THE IMPACT OF THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE ON TIME TO THE DOCTORATE 1 DRAFT. The Impact of the Student Experience on Time to the Doctorate:

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1 THE IMPACT OF THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE ON TIME TO THE DOCTORATE 1 The Impact of the Student Experience on Time to the Doctorate: An Event History Analysis Utilizing Exit Survey Data Daniel R. Jones-White and Olena Glushko University of Minnesota-Twin Cities Author Note Daniel R. Jones-White, Office of Institutional Research, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities; Olena Glushko, Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.

2 THE IMPACT OF THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE ON TIME TO THE DOCTORATE 2 Abstract Utilizing data collected from an institution s administration of the AGS/AUU Doctoral Exit Survey, this study explores if the doctoral student experience is related to doctoral completion times. Specifically, this study attempts to identify the underlying dimensions of doctoral student attitudes about their experiences in graduate school and how these dimensions of doctoral student experiences impact on time required to complete their doctoral degree. Results demonstrate that student satisfaction with the program, advisor/faculty satisfaction, and perceptions of program related obstacles are associated with completion times which suggests practical targets for program improvement. Keywords: time to the doctorate, exit survey, event history analysis

3 THE IMPACT OF THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE ON TIME TO THE DOCTORATE 3 The Impact of the Student Experience on Time to the Doctorate: An Event History Analysis Utilizing Exit Survey Data Although the U.S. is currently leading the world in doctoral degree attainment, it faces intense competition with other industrial powers in the rapidly changing global economy. In order to remain competitive, U.S. doctoral education should focus on current vulnerabilities (Wendler, et al., 2010, p. 27), the most critical of which are attrition and time to the doctorate. Recent findings for the Council of Graduate Schools (2008) Ph.D. Completion Project suggest that 6.6% of Ph.D. students left their programs in their first year. By year ten, 30.6% of students left their programs without a doctoral degree. For students who opted to persist in their doctoral studies, only 56.6% completed their degree within ten years (Council of Graduate Schools, 2008). By contrast, Ph.D. completion rates in other industrialized countries tend to be much higher. In the UK, for example, the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE, 2007) found that 72% of full-time and 35% of part-time Ph.D. students completed their degrees within seven years, and 76% of full-time and 48% of part-time Ph.D. students completed their degrees within ten years (p. 13). Since both the direct and opportunity costs to Ph.D. students, universities, and society are very high (Baird, 1993; Wendler et al., 2010), the problems of doctoral student attrition and time to the doctorate have generated renewed interest within the academic community and American society. Conceptual Perspectives Given the plethora of literature concerning graduate student time-to-degree (Abedi & Benkin, 1987; Baird, 1990; Bowen & Rudenstine, 1992; de Valero, 2001; Ehrenberg & Mavros, 1995; Gillingham, Seneca, & Taussig, 1991; Groen, Jakubson, Ehrenberg, Condie, & Liu, 2008; Jiranek, 2010; Picciano, Rudd, Morrison, & Nerad, 2008; Seagram, Gould, & Pyke, 1998;

4 THE IMPACT OF THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE ON TIME TO THE DOCTORATE 4 Stricker, 1994), it is clear that universities worldwide have been trying to address this problem for many years. While there is a heightened recognition of the emerging problem of doctoral student timely graduation, there is little consensus about the sources of the problem. Researchers have identified a number of factors that influence time-to-degree 1, which is interrelated with the attrition problem. These factors can be loosely grouped into two broad theoretical perspectives: 1) individual factors, such as student background characteristics and attributes, financial resources, institutional and external commitments, and 2) institutional-level factors, such as department/program characteristics, academic and research experiences, and department climate. Among the numerous individual explanatory factors that contribute to time-to-degree, empirical studies have identified the importance of demographic characteristics, such as gender (Abedi & Benkin, 1987; Picciano et al., 2008; Seagram et al., 1998) and citizenship (Abedi & Benkin, 1987; Gillingham, et al., 1991). Where models were able to explain gender effects in success outcomes, researchers revealed that men and women reported significantly different experiences in graduate school which may indirectly affect their completion times (Seagram et al., 1998). Challenges posed by doctoral education extend beyond gender as research literature identified significant differences in completion times based on citizenship. Studies demonstrated that international students, on average, complete at faster and higher rates than domestic students (Abedi & Benkin, 1987; Gillingham, et al., 1991; Nerad & Miller, 1996; Park, 2005). Despite the apparent gender and citizenship related differences, disentangling the actual causal influence 1 Scholars also revealed a direct relationship between completion rates and time-to-degree, indicating that a low completion rate correlated with long time-to-degree (Nerad & Miller, 1996, p. 64).

