Students who are the first in their families to graduate from college have significant challenges and yet comprise a significant percentage of the number of awarded doctorates in the United States.

Socialization has become a common framework through which to understand the doctoral student experience; however, the framework has predominately been used as a lens through which to understand traditional, single-discipline doctoral student experiences. Interdisciplinary doctoral programs are becoming increasingly common in both the United States…

Interdisciplinarity has become a growing emphasis in the U.S. higher education and the prevalence of interdisciplinary doctoral programs is one indicator of such growth. Despite this growth, the experiences of individuals within interdisciplinary doctoral programs have been largely unexamined in the literature. This paper examines a self-designed…

Institutional prestige is an inherent part of higher education in the U.S., resulting in rankings that often become the rationale for resource allocation including research grants and increased admission applications. While the desire for prestige and high rankings are important to research universities, the reality is that not all universities…

In this study, we explored the experience of Asian international doctoral students in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields at one research-extensive university. We found that Asian international doctoral students in the STEM fields at this institution were often isolated from their peers and faculty, faced an array…

Sixty doctoral students and 34 faculty members were interviewed in departments identified as having high and low doctoral student completion rates at one institution in the United States in order to examine the cultural contexts and structures that facilitate or hinder doctoral student completion. This paper outlines the differences in…

Doctoral student attrition in the United States has reached alarming proportions, with reported rates of approximately 50% across disciplines (Nettles and Millett 2006). Attrition rates of underrepresented populations have been reported at higher rates across disciplines (Council of Graduate Schools 2004), pointing to a disparate experience for…

The term "success" in higher education has been used widely to describe multiple outcomes, practices, and variables. In doctoral education, in particular, the study of success is paramount as only 50% of those students who enter doctoral education actually complete the degree. The definition of success, however, remains elusive. This study…

Socialization has become the common theoretical framework used to better understand the complexity of the doctoral student experience. In particular, theories of socialization have been connected to the issue of attrition in doctoral education, with researchers often attributing poor or inappropriate socialization to a student's decision to depart…

Twenty doctoral students in the disciplines of chemistry and history were interviewed to better understand the socialization processes that influence their success and how these processes differ by year in the degree program and disciplinary culture. Five major themes emerged describing these socialization processes and how they facilitate or…

The transition to independent scholar is part and parcel of the doctoral education process (Council of Graduate Schools, 2005) as well as an integral part of the socialization process that occurs while in graduate school (Weidman, Twale, & Stein, 2001). This article details the journey toward independence, rooted in the socialization process of…

Undergraduate student involvement has been linked to retention and satisfaction (Astin, 1993; Tinto, 1993); however, no empirical research has yet been conducted on the outcomes of involvement at the graduate level. We interviewed 10 doctoral students in higher education in order to explore graduate student involvement, finding that it is not only…

The preparation of graduate students for faculty careers is not a new discussion in academe. The debate over teaching versus research preparation stretches back to the inception of graduate education in this country (Atwell, 1996; Berelson, 1960). However, the lingering concerns about the preparation for the faculty role and all its components…