Leaving the Ivory Tower: The Causes and Consequences of Departure from Doctoral StudyGraduate schools have faced attrition rates of approximately 50 percent for the past 40 years. They have tried to address the problem by focusing on student characteristics and by assuming that if they could make better, more informed admissions decisions, attrition rates would drop. Yet high attrition rates persist and may in fact be increasing. Leaving the Ivory Tower thus turns the issue around and asks what is wrong with the structure and process of graduate education. Based on hard evidence drawn from a survey of 816 completers and noncompleters and on interviews with noncompleters, high- and low-Ph.D productive faculty and Directors of Graduate study, this book locates the root cause of attrition in the social structure and cultural organization of graduate education. |
Contents
The Invisible Problem | 1 |
Explaining the High and Persistent Rate of Attrition | 20 |
Explaining Departure | 39 |
The Lack of Information | 50 |
The Absence of Community | 82 |
Disappointment with the Learning Experience | 110 |
The Quality of the AdviserAdvisee Relationship | 131 |
The Decision to Leave | 166 |
Chapter 9 Personal Consequences of Departure | 192 |
Labor Market Consequences of Departure | 219 |
Conclusions and Recommendations | 255 |
Most and Least Successful AdviserAdvisee Relationships from the Point of View of the Faculty | 279 |
| 290 | |
| 299 | |
About the Author | |
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Leaving the Ivory Tower: The Causes and Consequences of Departure from ... Barbara E. Lovitts No preview available - 2001 |
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academic activities addition adviser appear asked at-risk completers attended attrition attrition rates become better career cause cognitive maps completers Consequently contrast courses decisions dents departmental differences discipline discussed dissertation doctoral duration effect emotional entered expectations experience fact factors faculty feel felt field four graduate education graduate school graduate students groups higher humanities ideas important indicate individual integration intellectual interactions interest interview knowledge labor market lack learning leaving less lives mean meet noncompleters opportunities participation percent persistence Ph.D positive problems professional professor questions reasons received relationship requirements responses Rural salary sample satisfied sciences sector selected social stage status structure survey Table talked teaching things thought tion took undergraduate understand Urban wanted women
Popular passages
Page 290 - Bean,J. (1980). Dropouts and turnover: The synthesis and test of a causal model of student attrition.
Page 290 - The relation of graduate students' role relations to their stage of academic career, employment, and academic success. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 7, 428-441 . . (1976).
Page 290 - P 1982. Conceptual models of student attrition: How theory can help the institutional researcher. In ET Pascarella (ed.), Studying student attrition, pp. 17-33. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Bean, J.