Open access peer-reviewed chapter
Abstract
About half of all doctoral students who start a doctoral program do not finish it. A variety of factors internal and external to the student have been studied to determine what factors are associated with a student finishing and not finishing a doctoral program. Several factors have been identified and include both barriers and their counterpart facilitators. Barriers include a lack of motivation, not fully understanding expectations, low self-regulation, poor student-advisor fit, and a lack of social integration. Facilitators include being motivated, understanding expectations well, good student-advisor fit, and sufficient social integration. Strategies for improving doctoral program completion have been proposed that intervene on these factors and have focused on the admissions process, student preparedness, isocial integration, and faculty advisor support, but the effectiveness of such strategies has been less studied. This chapter provides an overview of what is known about facilitators of and barriers to doctoral program completion and proposed and successful strategies for improving doctoral program completion. This overview can serve as a guide for the development of evidence-based strategies for improving doctoral program completion at institutions of higher education.
Keywords
- doctoral student success
- doctoral program
- doctoral program completion
- student retention
- student attrition
- student persistence
- graduation
1. Introduction
The paradox that students with the most academic aptitude are the least likely to finish the doctoral program they start has persisted for decades. Doctoral program completion rates among students in the United States (U.S.) have averaged 40–60% for the past 50 years [2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14], with some variation across disciplines [4] and between online and in-person programs with attrition rates 10–30% higher in online doctoral programs than in in-person programs [15, 16, 17].
While these low doctoral program completion rates continue to be a nationwide problem, the number of doctoral degrees that have been awarded has still increased by about 3.1% per year over the past 60 years [18]. Some of this increase is likely due to an increase in the number of institutions offering doctoral programs and an increase in enrollment in these programs. The number of doctorate-granting institutions increased 50% between 1973 and 2020 and an average of 9% per decade since 1980 (per data from the Survey of Earned Doctorates provided in tables available from: https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf22300/data-tables). Enrollment in doctoral programs increased a total of 64% from 1998 to 2010 [19], and online higher education programs overall continue to grow at a rate of 10% while in-person programs grow at a rate of 1% [20]. Still, only 3.15% of the U.S. population has a doctoral degree [13]. As the number of doctoral programs and enrollment in those programs continues to rise, it is becoming increasingly important to find ways to improve doctoral program completion rates by either increasing persistence or decreasing attrition among students; the individual, social, and economic impacts of low doctoral program completion rates are vast. The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of some of the salient factors that are associated with doctoral program completion and noncompletion that are also conducive to potential program level intervention with the goal of improving doctoral program completion.
2. Impact of low doctoral program completion rates
Low doctoral program completion rates can have a negative impact not only on the individual who does not complete the doctoral degree, but it can have broader negative impacts as well both societally and economically. Individually, doctoral student attrition can be devastating and demoralizing for students personally, professionally, and financially [10, 16, 21]. “The most important reason to be concerned about (doctoral) student attrition is that it can ruin individuals’ lives” ([10], p. 6), and “the decision to leave can have long-term effects on students’ emotional well-being” ([10], p. 201). The psychological impact including disappointment and failure of not completing a doctoral program is high [10, 22]. Doctoral students who do not complete their degree have lower self-esteem and fewer employment opportunities as well [10].
Societally, it is likely that doctoral students who do not complete their degree will not contribute to humankind in the significant ways they could have educationally and otherwise compared to if they had completed their degree [23]. This is even more important post-COVID pandemic because “doctoral program graduates add to the intellectual and creative firepower to…lead us out of numerous and pervasive economic, educational, political, social, and health care challenges, revealed by the pandemic” ([24], p. 2). Higher doctoral student attrition of course leaves fewer doctorate qualified individuals available for universities to hire as faculty who can conduct research and educate the next generation of students. Given the important contributions doctoral graduates can have in the areas of research, education, and in other ways that could impact society significantly, high doctoral student attrition is a problem [25].
Economically, money spent by institutions on doctoral student recruitment and the student assistantships institutions provide in exchange for tuition can be significant [23]. This money is not reflected in doctoral degrees conferred when students drop out of a doctoral program. Attrition from a doctoral program is costly for faculty advisors as well [26].
