Time to completion

At Queen’s University our goals are to deliver high quality graduate programs, provide excellent research training for graduate students and support our students in timely degree completion. Best practices, student financial support and meaningful mentorship are integral to achieving our goals. As well it is important to support students who benefit from time away from studies for health or family reasons and those who might require accommodation.

Our policy on completion times defines our guiding principles and actions that support our goals.  The answers to " Frequently Asked Questions" and for main elements of the time to completion/extension policies are listed below. SGS provides valuable resources to support timely completion and student success .

The principles incorporated in the time-to-completion policy are:

• The majority of Master's students complete their degrees within 1 to 3 years and doctoral students complete  in 4 to 6 years of full time study. It is important that students and their supervisors develop timelines and plans that support timely completion. The recently approved and proposed time to completion policies support a process to ensure this takes place and furthermore, that it takes place earlier so that strategies and actions can be implemented if needed.
  
  Master's and doctoral programs are approved and reviewed provincially; they are designed and structured such that the degree requirements can be completed in two and four years, respectively (also the Ministry provides support for 2 and 4 years). These are therefore reasonable reference points  - they are not hard limits in which degrees must be completed since there may be many reasons why programs take longer.
  
  
• In collaboration with their supervisors, all PhD students complete annual progress reports that summarize their achievements/accomplishments over the past year, the goals and objectives for the upcoming year, any concerns or challenges that could impact progress, and strategies to address them.
• Departments use information from the annual reports to ensure that students are making progress and can offer support if problems or difficulties are brought to light. They can extend the program by one year (i.e. third year Master’s and fifth year PhD) and make sure that a plan to progress towards completion is in place.
• If an additional extension is required, the School of Graduate Studies on the recommendation of the supervisor and department, will review the most recent annual progress reports. Students progressing toward degree completion will be granted a one year extension (i.e. fourth year Master’s and sixth year PhD).
• Further extension requests may be granted by the School of Graduate Studies in exceptional circumstances with the support of the department and supervisor.
• The policy comes into effect September 2013 and all current students follow the policy in place when they commenced their graduate studies (i.e. they are grand-parented).