5 THE IMPACT OF THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE ON TIME TO THE DOCTORATE 5 of these variables is difficult as it is likely that these differences reflect structural or cultural barriers rather than differences between individuals. Most perspectives that focus on individual-level characteristics as the source for lengthening time to the docotrate suggest that resources available to graduate students are not sufficient to encourage timely graduation. Gillingham, Seneca, and Taussig (1991) demonstrated that financial resources, such as amount of borrowing and household income, and study hours each had direct effects on expected time to degree for doctoral students (p. 449). Additionally, evidence suggests that the availability of financial support, such as fellowships/grants and research assistantships, decreases time-to-degree, whereas the reliance on other financial sources to pay for graduate school, such as borrowing, off-campus employment, teaching assistantships or tuition waivers, generally increases it (Abedi & Benkin, 1987; Ehrenberg & Mavros, 1995; Gillingham et al., 1991; Jiranek, 2010; Seagram et al., 1998). In addition to individual level financial factors commonly associated with rational decision making and encapsulating cost-benefit ideas, researchers have also identified the importance of academic background in influencing the time-to-completion for doctoral students. In terms of academic background, Baird (1990) suggested that delaying entrance to graduate school, pursuing a Ph.D. at an institution which is different from a student s undergraduate college, and changing the discipline of study contribute to lengthening the doctoral degree completion time. A study by Abedi and Benkin (1987) demonstrated that other life choices, such as the number of dependents in the family, increase the time-to-degree. Finally, individual characteristics, such as ability, motivation, and career goals also play a role in both success and time to the doctorate (Picciano et al., 2008).

6 THE IMPACT OF THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE ON TIME TO THE DOCTORATE 6 Institutional perspectives focus on the structural barriers and opportunities that may affect time-to-degree for doctoral students. Research in this area explored the observed interdisciplinary variance in time-to-degree (Abedi & Benkin, 1987; Baird, 1990; Bowen & Rudenstine, 1992; Gillingham et al., 1991; Jiranek, 2010; Picciano et al., 2008; Seagram et al., 1998; Stricker, 1994). Evaluating both inter- and intra-disciplinary differences in time-tocompletion utilizing data from the National Research Council, Baird (1990) suggested there existed a rough correspondence to the clarity of the central paradigms within disciplines and the degree of agreement about those paradigms (p. 380). As a result, researchers theorized that the explanation for the better graduation rates and shorter time-to-degree associated with fields such as mathematics and sciences, as compared to the humanities or social sciences, stems from the perception that mathematics and sciences have relatively clear and agreed upon bodies of knowledge and procedures (Baird, 1990, p. 380), and the expectations for success are better delineated in these fields. In addition to the field of study, researchers proposed that institutional-level factors influencing time-to-degree focus on departmental resources. This approach suggests that departmental resources, such as the availability and quality of advising, attitudes toward students, and department climate strongly affect a student s degree timing (de Valero, 2001; Girves & Wemmerus, 1988). Girves and Wemmerus (1988), for example, identified that at the doctoral level Being treated as a junior colleague by the advisor accounts for much of the variability in degree progress. He or she serves as a role model and becomes the primary socializing agent in the department (p. 185). Consequently, where students are treated as junior colleagues there is an expectation that they are better socialized in the norms and expectations of graduate school, increasing their likelihood of success. Moreover, research modes that differ

