How to Choose an English Doctoral Program: A Guide for Women, First-Generation University Students, and Their Mentors

Abstract

Featuring data from a nationwide survey of English faculty in Canada, this study focuses on the reasons that faculty offered for choosing their respective doctoral programs. This analysis pays particular attention to gendered disparities in participants’ responses and to disparities associated with parental educational level, two variables that sometimes intersect in striking ways. This investigation explains why some reasons that women and first-generation university students provided for their choice of doctoral program can increase a student’s chances of entering a poorly ranked program. Employing previously unprocessed data from Statistics Canada, this article also presents information to help would-be PhD students who are women, first-generation university students, or both make more informed decisions about where to pursue doctoral study to be more competitive in the academic job market if they aspire to be professors. This article is simultaneously designed to increase faculty mentors’ understanding of the problematic logic that women and first-generation university students may use when selecting their PhD programs so that such mentors can better address these students’ misperceptions about doctoral studies and the profession.