
	Yoav Gortzak		IR		Arizona State University
	Amu Oakes		IR		College of William and Mary
	Brent Strathman		IR		Dartmouth (visiting)
2005 Ph.D.s
	William Anderson		American		University of South Dakota
	Brett Curry		American		Georgia Southern University
	Gregory Gwiasda		American		Analyst, Private Sector
	Andrew Holbrook		American		University of New Orleans
	Hiram Irizarry-Osorio		Comparative		Analyst, Kirwan Institute, OSU
	Robert Kelly		Comparative		University of the Pacific
	Jeffrey Martinson		IR		Meredith College
	Scott Orr		Comparative		Texas Lutheran University
	Justin Taylor		American		Analyst, Private Sector
2004 Ph.D.s
	Eileen Braman		American		University of Indiana
	Andrew Farrell		American		University of Oklahoma (visiting)
	Yoram Haftel		IR		University of Illinois - Chicago
	Blair King		American		Analyst, National Democratic Inst for Int. Affairs
	Gregory Miller		IR		College of William & Mary; Univ. of Oklahoma
	J. Quin Monson		American		Brigham Young University
	Kenneth Mulligan		American		Southern Illinois, Carbondale
	Jason Mycoff		American		University of Delaware
	Mary Outwater		American		Director, Oklahoma University Poll
	Julie Anne S. Peterson		American		Analyst, Private Sector
	Kevin Sweeney		IR		Analyst, Department of Defense
	Wendy Watson		American		Univ. of North Texas; Southern Methodist University
	Margaret Williams		American		James Madison University; Goucher College

Average Time to Degree

The National Research Council (NRC) cites an average time-to-degree of about 6.5 years in Ph.D. programs in political science. In order to determine where ours fell relative to the national average, we looked at median completion times for all cohorts from 1990 (when the first reliable data exist in our dataset) to 2005 (at which point missing data make the answer unreliable). We also broke the data down by sex of student. The average answer, consistently over time and across the two sexes, generally hovers between six and seven years—a number that corresponds very closely with the national average. It appears that there might be a slight downward trend in recent years, but there are too few students to say definitively whether that is the case.

We also broke the same data down by subfield, and here the results are considerably more nuanced. As one often hears, comparativists tend to take longer to complete their dissertations due to the requirements of language classes and fieldwork. Americanists are generally the fastest to complete theirs, and students of International Relations fall somewhere in between. What is most interesting, however, is the fact that, since the late 1990s, time to degree across subfields has converged considerably: the most recent cohorts all show far less variance, completing their degrees in something close to six years regardless of subfield.

Attrition and Completion

Attrition—whether due to spousal considerations, an attractive career opportunity elsewhere, or personal reasons—is far more common in Ph.D. programs than entering students realize. Many professors tell stories of entering graduate school, being told to look at the students to their left and right, and then being told that only one in three entering students would end up with a Ph.D.

Regardless of the reason, the classical "one in three" statistic is not far off in general for political science programs, nor is it for ours: our actual attrition rate varies widely from one year to the next due to small cohort size, but a smoothed series over time moves roughly between 50% and 60%. (We should note for the sake of comparability that this figure captures all forms of attrition, including simply dropping out and taking a terminal M.A.; in many departments’ official statistics, these figures are disaggregated.)

For comparable data from other Universities

The Program In Statistics and Methodology (PRISM) provided the research assistance necessary to collect and visualize these data.