7 THE IMPACT OF THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE ON TIME TO THE DOCTORATE 7 across disciplinary fields and favor either a more individual or more team-based approach to research may account for different socialization patterns in different disciplines (Girves & Wemmerus, 1988; Haldaway, Deblois, & Winchester, 1995). By the same token, Tinto (1993) echoed the importance of the socialization effects of graduate school and academic and department culture. Researchers also found that other departmental factors played a role in doctoral student success, such as the student/faculty ratio and size of the department (Stricker, 1994), satisfaction with program quality and quality of skills training (Picciano et al., 2008), research infrastructure (Jiranek, 2010), and involvement in publications/conference papers (Jiranek, 2010; Seagram et al., 1998). Besides these more intangible departmental resources, research literature has also emphasized the importance of financial support offered to students by the department in time-to-completion rates of doctoral students (Abedi and Benkin, 1987; Ethington & Pisani, 1993; Ehrenberg and Mavros, 1995). While it is unlikely that any of these approaches provide a complete picture of the factors associated with time to the doctorate, scholars have acknowledged the need to explore graduate education outcomes through the lenses of the interaction between student characteristics and institutional factors (de Valero, 2001, p. 342). The present study adapts important aspects of Tinto s (1993) theory of doctoral persistence for the study of doctoral completion times. Emphasizing the longitudinal aspect of doctoral education, Tinto (1993) suggested that completion of the doctorate could potentially be explained by attributes of the student (e.g., educational experiences, student background, etc.), early orientations (e.g., goals, commitments, etc.), institutional experiences (e.g., classroom relations, faculty relations, etc.), integration (academic and social), and research experiences (e.g., research opportunities). Recent research has attempted to apply Tinto s (1993) theory of

8 THE IMPACT OF THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE ON TIME TO THE DOCTORATE 8 persistence to the issue of time to the doctorate. Ampaw and Jaeger (2012), for example, applied the model to the study of the duration times of the three stages of the doctorate (transition stage, development stage, and research stage) and found the differential effects of variables at different stages. Our study attempts to build off their work by including primary data in the analysis of factors effecting completion times. By incorporating student responses to survey questions about their experiences in graduate school, this study aims to determine to what extent a student s academic and social experiences may influence the time required to complete the doctorate. Purposes of the Study The present study utilizes a unique data source to identify and examine the factors related to doctoral student time-to-completion at a large public research university. The study addresses two major research questions: (1) What are the underlying dimensions of doctoral student attitudes about their experiences in graduate school? (2) Are these dimensions of doctoral student experiences related to time required to Data Source and Sample complete the doctoral degree? Method The data used in this study are drawn from a cohort of 681 successful doctoral students who obtained a Ph.D. from the study institution between July 1, 2010 and June 30, In addition to responses pulled from the Survey of Earned Doctorates, this study also takes advantage of a unique dataset that arose from the Association of American Universities Institutional Data Committee comprised of institutional research professionals, deans, and AAU staff charged with developing a survey to explore the overall level of satisfaction levels of

9 THE IMPACT OF THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE ON TIME TO THE DOCTORATE 9 doctoral students with their doctoral studies experience. 2 Given that the AGS/AAU doctoral student exit core survey was developed to build a database of responses to a common set of questions of graduating PhD recipients, it is a potentially excellent source of data for exploring questions related to how graduate school experiences may act to influence the time-tocompletion of doctoral students. Outcome Variable The outcome variable for our study is a successful doctoral student time-to-completion (or time to the doctorate) measured in days (converted to years). Inclusion was predicated on a student completing the doctoral degree between July 1, 2010 and June 30, 2011 and filling out the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities administration of the Survey of Earned Doctorates. 3 The starting point then was the date a student first enrolled in his or her doctoral program. This approach yields data that are free from right censoring 4 as every individual in the sample 2 Between , the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities participated in a pilot project with the NRC that allowed the University to collect the data and submit an electronic file. This allowed the University to combine the NRC s Survey of Earned Doctorate and the AAUDE s Graduate Exit Survey into a single instrument. 3 Students are first invited to participate in the survey when they receive their Graduation Packet and are reminded to participate when they submit their dissertation. Traditionally, the average response rate of the survey is upwards of 90%. 4 While we believe that our focus on successful doctoral students yields a dataset that is technically free of right censoring, it is important to note that the possibility of left truncation (or students entering and completing prior to the completion window) is a recognized limitation of

