Thirty-nine Begin New Ph.D. Program at School of Public Health

UPDATED: October 6, 2016, at 3:59 p.m.

The School of Public Health began phasing out its Doctor of Science in favor of a new Ph.D., with 39 students matriculating in the program this fall.

Last spring, HSPH announced it partnered with the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and would scrap five S.D. programs—Epidemiology, Environmental Health, Global Health and Population, Nutrition, and Social and Behavioral Sciences—in favor of a unified Ph.D. in Population Health Sciences.

When GSAS partners with another graduate school to create a Ph.D. program, the school where the program is based determines benefits and financial aid packages. In all cases, new students for the first two years receive a full tuition grant, health insurance coverage, and a 10-month living expense stipend, which is $26,490 for students in the Population Health Sciences program.

But S.D. students already enrolled in the school will not be switched into the new Ph.D. program. Ordinarily, S.D. students are responsible for covering their own tuition and health insurance costs, and do not receive a stipend.

According to an email from HSPH spokesperson Todd Datz, the school is introducing new benefits for S.D. students to “make the support for S.D. and Ph.D. students closer to parity.”

Beginning this year, Datz wrote, all S.D. students will receive full tuition through their fifth year. The School will also fully cover health insurance and the University health fee, and provide subsidized T passes. This year, the school will also cover the facilities fee. However, the stipend that Ph.D. students receive is not included in the improved benefits package for S.D. students.

S.D. student Justin M. Feldman said last semester that the divide between Ph.D. and S.D. students could potentially create animosity. But now that the new Ph.D. students are on campus, he said tension “hasn’t really come into play yet.”

“They’re putting this Ph.D. program together still,” Feldman said. “There’s actually still ambiguity around what [Ph.D. student] TA and RA requirements will be.”

Feldman said he has not hear much about what the teaching and research assistant requirements for the new Ph.D. students will be like. Ph.D. and S.D. students perform similar work, but teaching is a key component of Ph.D. programs.

“You have a new cohort of students who are required to TA, pushing out students who have seniority and experience in those positions,” Feldman said. “So I don’t know what will happen with that, and the same goes for research.”

School of Public Health professor S. V. Subramanian, the director of the new program, wrote in an email that administrators are still discussing how to handle teaching requirements.

“We are discussing this and want to be thoughtful and comprehensive in coming up with a proposal and want to ensure we have the right inputs,” Subramanian wrote.

Adjani Peralta, a first year student in the new Ph.D. program, said that while the program is still a work in progress, students will be required to teach. Peralta added that she is pleased with the communication between administrators and the new cohort; students meet with administrators monthly and can discuss issues then.

“I do feel like they are listening to us,” Peralta said.

Peralta said if HSPH had not offered this new unified program, she would have applied for the Ph.D. in Biological and Biomedical Sciences offered jointly between the Medical School and GSAS.

The School of Education went through a similar process as HSPH in the fall of 2014, when it began phasing out its Doctor of Education and enrolled its first class of Ph.D. students.

Ed.D. student Joseph C. McIntyre said he was largely unaffected during the transition process that first year, but added that his peers were “a little bit upset” because they worried the Graduate School of Education’s offering of a Ph.D. would devalue their doctorate.

The funding disparities between Ph.D. and non-Ph.D. doctoral students have been a key concern for members of the graduate student unionization effort. McIntyre co-authored a Crimson editorial last month about the “piecemeal approach” to funding across Harvard’s graduate schools.

Feldman, who is also involved in the graduate student effort to create a union, said he and his fellow S.D. students at HSPH hope the administration continues to improve equity between the doctorates.

—Staff writer Leah S. Yared can be reached at leah.yared@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @Leah_Yared.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

CORRECTION: October 6, 2016

A previous version of this article incorrectly implied the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences provides financial aid packages for students from different schools who received Ph.Ds. In fact, the school where a program is based proves those packages. This article also incorrectly stated the size of the stipend students in the Population Health Sciences program receive. They receive $26,490, not $27,600.