Attrition Rates in Phd Programs

Counselor Education Discuss the key points in the literature review and how the author used this section to identify the gap or problem addressed in the study. Describe the phenomenon under study and how it is a key component in this qualitative research study. Describe the problem and how it informed the research questions under study. Describe the qualitative design used and why it is appropriate for the identified problem and research questions. Support your response with a peer-reviewed citation from a research source.

Assess the appropriateness of the instruments used to collect data and answer the research questions as well as to address the stated problem. The researchers chose to focus on doctoral student attrition which occurs across academic disciplines and presents problems for noncompleting students and the programs from which they withdraw. The problems that are inherient in this situation are numerous and occur at different levels for all the different stakeholders involved.

For example, the department that sponsors a PhD student loses an opportunity cost due to the fact that they could have devoted their resources to another candidate that was either willing and/or able to finish the program in contribute in some manner to the university as well as the field in general. The PhD student also could have also most likely better devoted their time elsewhere, in light of their attrition, which could represent a stumbling block along their career development path.

Furthermore, whoever contributed the financial resources for the student to study, whether it be the university, public funding, or the student themselves, would also be disadvantaged by an investment that would not offer the returns that it would have otherwise had if the student had graduated.

Therefore, the researchers pose the follow research question guided the present study, "What is the experience of doctoral attrition in counselor education?" Since the attrition of a PhD student represent a potentially significant misuse, or inefficient use of resources, understanding the experiences that are related to attrition could help to illuminate the factors that led up to the decision to retire from the PhD program, as well as an opportunity to improve resource and risk management relative to PhD students and PhD programs.

PhD Program Attrition Overview Given the importance of PhD students to graduate schools worldwide, there have been many efforts to understand the factors that are relevant to issues related to PhD student attrition from the perspective of universities. For example, one study used data from the Andrew W.

Mellon Foundation's Graduate Education Initiative (GEI) that is an organization that provides funding to some of the top graduate students in the U.S., there were fifty-four universities in total, including most Ivy League institutions, that served as the source of data for one particular study that examined the attrition over a fifteen year period (Ehrenberg, Jakubson, Groen, So, & Price, 2007).

The study used survey data on entrants to PhD programs at 44 of the "treatment" departments and 41 "control" departments during a 15-year period that spanned the start of the GEI and then used a factor analysis to group more than one hundred program characteristics into a smaller number of factors, and rate the impact of the GEI on each school, and the impact of each on attrition and graduation probabilities are estimated (Ehrenberg, Jakubson, Groen, So, & Price, 2007).

The results that the study concluded with suggest that GEI program impacts were strongest on the summer requirements, seminar, and clarity of expectations factors and also on the proportion of individuals who said their department encouraged them to complete their dissertations as quickly as possible; other results presented suggest that the GEI reduced attrition rates and improved graduation rates primarily through the routes of improving clarity of expectations and encouraging students to finish their dissertations as quickly as possible (Ehrenberg, Jakubson, Groen, So, & Price, 2007).

Article Review Although many studies have been conducted from the perspective of the university and the graduate program, far fewer have been conducted with more narrow research interests such as examing the attritution phenomon from individual academic disciplines. The article reviewed looks at PhD from a student's perspective and considers how social-personal matches, among other factors, many influence attrition rates for PhD students who are studying for their doctoral degrees in counselor education (Willis & Carmichael, 2011).

This study used a criterion-based sampling method to select participants which included factors such as: Each participant must have been enrolled in any doctoral program in counselor education between 1975 and 2005 and must have subsequently withdrawn from the program and eight participants were selected based on these qualifications; six of which pariticpated in the study. Although the sample size was considerably small compared to other.