10 THE IMPACT OF THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE ON TIME TO THE DOCTORATE 10 experienced the event. While this offers certain benefits from a modeling standpoint, it is important to remember that the resulting hazard ratios reflect the model s prediction about the relationship between the independent variables and the timing of completion. The model is unable to offer any insight into whether a variable is related to the occurrence of completion. Consequently, significant and non-significant results can only be interpreted as being related and unrelated to the rate (or timing) of completion, not to whether a doctoral student is successful or not. While time to the doctorate would seem a rather innocuous measure of doctoral student success, it is not without sources of measurement error. In particular, because the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities posts doctoral degrees at the end of each month, our initial estimates of completion suffered from a lack of precision regarding when a student actually finished his or her program of study. This is especially problematic as the traditional method of calculating doctoral duration yielded an excessive number of identical duration times (or ties), which poses a significant challenge to the event history model. To reduce the number of ties and improve the accuracy 5 of our estimates of duration, we choose to eschew the degree posting date in favor of the submission date for students responses to the Survey of Earned Doctorate/ Graduate Exit Survey. The average difference between the traditional measure of elapsed time (based on degree posted date) and our estimated measure of elapsed time (based on survey submission this study. Future research aims to address this problem by incorporating additional cohorts of successful doctoral students. 5 If we consider a student to complete the doctorate as the time he or she submits the final dissertation, reliance on degree posting date as a measure of completion will always overestimate a student s doctorate. time to the

11 THE IMPACT OF THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE ON TIME TO THE DOCTORATE 11 date) is (SD = 0.078) or the equivalent of days. When differencing submission time from posting time, we observe some outliers at both tails: Approximately 5% of respondents submitted their survey after their degree was posted, while another 5% submitted their survey more than 50 days before their degree posted. For these cases, we believe that the information incorporated in the degree posted date is more accurate and consequently deferred to that. Figure 1 plots the Kaplan-Meier survival plot for the 681 respondents included in our sample. The earliest incidence of completion occurred at 2.28 years from program start, while the latest observed incidence of completion occurred at years from program start. The median completion time among respondents is 5.46 years from program start. Ninety-five percent of respondents completed in fewer than years and ninety-nine percent completed in fewer than years. Independent Variables The independent variables used in the analysis fall into five categories: 1) personal characteristics and demographics, 2) program characteristics, 3) student performance in the program, 4) primary sources of financial support, and 5) doctoral program experiences and satisfaction. Table 2 provides the descriptive statistics for each of the variables included in our model. Personal characteristics and demographics. Our model incorporates eight variables to control for individual characteristics that may be associated with elapsed time to the doctorate. Female is a dichotomous variable indicating the gender of the individual and is coded 0 for male and 1 for female. Under-represented minority is a dichotomous variable to indicate students from one of the historically under-represented racial/ethnic groups in higher education: Native

12 THE IMPACT OF THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE ON TIME TO THE DOCTORATE Figure 1. Kaplan Meier Estimate of Time-to-Completion for Students Completing Their Doctoral Degree Between July 1, 2010 and June 30, American/American Indian, African American, and Hispanic. Because previous studies demonstrated that international students, on average, complete at faster and higher rates than domestic students (Abedi & Benkin, 1987; Gillingham, et al., 1991; Nerad & Miller, 1996; Park, 2005), a dichotomous variable identifying if a respondent was an international student (coded 1 if a student is international, 0 if not) was created. Kaplan-Meier survival estimate analysis time As some previous studies identified the effects of a student s life choices as being related to certain outcomes associated with graduate education (Abedi & Benkin, 1987; Ampaw & Jaeger, 2012; Baird, 1990), we included three variables to try and control for these potential effects of external commitments and age on time to the doctorate: Married (coded 1 if a student

