Why do students consider dropping out of doctoral degrees? Institutional and personal factors

By Montserrat Castelló, Marta Pardo, A. Sala-Bubaré, Núria Suñé-Soler. 2017

202 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Despite the increasing popularity of doctoral education, many students do not complete their studies, and very little information is available about them. Understanding why some students consider that they do not want to, or cannot, continue with their studies is essential to reduce dropout rates and to improve the overall quality of doctoral programmes. This study focuses on the motives students give for considering dropping out of their doctoral degree. Participants were 724 social sciences doctoral students from 56 Spanish universities, who responded to a questionnaire containing doctoral degree conditions questions and an open-ended question on motives for dropping out. Results showed that a third of the sample, mainly the youngest, female and part time students, stated that they had intended to drop out. The most frequent motives for considering dropping out were difficulties in achieving a balance between work, personal life and doctoral studies and problems with socialization. Overall, results offer a complex picture that has implications for the design of doctoral programmes, such as the conditions and demands of part-time doctoral studies or the implementation of educational proposals that facilitate students’ academic and personal integration into the scientific community in order to prevent the development of a culture of institutional neglect.

Subfields: General Health Professions, Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9cce5eed3a1e3ae961cc986a5e600e2246292653

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In General Health Professions

1. M. Fokkens-Bruinsma
2. George Gunnesch-Luca
3. Raluca Livinƫi
4. E. Jansen
5. D. Iliescu
6. E. V. Rooij

In Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health

1. M. Fokkens-Bruinsma
2. E. Jansen
3. D. Iliescu
4. E. V. Rooij

Citations in the corpus

• Factors that influence PhD candidates’ success: the importance of PhD project characteristics (2019, background): “Castelló et al. (2017) listed the high demands of a doctoral degree, which interfered with people’s personal lives, as responsible for dropping out as well.”
• Stressors in early-stage doctoral students* (2018, background): “balance within this transition period, where acquiring a good work–life balance was itself reported as a stressor; this lack of balance has been shown to be a source of motivation for dropping out of doctoral study (Castello et al. 2017).”
• Research self-efficacy: A meta-analysis (2021, background): “This is particularly important given the relatively high rates of dropout for doctoral students (Bair & Haworth, 2004), and RSE as a personal resource could be an important mechanism for the control of these rates (Castello et al., 2017).”