Given the individual, societal, and economic impact of doctoral student attrition, this area of higher education merits attention. Identifying barriers to and facilitators of students completing their doctoral programs and designing, implementing, and evaluating interventions that align with these factors is critical and warranted. “National attention on the topic of non-completion rates for students pursuing doctoral degrees has resulted in extensive research and established initiatives, across university campuses nationwide, in an effort to understand the issues surrounding attrition rates” ([27], p. 16). Indeed, doctoral trained individuals are important to maintaining global competitiveness, innovation, and knowledge creation. Thus, understanding causes of attrition is important to this national imperative. According to Marshall et al. ([28], p. 74) “the future of higher education institutions may be dependent upon moving doctoral students to completion more successfully.” Clearly, the impacts of low rates of doctoral program completion are extensive.
3. Factors associated with low doctoral program completion rates
Doctoral program completion is largely dependent not on any single factor but on an interaction of multiple factors both internal (e.g., motivation, self-regulation) and external (e.g., student-advisor relationship, personal/social lives, the department, and socialization) to the doctoral student. These factors have been studied in relation to a number of measures for doctoral student success: doctoral program completion (i.e., when students finish the doctoral program), doctoral student persistence (i.e., how well students continue to progress through the doctoral program), doctoral student attrition (i.e., when students drop out of the doctoral program), doctoral student retention (i.e., the rate at which students stay in the doctoral program), and doctoral program completion intention (i.e., how much a student intends to remain in a doctoral program, which has been shown to be a reasonable proxy for degree completion at other levels of higher education [29, 30, 31].
Most of the published research about factors associated with doctoral student success are older; however, the information learned through this research does not appear to have changed much over time. Also, it is important to note that most studies about factors associated with doctoral student success focus on one or a small number of factors at once, so it is difficult to determine how much the effect of any single factor has and what the most important factors really are due to likely inevitable confounding of factors. However, certain factors tend to show up as prominent ones rather consistently over several decades. I have categorized factors associated with doctoral student success (or lack thereof) into barriers to and facilitators of doctoral program completion. While this chapter does not provide an exhaustive list of all barriers and facilitators, it highlights what I determined to be the most relevant ones and also the ones likely most amenable to intervention so that administrators can use this information to create and implement programs for increasing doctoral program completion rates.
3.1 Barriers to doctoral program completion
A multitude of barriers both internal and external to the student have been associated with doctoral program completion and may be interrelated. Some of the more salient internal barriers to doctoral program completion are lack of motivation [10, 25, 32, 33], not fully understanding expectations, and self-regulation [34]. Two types of stress that significantly predict students’ intent to leave their doctoral program but are related to factors external to the student is stress related to the student-faculty advisor relationship and stress related to a lack of support from family and friends [35].
Student concerns about faculty advisors are a major reason for students considering leaving their doctoral program [36]. A poor student-faculty advisor relationship is strongly associated with attrition among doctoral students [25, 34, 36, 37, 38]. Specifically, a lack of faculty support, such as low availability, interest, or feedback, or a negative student-faculty advisor relationship have been associated with doctoral student attrition [25]. For online doctoral programs, the student-faculty advisor relationship may be further challenged because of the lack of physical connection between students and faculty advisors [27].
The student-faculty advisor relationship becomes particularly relevant in the culminating project phase of a doctoral program. The apprenticeship model that is traditionally used for completing the culminating project requires the student to work directly with a faculty advisor to complete the project. This model lacks structure and concrete guidance and is largely dependent on the student initiating contact with the faculty advisor for review of their work and feedback. Additionally, the lack of structure requires a high level of self-motivation and self-regulation in students. Perhaps relatedly, unsupportive departmental cultures and practices are associated with doctoral student attrition as well [10, 38, 39], and issues related to departmental cultures and practices are often related to a mismatch between student and department expectations [10, 38, 40, 41, 42]. Differing expectations between the student and the department via the faculty advisor predicts intent to leave a doctoral program; as the stress related to this mismatch in expectations increase
Possibly it is through these department level factors that the feelings of isolation and depersonalization among doctoral students that can result in noncompletion [40] is occurring. A lack of social integration, or “the process of making friends and becoming part of the departmental, and for some, university-wide, community” ([1], p. 201), with faculty and other students has been a key factor associated with doctoral student attrition for decades as well [10].
