improving phd completion times

harvard has found a way to improve phd completion times: putting a clicking clock on supervising professors and not just phd students.

For the last two years, the university has announced that for every five graduate students in years eight or higher of a Ph.D. program, the department would lose one admissions slot for a new doctoral student. The results were immediate: In numerous departments that had for years had large clusters of Ph.D. students taking eight or more years to finish, professors reached out to students and doctorates were completed.

read the full story at inside higher ed.