The University of Minnesota library system has been maintaining electronic dissertations since in their Digital Conservancy website. These digital archives represent an excellent opportunity for data mining. Unfortunately, the code will not work unless you are signed in to the University of Minnesota library system. Obviously, this sample is not representative of all institutions or time periods, so extrapolation may be unwise.
The code returns a list with two elements for each author. This raw HTML is then further parsed using some of the base functions in R, such as grep and strsplit. The tricky part is to find the permanent URL for each student that contains the relevant information. The loop stops once all records are imported. The important part is to identify the format of each URL so the code knows where to look and where to re-initiate each search.
The permanent URL for each student is then accessed and parsed. The important piece of information for each student takes the following form:.
University of Minnesota Ph. July Major: Business. Advisor: Jane Doe. This chunk of text is then saved to the output object for additional parsing.
After the online data were obtained, the following code was used to identify page length, major, month of completion, year of completion, and advisor for each character string for each student.
The section of the code that begins with get data using function takes the online data stored as dat on my machine and applies the function to identify the relevant information. The resulting text is converted to a data frame and some minor reworkings are applied to convert some vectors to numeric or factor values.
Now the data are analyzed using the check. The data contained 2, records for students that completed their dissertations since The range was incredibly variable minimum of 21 pages, maximum of , but most dissertations were around to pages.
Interestingly, a lot of students graduated in August just prior to the fall semester. As expected, spikes in defense dates were also observed in December and May at the ends of the fall and spring semesters. The top four majors with the most dissertations on record were in descending order educational policy and administration, electrical engineering, educational psychology, and psychology.
Not many differences are observed among the majors, although some exceptions are apparent. Several considerations concerning dissertation deadlines may affect how and when you plan to write and submit your dissertation. Lectures and seminars end at the division of the Easter term, leaving about two weeks for revision before the examinations, which begin around the end of May. If you submit your dissertation by the division of the Easter term, it can be read and marked at the same time as your exams.
In that case, you will know your result soon after the middle of June. You may need to know your results early in the summer because you are applying for grants or for further courses which have early deadlines and which require a firm MPhil result before the application can be judged.
If this is likely to be the case, you should plan to complete your dissertation by the early date. Even if you choose to submit your dissertation at the later date, you will still need to plan it well in advance during the Lent and Easter terms while your supervisor is still around. To ensure that the content and approach of your dissertation will be acceptable, you must also submit a one page synopsis of your intended dissertation, which summarises its theme, argument and structure, to the Administration Office by the division of the Easter term.
The Department cannot guarantee any supervision after the end of the Easter term. Dissertations that are submitted after the first deadline will not normally be examined until just before the beginning of the following Michaelmas term, in late September, which means that you will not know your results until early October. When submitting you must take the two copies of your dissertation to the Administration Office as well as submit an electronic version. Full details are given on the Dissertation Submission page of the website.
An oral examination or viva on your dissertation and any other aspect of assessment will not be held automatically, but the Department reserves the right to call you for one. This might be because there are particular questions that we wish to follow up, because there is a danger of your failing, or because we wish to decide about a borderline between a pass and a high pass mark. Breastfeeding and bone density change , Karen L Pearce.
Archaeology and normalcy: Disciplining a discipline , Joannah L Whitney. From scientific risk to paysan savoir -faire: Divergent rationalities of science and society in the French debate over GM crops , Chaia L Heller. Confronting the tribal zone: Toward a critical ethnohistory of colonial state formation in San Juan through the system of encomiendas, — , Gabriel De La Luz-Rodriguez. Making doctors in Malawi: Local exigencies meet global identities in an African medical school , Claire Leone Wendland.
Masculinity and fatherhood: Stratified reproduction among the Puerto Rican partners of adolescent mothers , Jennifer Whitman Foster. Hungry for the taste of El Salvador: Gastronomic nostalgia, identity, and resistance to nutrithink in an immigrant community , Sharon L Stowers.
Space, society and self in Siena, Italy: A study of community, identity and social change in small, southern European city , Arthur L Figliola. In the shadow of the other: Explorations of German identity in the construction of difference , Amy Elizabeth Harper.
The political ecology of wild mushroom harvester stewardship in the Pacific Northwest , Eric Todd Jones. Amalgamation, immigration, and the problem of racial and ethnic classification: New York City, — , Teresa Elizabeth Leslie.
Nightclub capitalism and expatriate jazz musicians in Paris , Scott M Cashman. Her areas of expertise include undergraduate and graduate curriculum development for writing courses in the health sciences and American literature with a focus on literary travel, tourism, and heritage economies.
Her writing and academic scholarship has been widely published in places that include Studies in American Culture , Dialogue , and The Virginia Quarterly Review. Her research on the integration of humanities into STEM education will be published by Routledge in an upcoming collection. Throughout her career in higher education, Dr. Watson has served in faculty governance and administration as a frequent committee chair and program chair.
As a higher education consultant, she has served as a subject matter expert, an evaluator, and a contributor to white papers exploring program development, enrollment research, and educational mergers and acquisitions. How Long Is a Dissertation? August 6, Courtney Watson, Ph. A dissertation is a complex document that elicits many burning questions, both from doctoral candidates and those outside of academia: How long does my dissertation need to be?
How much research is involved? Can I choose my own topic? What does academic research actually look like, and am I capable of it? What will I do with my dissertation? How much time will I spend writing my dissertation? Book a Free Consultation.
0コメント