Finally, lack of financial and family support can be barriers to doctoral program completion. Unstable funding sources can lead to attrition [43, 44], and a lack of funding can be a barrier to doctoral program completion [45].
Barriers to doctoral program completion can range from factors internal to the student to factors external to the student, and since these factors have largely been studied independently of each other it is difficult to determine if or how they are interrelated. It is likely that some factors are confounded by other known or unknown factors, and some may be correlated with each other. Most evidence, though, appears to point to the effectiveness of the student-faculty advisor relationship being arguably the most relevant, or one of the most relevant, factors associated with doctoral program completion. Several other factors, though, may be dependent on the effectiveness of that relationship, such as student clarity of expectations of the program which presumably are communicated or at least reinforced by a student’s faculty advisor.
3.2 Facilitators of doctoral program completion
Most of the barriers to doctoral program completion have a facilitator counterpart. For example, while a lack of motivation is a barrier, having motivation is a facilitator, and motivation is indeed a key construct explaining doctoral student persistence [46, 47, 48, 49]. Motivation is also strongly related to doctoral program completion [25, 26]. Similarly, while students not fully understanding expectations of the program is a barrier to doctoral program completion, understanding expectations well is a facilitator. Knowledge of the doctoral process is important to doctoral student success [50] and having clear doctoral program expectations is associated with doctoral program completion [51]. When doctoral students understand the expectations of them in terms of each task related to completing their dissertation, and they also understand the role of the university related to each of those tasks, they are more likely to complete their dissertation [52].
Doctoral students’ relationship with their faculty advisor is critical to their success. Numerous studies have shown a good faculty advisor-student fit (e.g., the working relationship between the faculty advisor and student is positive, the student perceives the working relationship with their faculty advisor to be supportive) is associated with doctoral student persistence [16, 36, 43, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57], doctoral student retention [36, 38], doctoral student attrition [58], and doctoral program completion [10, 25, 59]. In a meta-synthesis of literature, Bair and Haworth ([25], p. 9) found that the “the single most frequently occurring finding…was that successful (doctoral) degree completion is related to the degree and quality of contact between a doctoral student and her or his advisor(s) or other faculty in the student’s doctoral program.” A productive student-faculty advisor relationship is a key factor in doctoral program completion [37]. Hill and Conceição ([60], p. 40) found through a systematic literature review that “relationships with faculty and mentors are perceived by students to be the most salient factor associated with successful completion of the doctoral degree.”
A reasonable presumption might be that the beneficial effect that positive student-faculty advisor relationships have on doctoral student success may be mediated by other factors such as connectedness, motivation, and perceived competence. The level of social connectedness a student perceives with their faculty advisor has been shown to be high in an online doctoral program that uses a cohort model requiring frequent interaction between the student and faculty advisor through online discussion boards [61]; this program also has a 73.81% completion rate since its inception in 2016 as of the writing of this chapter. Perceived faculty advisor support among students has been shown to have an indirect effect on dropout intentions through self-motivation and predicts perceived competence, a major facilitator of doctoral student persistence [56]. Positive student–faculty relationships also facilitate social integration of students, important for persistence [62].
As a lack of social integration with faculty and other students has been a key factor associated with doctoral student attrition, sufficient social integration has been shown to be important to doctoral student success [50]. Social integration and support are associated with doctoral program completion [63] and doctoral student persistence [64, 65, 66, 67]. Bair and Haworth [25] found that most studies that measured interpersonal involvement and engagement in academic life showed “student involvement in various programmatic, departmental, institutional, and professional activities and opportunities contributes favorably to doctoral student retention and completion” ([25], p. 11). Social integration, in turn, may help students to understand the expectations of the program as well through complementing its role with academic integration [32]. Perhaps relatedly, a sense of belonging or “sense of connection with their college, degree of social support, and experience of both academic challenge and support” ([68], p. 108), is relevant to their persistence. Faculty support appears to be more important to doctoral student success than peer support, but peer support is associated with doctoral student success [69] and doctoral program completion [56], with doctoral students who form relationships with their peers being more likely to persist than those who do not [25].
