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Three Magic Letters: Getting to PhD Michael T. Nettles and Catherine M. Millett Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006, 368 pages, $42.00 (hardcover).
Reviewed by Matthew R. Wawrzynski, Michigan State University
In 1996, Nettles and Millet undertook the most comprehensive study on American doctoral students to date. They surveyed over 14,000 doctoral students at United States institutions representing 1 1 fields of study and examined "how individual, institution, field, faculty, and financial characteristics" (p. 4) affect doctoral student success and failure. Three Magic Letters: Getting to PhD is the product of their collaborative efforts.
In the first of four sections of the book, Nettles and Millett provided a brief historical context of doctoral education. In chapter 1 , they developed the rationale and purpose for studying doctoral student experiences. The chapter culminates in an outline of the following chapters that parallels the format of a journal article with sections devoted to research design, findings and discussion, and recommendations for future research and practice.
In chapter 2, Nettles and Millet provided the context, trends, and conceptual analytical framework for their study. While relying on many scholars to advance their Conceptual Model of Doctoral Student Experiences found on page 28, the authors noted that the foundation for their study is based on Berelson's Graduate Education in the United States. The model developed by Nettles and Millet depicts the influence of personal and academic backgrounds, along with other acquired benefits, on five major outcome measures of a doctoral student experience: type of funding, socialization, research productivity, satisfaction and dropping out of a doctoral program, and doctoral degree completion. The descriptive analyses and a brief rational for the relational analyses used in their study are discussed at the end of this chapter. Interestingly, Nettles and Millett's exploratory analyses revealed that...