This raises the important consideration of the appropriate time frame over which such commitments should extend. Clearly, committing substantial packages of support over very long completion times would not be feasible. There is some evidence, however, that financial support allows students to complete their programs more quickly. A 1992 study by Professors Joseph Fletcher and Richard Stren reported the results of a 1991 survey of graduates of Ph.D. programs over the previous five years. These were, in fact, statistically the most important factors contributing to lengthy times to completion.
Financial factors are by no means the only determinants of times to completion.
Problems in defining the thesis topic and supervisory problems were also identified by Fletcher and Stren. If completion times are to be reduced, each department will need to develop a concerted strategy of academic and financial support for students, of which assured financial support for a reasonable period of time must be a part. The main problem in assembling comprehensive data is that the data originate in various offices and different databases within the University. Since the identifying characteristics of TA data are name and social insurance number, SGS, which maintains an awards database whose identifiers are name and student number, is required to create a special file containing social insurance number. Incorrect and missing social insurance numbers result in fairly significant data gaps when the HR and SGS files are matched and the required data clean-up is labor intensive and error prone.