T-Minus ? To graduation

I don't really know how long it is going to take for me to graduate. I read this article today and some of the comments. It was an interesting article about the need for schools to help doctoral students graduate sooner. The average time it takes to graduate from a BS to PhD is 7.6 years, on the rise over the past 30 years! How can I shorten that time frame? I will definitely have to move faster than I am now!

The study sites a couple of suggestions, but overall I see a problem that isn't mentioned, as it applies to science related PhD's. Many scientific disciplines have become so complex that students must learn much more before they can make a contribution. Students must understand everything about the past before they can look into the future. This requires time and therefore makes PhD completion times rise. Although many students have a head start over students 30 years ago (many high school students can take calculus, whereas 30 years ago it was only taught in college) the distance to make a contribution is increasing rapidly. Scientific discovery has become very competitive and complex. Discovering new and interesting contributions to ones discipline is often more difficult than in the past because so much must be learned and studied before one can attempt to formulate anything new.

I can't be sure that this is the reason why people don't graduate sooner. Perhaps it is the comforts of grad school that keep people here (free pizza, exhaustive dead ends, late nights, and a decline in social life). Aren't those three great reasons to go to graduate school? Perhaps it's an aversion to moving on to something outside of the academy. At some point people tire of it. That is when they either decide to leave or get serious about finishing. And that brings me back to...Well me. Honestly, I am not always this self centered but I have one goal as of late... And that is to get my PhD as quickly as possible. Oh sure I probably have 3 more years... But that doesn't change my goal. I am told that if I write my goals down they will happen a lot sooner. So there you are I wrote them down and maybe I can help move the time to graduate statistic back to 7.599 years!

Once again I think that if you want to graduate sooner it is really up to you. Are you asking the right questions? Are you reading and writing each day? Are you taking courses that will lead you to a solution? Have you found a good mentor? Are you meeting regularly with your advisor? In almost everyway it is up to the graduate student to graduate. So how can we shorten the timeframe? I will be on the look out for solutions. I am getting tired of reading about the problem. I know what the problem is, I have the problem, I am the problem. So lets find some solutions, proactive solutions. Solutions I can actually DO something about.