Almost universally, residential doctoral programs have reported attrition rates of up to 50% for face-to-face programs and 50-70% for online doctoral programs. The purpose of this critical review was to explore current literature for doctoral attrition and persistence to explore reasons and attributes for improved persistence to completion. We…

Although the number of foreign students enrolled in economics doctoral programs in the United States has gradually increased, no need exists to modify curricula to meet the needs of these students. During 1981-1982, in 13 of the leading economics programs, foreign students comprised 36 percent of graduate enrollments and 45 percent of…

Barriers to doctoral dissertation completion were identified from a review of empirical studies of doctoral graduates and graduate students who had not completed a dissertation (ABD students) and reviews of components of doctoral persistence. The Dissertation Barriers Scale, comprising 45 items, was constructed and administered jointly with 2…

This paper addresses the recommendation made by a recent study that the Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree be rejected as the graduate degree in education and the corollary of this recommendation, that the Doctor of Education degree (Ed.D.) be the standard degree for advanced study in education. This paper reviews data on trends in the incidence…

The availability and characteristics of graduate programs in educational administration offered by universities in African and Caribbean countries belonging to the Commonwealth are summarized in this paper. The programs reviewed are offered by universities in the West Indies, Guyana, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Kenya, and Nigeria. The paper notes that…

This paper describes selected issues and concerns facing students who are deciding upon a masters or doctoral program in instructional technology. Issues of recognition, program identification, and environment are considered to help students trying to choose a program from the nearly 200 masters level and over 60 doctoral level programs offered by…

Four approaches to measuring quality in graduate education are reviewed, and the approach used at the graduate school at Ohio State University is assessed. Four approaches found in the literature are: measuring quality by reputation, by scholarly productivity, by correlating reputation and scholarly productivity, and by multiple measures. Ohio…

This paper reports the results of a literature reviewed on models or approaches to curriculum development and evaluation used or are currently in use at the college level in recreation and leisure studies. Trends in this field are identified, analyzed, and summarized according to themes. Most of the data available in the literature were about…

Given the growing need to look across national borders in order to be prepared for global challenges confronting higher education in the coming decades, it can be expected that institutional administrators in the U.S. and other western countries will need information on the quality and efficiency of their activities, including an international…

Methods that are based on teaching children are not appropriate for teaching adults. As early as 1929, the education literature contained references to successful teachers of adults as those who deviated from "sound" pedagogical practices. The work of Malcolm Knowles solidified the field of adult education and established the term…

Traditional and revised models of psychological training fail to prepare graduate students to be teachers or effective faculty members. This paper addresses the mentoring needed by graduate psychology students who aspire to academic positions. The mentoring of future academicians requires different processes than the mentoring of future clinical…

Columbia and New York University probably served as the breeding grounds for the debates about whether nursing is a practice discipline, a clinical science, or a basic science, as well as for arguments about how practice and research should be related and, ultimately, how the DNS differs from the PhD. (MLW)

An overview of the nature and content of doctoral study in higher education is presented, focusing on an analysis of the literature indicating potential outcomes of these programs. The type of training for academic administrators and the significance of this training for degree recipients and for colleges and universities are examined. The study…

The percentage of speech communication doctoral graduates employed full time and the percentage working in academic institutions have declined considerably since 1968. The glut of humanities doctorates appears to present three courses of action: increase undergraduate enrollments, decrease graduate enrollments, or increase nonacademic employment…

This study compared doctoral students at three stages of their graduate career in the areas of relations with faculty, relations with peers, emphases of classes and other program experiences, personal gains due to the program, and attitudes toward the program. A sample of 596 doctoral students at the University of Illinois (Chicago) were surveyed…