One way to facilitate social integration in a doctoral program is using the cohort model, where a group of students goes through a portion of the program, usually the portion involving completion of the culminating project, with a cohort, or group, of students. The cohort model provides opportunities for peer interaction and fosters a sense of connectedness and belonging [16, 61, 70] as well as positively influencing doctoral program completion [71, 72]. In one study, doctoral students believe that being part of the community fostered by a cohort model was a major reason they completed their doctoral program [27]. Studebaker and Curtis [27] suggest that “educators involved with online doctoral programs would do well to accept and plan instruction in a cohort model that helps build community even when students do not engage in doctoral studies in the same physical location or at the same time” (p. 25). Incidentally, the cohort model also facilitates structure [61], and incorporating structure into the culminating project process can positively impact doctoral student success [40, 73]. A structured curriculum and the social connectedness that occurs through a community of practice are associated with higher levels of doctoral program completion [16, 72, 74, 75]. While the cohort model seems to be effective for doctoral student success, it is not clear how much of that effectiveness may be occurring through the social integration, structure, and/or other factors facilitated through using this model.
Social support outside of that occurring through the doctoral program is also important to completing the dissertation [76]. Successful doctoral students report greater perceived support from employers, family, and friends than students who drop out of their doctoral program [48]. Boone et al. [54] found doctoral students to be motivated by support from family and friends specifically. Positive relationships with family are associated with doctoral program completion [51], and doctoral students remaining connected to family has been associated with persistence and completion [74]. Indeed, support from family and friends predicts intent to leave a doctoral program in an inverse manner; as support from friends and family increase, intent to leave decreases [35].
Other factors facilitating doctoral program success include institutional support services, such as academic advising, career services, and library resources [74, 77], financial support including fellowships and research assistantships [25, 44, 78, 79], student satisfaction with the doctoral program [25], and self-regulation [80] which refers to the regulation of one’s cognition, motivation, and behavior in the completion of a goal.
4. Strategies for increasing doctoral program completion rates
Barriers and facilitators to doctoral program completion have been identified, and the negative impacts of doctoral degree non-completion for institutions and students are clear. This has caused institutions to look for ways to increase student persistence and retention and decrease attrition to ultimately increase doctoral program completion. Despite research that has indicated for decades a need for interventions to increase doctoral program completion, a scarcity of research on what strategies result in an increase in doctoral program completion still exists, and most universities have not implemented recommendations in the literature. Research findings suggest opportunities for adjusting doctoral programs to increase doctoral program completion rates, various strategies have been proposed to increase doctoral program completion rates, and at least one type of strategy has been created, implemented, and evaluated for increasing doctoral program completion rates.
Proposed strategies for increasing doctoral completion rates have included leveraging the admissions process more, improving student preparedness, improving social integration, and maximizing the effectiveness of faculty advisor support. One strategy that has been shown to be effective at increasing doctoral program completion and student retention is the use of the cohort model [40, 72, 81, 82]. A cohort model provides a context that may facilitate other possible mediating variables for doctoral student success such as social connectedness between the faculty advisor and the student, a sense of belonging in the student, and curricular structure.
4.1 Admissions
Rockinson et al. [51] suggest that reducing attrition may begin as early as the admissions process if criteria that are effective at forecasting success in completing the doctoral degree can be identified. Individual criteria (e.g., academic, affective) that may be able to be identified in the admissions process are associated with attrition from doctoral programs [22]. For example, Rockinson et al. [51] recommend recruiting and selecting applicants who are internally motivated, because internal motivation is an important factor associated with doctoral program completion. Once admitted, adequately preparing the student for the rigor of the work ahead may be the next step for helping to maximize the likelihood of doctoral degree completion. While I think that screening more carefully in the admissions process may be helpful, I believe more gains in effective intervention may be in after students begin a doctoral program such as preparing them well and helping to ensure supportive relationships among students and with their faculty advisors.
4.2 Preparedness
Ensuring doctoral program applicants who are admitted have a good understanding of the rigors of the doctoral program may help ensure these students will complete the doctoral program. Doctoral program faculty advisors and administrators need to explicitly address with students the expectations and goals of the program to help limit factors leading to attrition [36]. Breitenbach [61] and Rockinson et al. [51] have recommended orientation or mentorship programs to provide information to doctoral students and their families about expectations for successfully completing the doctoral program (e.g., time, money, organization skills, intellectual rigor, procedures). Effective programs may need to develop and implement processes (e.g., orientation programs) that help students understand the expectations of the program and especially the culminating project, as attrition often happens during the culminating project phase of their doctoral program [38]. Preparing students effectively may facilitate other relevant factors to doctoral program completion such as student perceived competence and motivation.
