Ph.D. in Communication Theory & Research

The Ph.D. program prepares students to conduct original research on communication processes and effects, within the tradition of the social and behavioral sciences. Most graduates enter academic teaching and research careers, or communication-related professions that require quantitative research skills. After a core curriculum of courses in empirical methods, statistics, and mass communication theory, each student builds a research specialization through advanced courses and seminars in Communication and related departments, research projects, teaching, and an examination in the area of concentration. These requirements are normally completed in three years, and the dissertation in the fourth year.

Stanford's Ph.D. program in Communication has been, since its founding by Chilton Bush and Wilbur Schramm in the 1950s, a major source of professors of mass communication nationally and internationally. Many doctoral students come from work backgrounds in journalism and other communication professions, and will teach these skills. But the doctoral program itself is an intense preparation for social scientific research on communication processes and effects.

Faculty in the Institute for Communication Research involve their doctoral students in a wide variety of research projects. The program is largely an apprenticeship, so it is important for each student to join a project and to work closely with an advisor by the second year. Each Ph.D. student teaches in the undergraduate Mass Communication and Society course; a second instructional assignment, in either a professional or an academic specialty, is also required for the degree. In recent years, more than 90 percent of Stanford's Communication Ph.D. graduates have been offered tenure-track university faculty appointments.