What You Don't Know: Graduate Deans' Knowledge of Doctoral Completion Rates

Elgar, Frank J.; Klein, Raymond M.

doi:10.1057/palgrave.hep.8300059

Cited by 12 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 4 publications

(2 reference statements)

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“…Indeed, doctoral programs struggle to shorten the time to degree, prevent attrition, and guide doctoral students to meaningful careers after training [22]. More than 85% of graduate deans surveyed in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the US have taken steps to establish supervisor guidelines to help PhD students complete their programs in a timely fashion [23]. Amid the drive to shorten doctoral training periods, a persistent and understandable faculty concern is that to add such programming during training might take focus away from the laboratory and could potentially slow research progress, which might negatively impact grant funding, publication output, and time to degree [24].…”

Section: Efficiency and Productivity: Time To Degree And Publicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A cross-institutional analysis of the effects of broadening trainee professional development on research productivity

et al. 2021

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PhD-trained scientists are essential contributors to the workforce in diverse employment sectors that include academia, industry, government, and nonprofit organizations. Hence, best practices for training the future biomedical workforce are of national concern. Complementing coursework and laboratory research training, many institutions now offer professional training that enables career exploration and develops a broad set of skills critical to various career paths. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded academic institutions to design innovative programming to enable this professional development through a mechanism known as Broadening Experiences in Scientific Training (BEST). Programming at the NIH BEST awardee institutions included career panels, skill-building workshops, job search workshops, site visits, and internships. Because doctoral training is lengthy and requires focused attention on dissertation research, an initial concern was that students participating in additional complementary training activities might exhibit an increased time to degree or diminished research productivity. Metrics were analyzed from 10 NIH BEST awardee institutions to address this concern, using time to degree and publication records as measures of efficiency and productivity. Comparing doctoral students who participated to those who did not, results revealed that across these diverse academic institutions, there were no differences in time to degree or manuscript output. Our findings support the policy that doctoral students should participate in career and professional development opportunities that are intended to prepare them for a variety of diverse and important careers in the workforce.

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Section: Efficiency and Productivity: Time To Degree And Publicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A cross-institutional analysis of the effects of broadening trainee professional development on research productivity

et al. 2021

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“…These concerns were also echoed in Western Europe (Kehm, 2004, Maher, Ford & Thompson, 2004) Australia (Bourke, Holbrook, Lovat, & Farley, 2004;Sinclair, 2004;Kiley, 2011), Canada (Elgar & Klein, 2004) and the United States (Golde, 2005;Council for Graduate Schools 2008, 2010. Along with the arts and humanities, the social sciences were seen to have particularly low submission rates (Wright & Cochrane, 2000), and as a consequence the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) has been in the vanguard when introducing remedial changes to the management of the doctoral studentships that they fund.…”

Section: Doctoral Submission and Completion Ratesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Negotiating a ‘Scary Gap’: Doctoral Candidates, ‘Writing Up’ Qualitative Data and the Contemporary Supervisory Relationship

Humphrey

Simpson

2012

Journal of Education and Training Studies

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The complex task of 'writing up' qualitative data provides difficulties and challenges for both doctoral candidates and their supervisors, which can often result in detrimental effects on the supervisory relationship. These effects can be heightened by the pressures currently felt by supervisors, not least to ensure their supervisees submit in a timely fashion. We argue here that these pressures are in part responsible for a shift in supervisory pedagogy from a relational to a processual grounding. This article addresses some of the consequences of these effects via analysis of interviews with doctoral candidates and their supervisors from a series of interdisciplinary research training workshops in the UK designed to provide help for doctoral candidates engaged in writing up qualitative data. In these workshops doctoral candidates came together briefly for a residential workshop along with peers at the same stage of the doctoral cycle who were away from their institutional homes. We discuss the relationship between process and relationality and how a workshop of this kind might impact on writing and help with timely submission.

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“…The most common factor that this author found among graduate deans was their commitment to progressing graduate education at their institution. One study found that graduate deans' position on campus may influence doctoral completion through their ability to affect policies (Elgar & Klein, 2004). According to these authors, the role of the graduate dean was to advise schools and faculty on program requirements, thesis guidelines, supervision of students, and thesis examinations.…”

Section: Background Of the Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Roles and Responsibilities of Graduate Education Deans: Mapping Current and Future Job Challenges

2021

JHETP

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Graduate education is changing, driven by social issues, expectations, and technology. Leaders of graduate education play important roles in understanding these changes. The purpose for conducting the study was to profile the professional setting of the graduate dean, exploring the roles, responsibilities, and challenges of the position. Using a research-team developed instrument, graduate education leaders were surveyed. Descriptive findings of the study included the nomenclature of titles who held full time appointments and had an academic background in the liberal arts. The roles and responsibilities of these respondents were reported as a group and separated by research and comprehensive universities.

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What You Don't Know: Graduate Deans' Knowledge of Doctoral Completion Rates

Cited by 12 publications

References 4 publications

A cross-institutional analysis of the effects of broadening trainee professional development on research productivity

A cross-institutional analysis of the effects of broadening trainee professional development on research productivity

Negotiating a ‘Scary Gap’: Doctoral Candidates, ‘Writing Up’ Qualitative Data and the Contemporary Supervisory Relationship

The Roles and Responsibilities of Graduate Education Deans: Mapping Current and Future Job Challenges

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