The Part-Time Doctoral Student Experience

Abstract

Although scholarly interest in doctoral education has increased dramatically over the last two decades, much of this attention has focused on the experiences of doctoral students who are enrolled full-time in their programs. This study explored the experiences of 10 part-time doctoral students in different disciplines. Through semi-structured interviews with these students, we found that many of the issues surrounding these part-time doctoral students involved concerns related to balance, support, and fitting the mold of a "traditional" doctoral student. Importantly, while some of these issues are consistent with the experiences of full-time doctoral students, the experiences of part-time doctoral students are more complicated and required sustained and flexible efforts to adequately address. We conclude by suggesting both institutional and empirical efforts to better understand the complicated experiences of part-time doctoral students as well as to develop multi-faceted initiatives to support the experiences of this growing doctoral student population.

A Preliminary Examination of Doctoral Student Retention Factors in Private Online Workspaces

“…Improving engagement opportunities by implementing a collaborative environment for online doctoral students may facilitate satisfaction and provide tools that enable program persistence. A reoccurring theme in doctoral education is the unavoidable attrition of doctoral students (Bowen & Rudenstine, 1992;Gardner & Gopaul, 2012;Lovitts, 2001;Spaulding & Rockinson-Szapkiw, 2012). Although some attrition is inevitable, providing support in the form of web-based communities for online doctoral students as they navigate the unfamiliar and complex research requirements may be one solution to improve retention.…”

“…Attrition in graduate programs remains problematic (Bowen & Rudenstine, 1992;Gardner & Gopaul, 2012;O'Keeffe, 2013), and strategies are needed to improve doctoral student progress (Allen & Seaman, 2011;Berman et al, 2012;Gardner, 2008). Existing empirical evidence identifies numerous challenges that commonly affect doctoral students.…”

“…Distance education has changed significantly (Gooch & Watts, 2014;Simonson, Schlosser, & Orellana, 2011), and educational shifts due to evolving learning environments provide opportunities to enhance learning prospects for doctoral students. More research is needed to investigate online collaboration using video tools (Gardner & Gopaul, 2012). Web systems create communities for online students, and virtual technology has altered the way faculty interact, teach, and manage doctoral students (Maor Ensor, & Fraser, 2015).…”

“…For decades, attrition from doctoral programs has averaged between 40% and 70% (Bowen & Rudenstine, 1992;Gardner & Gopaul, 2012;Lovitts, 2001;Spaulding & Rockinson-Szapkiw, 2012) while attrition for online students is an additional 10% to 20% higher (Allen & Seaman, 2011;Marshall, Greenberg, & Machun, 2012;Rovai, 2002). Retaining doctoral students is a multifaceted problem affecting institutions and students worldwide.…”

Exploring Mature-Aged Students’ Motives for Doctoral Study and their Challenges: A Cross Border Research Collaboration

“…Factors contributing to attrition included the high cost of pursuing graduate studies and salary lost, misfit of supervisor-supervisee pairing, mismatch of student expectation and program delivery, students experiencing social-emotional isolation, and their failure to socialize to institutional culture (Ali & Kohun, 2007;Golde, 1998Golde, , 2005Lott, Gardner, & Powers, 2009;Lovitts, 2008;Powell & Green, 2007). Crucial factors that enabled timely doctoral completion included students' persistence and resilience, and support from family and friends (Ali & Kohun, 2007;Gardner & Gopaul, 2012;Ivankova & Stick, 2007;Jairam & Kahl, 2012;D. Kim & Otts, 2010;Manathunga, 2005;Marshall & Green, 2006).…”