4.3 Faculty advisor support
Strategies for improving faculty advisor support of students might also facilitate factors known to be important to doctoral student success such as student self-regulation which in turn may facilitate student perceived competence. This may require identifying student psychological needs (perhaps identified in the admissions process) that faculty advisors can then support. Incorporating instruction into the doctoral program curriculum on how to improve self-regulated learning skills may be effective [80], and perhaps this could be incorporated into any preparedness interventions as well.
Doctoral students often struggle with the unstructured process through which they are expected to conduct independent research for their culminating research project [83]. Unlike the structure of their core courses, conducting independent research can often be a vague process and can cause anxiety. Gordon [83] argues that faculty advisors have a responsibility to work with students in such a way that they can achieve timely completion of their independent research project to prevent attrition. Perhaps this level of guidance could be accomplished through the curriculum itself. Rockinson et al. [51] recommend courses that are relevant to the completion of the culminating project to improve the likelihood of completion, because relevant courses are more conducive to academic performance. A relevant and structured curriculum that incorporates opportunities for teaching self-regulation skills may facilitate a positive student-faculty advisor relationship which has been shown to be associated with doctoral program completion as well as student persistence and retention.
4.4 Social integration
Rockinson et al. [51] recommend providing opportunities for students for social integration. Other researchers have also suggested that doctoral students be provided with more engagement opportunities with peers to feel less isolated [60, 65] and mediate stress [66]. Similarly, Boone et al. [54] have recommended that “students should create social and academic networks to gain the emotional and academic support to achieve learning goals and complete their programs of study” (p. 761) and “universities should consider providing resources to promote and facilitate unofficial student learning groups, such as online forums” (p. 761). Using a cohort model can facilitate the creation of these types of networks, and Breitenbach [61] and Rockinson et al. [51] recommend using a cohort model to foster a sense of belonging and connectedness with other students and with faculty. Various opportunities exist to increase social integration, and the effectiveness of social integration strategies on doctoral program completion should be evaluated.
5. Conclusions
Doctoral program completion rates have been consistently low for decades [2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14]; inevitably the negative impacts individually [10, 16, 21], societally [23, 24, 25], and economically [23, 26] of students not completing doctoral degrees persist. Much research has helped us to understand potential barriers to and facilitators of doctoral program completion.
Potential barriers to students completing doctoral programs may include low motivation [10, 25, 32, 33], being unclear about expectations of the program [10, 38, 40, 41, 42], feeling isolated [40], an unsupportive relationship with their faculty advisor [25, 34, 36, 37, 38], an unsupportive departmental culture [10, 38, 39], a lack of support from family and friends [35], and unstable or lack of funding [43, 44, 45]. Potential facilitators of students completing doctoral programs may include having motivation [25, 26, 46, 47, 48, 49], being clear about expectations of the program [50, 51, 52], sufficient social integration [25, 50, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69], a positive faculty-advisor situation which can take on a variety of forms [10, 16, 25, 36, 37, 38, 43, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62], and support from family and friends [35, 48, 51, 54, 74]. While there may be additional barriers and facilitators at broader levels, these present program level factors that could be intervened on by administrators of doctoral programs through various strategies related to the admissions process, preparing students more, and cultivating an environment that fosters positive faculty advisor support and social integration.
As this chapter has exhibited, there are many opportunities for the design, implementation, and evaluation of strategies focused on increasing doctoral program completion by intervening on one or more of the many factors shown to be associated with doctoral program completion or doctoral student retention or persistence. Research of these strategies should use pretest-posttest designs to assess the effect of any given factor on doctoral program completion to gain a better understanding of the mechanisms underpinning any intervention. A strategy for increasing doctoral program completion may involve anywhere from one to multiple factors reviewed in this chapter already known to likely have an impact. A multifaceted approach, though, is encouraged perhaps prioritizing and integrating the factors that appear to be most relevant and/or most feasible to address given the context for research available. Putting the current knowledge about potential barriers and facilitators to doctoral program completion to use through interventions with the goal of improving doctoral completion rates may ultimately help relieve the negative individual, societal, and economic impacts of students not completing their doctoral degrees.
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