First Things First

If I could have gotten a dollar for every student who, in referring to the period after the Comprehensive Exams, blithely said to me “I have to finish this degree in one year or less!” I would pay off a significant amount of my own student loans! However, the hard fact is that most students will not complete their dissertations within a year of finishing their coursework or completing the Comprehensive Exams, which precede the process of getting a dissertation approved and defended.

Sadly, the attrition rate for doctoral students is extraordinarily high, and there are many reasons why this is so; one reason involves running out of funding. Many PhD hopefuls embark on their doctoral journeys only to find that, somewhere along the line, they cannot afford to continue – and so they are forced to quit the program. This post deals with one essential element that contributes to the high attrition rate, and if universities shared this cautionary information with PhD applicants, perhaps PhD aspirants might make better informed decisions concerning whether or not they can complete the journey in a reasonable length of time, or not. Then, perhaps, the attrition rate might be reduced – if even by a little.

Some Startling Statistics

If you have earned a PhD, you are a member of a very exclusive club. According to the U.S. Census Bureau (2013), less than 2% of the adult population in America belonged to that club; in fact, the percentage of adults in the United States who hold a PhD degree is approximately 1.67% (US Census Bureau). Additionally, almost 50% of hopefuls who venture to join this elite group – even after spending thousands of dollars to join – never get the satisfaction of identifying themselves as members of this club.

BD*2 = PhD

According to many published reports, on average, it takes twice as long to earn a doctorate as it does to earn a 4-year Bachelor degree (BD), and it often takes as long as10 years to complete this terminal degree.

Glenn (2009) reported that Stock (2002) presented the findings of a study that tracked 586 doctoral students; after 5 years, only 27% had completed their degrees, 34% had dropped out, and 39% were still at it, working to complete their degrees beyond 5 years. Braude (2014) pointed out that Humanities departments have decided that 5 – 7 years is “the ideal time to completion” (para. 4). Additionally, reports claim that only about 57% of PhD students will have earned their degrees by the end of 10 years. I know of several doctoral learners who have dropped out of their programs because they ran out of funding – and I am sure that if you are a PhD student, you do, too!

The Council of Graduate Schools’ PhD Completion Project

In an effort to understand the reasons behind the high attrition rate of doctoral students, in 2002 and 2003, the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) launched a 2-phase project that spanned 7 years to study the PhD attrition rate phenomenon; this study ended in 2010. One of their goals was to provide information to schools that would enable them to shorten the length of time it takes to acquire a PhD. The CGS sought to identify contributors to the attrition problem, offer solutions, and develop best practices for universities to follow in creating strategies to reverse this trend. Not surprisingly, they found that financial ability was a major contributor to the problem, but so were many other issues that were related to advising, mentorship, and admissions (among other factors). The CGS offered some solutions to address the attrition rate problem and one of these solutions involved the issue of transparency, so that students could make informed decisions.

The Council of Graduate Schools’ Recommendations on Transparency

In their Executive Summary (2008) the CGS stated that, among the universities that participated in the PhD Completion Project, a consistent theme had been identified, which had to do with the fit or match between the student and a particular program, and the quality of students who were accepted into these programs. With specific reference to under-represented students, recommendations were made regarding recruitment, transparency, and admissions. Regarding transparency, the CGS recommendation was to:

Improve department websites to ensure that each includes additional data, information, and resources necessary for prospective students to make informed decisions; increase transparency in the selection processes and clarify expectations for students in their doctoral programs, including assessment milestones. (p. 2; bold, mine)

The idea of helping prospective students to make informed decisions by increasing transparency and clarifying expectations grabbed my attention as I thought about how transparency concerning the true cost of completing a PhD program and one’s financial ability to complete a doctoral program might impact enrollment and attrition rates. For example…

The “F-word” – How it Impacts the Completion of Your Terminal Degree

One of the first things that the PhD aspirant wants to know before embarking on the journey is: will I be able to pay for this? While many pay for their education out of personal funds, many more depend on financial aid to see them through. If you happen to be one of the many who depend on financial aid loans for your education, you may have been assured by your counselor that you had enough financial aid to see you through. Well, chances are – that may not actually be so! And here is where a certain type of transparency can make a difference…

Transparency = Informed Consent

In your initial contact with your Student Advisor you might be told that you have enough funds to cover your program – (most likely, this means the course work); however, what you will not be told is that you might run out of funds somewhere along the line, quite possibly during the Comprehensive Exams or dissertation writing process. You see, in America, there are three major parts to a doctoral degree program: (1) Course-work, (2) the Comprehensive Exams, and (3) writing the Dissertation and, while it is fairly easy to calculate the cost of completing your course-work, there really is no way to predict costs beyond the course-work. That is because everything from that point on depends on passing the Comprehensive Exams, getting full approval for your research proposal (i.e. the Research Plan), and writing the dissertation. This is a linear path that involves clearing several milestones; for my school (Capella University), obtaining mentor approval is Milestone 2, and it is just one of 13 rigorous milestones that a student must surpass before getting to her final defense!

So, in fact, while the course-work itself can take you a couple of years or less to complete, the Comps and dissertation period can easily exceed 3 years and cost you far more than the course-work did. The truth is that approximately 70% of students fail the Comps on their first attempt (google “comprehensive exams failure rate”), and even if they pass on the first attempt, the Research Plan and the dissertation writing process are made up of numerous iterative processes that involve mentor feedback and your response to their feedback, all of which extends the completion time of your dissertation.

I know of some students who, a year and a half after passing the Comprehensive Exams had not even progressed through Milestone 2 to achieve Mentor Approval status on their RP!

Managing Expectations + Clarity = Reduced Attrition Rates

One way to reduce the attrition rate, provide clarity so that students can manage their expectations, and enable prospective students to make informed decisions might be to provide them information on the Comps Exams failure rate, the iterative process involved, and the time constraints these processes can impose on completion. If schools were to provide some sort of calculator tool that students can use to create different scenarios that can give them a better idea of the costs that would be generated under different scenarios, this would also help them to make more informed decisions about whether or not to embark on this arduous journey. By the way – unless you are not constrained by financial concerns, this cautionary tale concerns every student for whom finances are a concern.

In a competitive education delivery environment, do schools have a moral or social responsibility to provide this type of information to prospective student-clients? That is debatable; however, without this bit of vital information, are doctoral students really making realistic and informed decisions when they embark on this journey? The takeaway is this: given the time and financial costs, do you still want to join this club?

In my next and future posts I will discuss such things as course-work, the Comps Exam and how it can potentially extend the completion of your PhD by several years, the mentorship process, peer-mentoring, and how these things can also contribute to the length of your PhD journey. Subsequent posts will discuss tips for passing the Comps on the first attempt, as well as provide valuable information on reducing the feedback iterations during the development of the Research Proposal (or Research Plan – RP) phase, and getting down to the business of completing your dissertation within one term of  obtaining full approval of your RP.

Dr. Ruth

References

Braude, M. (2014). Finishing a humanities dissertation in six years (or Less). The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from www.chronicle.com

Stock, W. A., Siegfried, J. J., & Finegan, T. A. (2011). Completion rates and time-to-degree in economics PhD programs. The American Economic Review, 101(3), 176-187. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1257/aer.101.3.176

Links to Resources

The US Census Bureau (all races): http://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/education/data/cps/2013/tables.html

The PhD Completion Project: http://www.phdcompletion.org/index.asp