When failing is the only option: explaining failure to finish PhDs in Estonia

Career Patterns of Doctoral Graduates: Evidence From Estonia

“…The reason to take note of the background of our PhDs emerges from the fact that young and linear students will probably have different expectations of doctoral studies also in regard to their future career paths. As revealed by previous studies, non-linear doctoral students are often those who work full-time in parallel with their doctoral studies (Vadi et al 2015), and therefore the degree takes longer (Kindsiko 2013) and drop-out rates are higher (Vassil and Solvak 2012). Still, they are also the cohort that tends to prefer the non-academic to the academic labour market after graduation, thereby potentially raising the value of the doctoral degree in the non-academic labour market, but also bringing new knowledge to their professional practice.…”

Supervisors’ Conceptions of Doctoral Studies

“…A recent study of doctoral students (Vassil and Solvak 2012) showed alarming results regarding the doctoral education in Estonia. Sixty per cent of PhD students fail to graduate on time or drop out from doctoral programmes.…”

“…Sixty per cent of PhD students fail to graduate on time or drop out from doctoral programmes. The pressure to complete successful doctoral work on time is increasingly important in Estonia (Kärner 2009, Vassil andSolvak 2012) as well as in other countries (see e.g. Kehm 2004).…”

Mastering research: a study about the effectiveness of research master programmes in the Netherlands

“…In answering this question, it is useful to examine the potential independent variables to measure the progress or success of Ph.D. students in the postgraduate research literature. In general, two categories of independent variables are mentioned to explain success in the Ph.D. phase: structural and individual variables (Vassil and Solvak, 2012). Vassil and Solvak did not use the specification of individual variables that already had been introduced by Wright and Cochrane (2000) who suggested the following three main independent variables by making a distinction between two categories of individual variables.…”

“…But for the sake of simplicity in the rest of this section the distinction between structural/institutional and individual (psychological and others) independent variables as described by Vassil and Solvak (2012) will be used.…”