13 THE IMPACT OF THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE ON TIME TO THE DOCTORATE 13 is married, 0 if not), Kids (coded 1 if a student has kids, 0 if not), and Enrollment age that shows age at which a person enrolled into a Ph.D. Finally, we included two variables to control for an individual s previous academic experience. Previous master s degree is a dichotomous variable (coded 1 if a student has a master s degree, 0 if no) that seeks to control for the impact of obtaining a graduate degree from a different higher education institution on time to the doctorate. The rationale for inclusion of this variable in the model lies in the fact that students who have some previous experience of being in graduate school may graduate faster. Undergraduate loans ($) is an ordinal variable that measures the total amount of loans that a student has from undergraduate education in $10,000 increments. This variable attempts to identify the impact of a student s personal educational debt burden on time to the doctorate. Program characteristics. In addition to controls for personal characteristics, our model also includes a robust series of controls for department characteristics that may influence the time-to-completion of doctoral students. Department size was operationalized as a measure based on the number of Ph.D. students enrolled in all the doctoral programs in the department in AY Department selectivity was operationalized as adjusted admission yield 6 of the Ph.D. applicants admitted to the program in AY The average GRE verbal scores and GRE quantitative scores for Ph.D. students admitted to the program in AY were included in the model as (indirect) measures of the program quality. Moreover, these two measures may serve as a characteristic of the program that controls for the differences between two broad academic fields: Humanities and Social Sciences and Mathematical, Natural, and 6 Selectivity was calculated by differencing the admission yield from 100 and is interpreted such that an increase in the selectivity measure represents a program with a lower admission yield.

14 THE IMPACT OF THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE ON TIME TO THE DOCTORATE 14 Physical Sciences. We hypothesize that higher GRE verbal scores are associated with doctoral programs in Humanities and Social Sciences, while higher GRE quantitative scores are associated with programs in Mathematical, Natural, and Physical Sciences. Master s degree required is a dichotomous variable identifying if the program required a master s degree as a prerequisite for admission to the doctoral program (coded 1 for yes, 0 for no). This variable was included in the model on the assumption that students who have a graduate degree in the field have the higher potential to graduate faster. Performance in the program. Five variables 7 were included to control for the potential relationship between a students performance in his or her Ph.D. program and the time required to complete the doctoral degree. The first two variables represent the number of presentations (1-10) and the number of publications (1-10) that a student had while in the Ph.D. program and attempt to measure a student s academic productivity. Dissertation award (coded 1 if a student received an award and 0 if not) identifies if a student s dissertation research was recognized and is intended to control for how a student s achievement in research while in graduate school may contribute to time to the doctorate. The final measure was included to reflect if a student was recognized for his or her teaching; teaching award (coded 1 if a student received an award and 0 if not) attempts to control for how a student s achievement in teaching may contribute to doctoral completion time. Additionally, we included information about the availability of a mentor (coded 1 if a student had a mentor, 0 if not) in this section as students who have a mentor either 7 In addition to these variables, we considered a variable measuring a student s first-term GPA as an additional measure of performance. However, univariate analysis provided no support that this measure was associated with a student s completion time.

15 THE IMPACT OF THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE ON TIME TO THE DOCTORATE 15 in or outside of their program may have different academic and social experiences leading to a shorter time to the doctorate. Primary sources of financial support. Our model also incorporates five variables reflecting the primary sources which students reported to use in order to finance their graduate education. Fellowship is a dichotomous variable (1 for yes, 0 for no) identifying students who reported an institutionally funded fellowship as either a primary or secondary form of financial support. Teaching assistantship, research assistantship, and loans are similarly dummy-coded variables (1 for yes, 0 for no) indicating those students relying on these other sources of financial support to finance graduate school. Loan graduate ($) is an ordinal variable that measures the total amount of loans that a student anticipates to have from graduate education in $10,000 increments. Program experiences and satisfaction. An important contribution of our study is the ability to incorporate students retrospective evaluations of their doctoral experience into our model of completion time in an effort to discern how a student s experience in his or her doctoral program may influence his or her time to the doctorate. This was facilitated by the implementation of the AGS/AAU doctoral exit survey at the study institution. This instrument includes 32 items (94 sub-items) about the experiences of the successful doctoral students in graduate school. Exploratory factor analysis was employed on a subset of items (n = 23) to identify the potential underlying dimensions of doctoral student experience. Maximum likelihood with an oblique rotation identified a four factor solution reflecting the experiences of successful doctoral students in graduate school: 1) satisfaction with the program, 2) advisor/faculty satisfaction, 3) program support, and 4) perceptions of program related obstacles. The associated factor loadings are provided in Table 1.

16 THE IMPACT OF THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE ON TIME TO THE DOCTORATE 16 Factor 1: Program satisfaction. Fifteen survey items eliciting information about various aspects of program quality load onto Factor 1. These items include Overall program quality, Overall quality of the graduate curriculum in your department, Would you recommend this university to someone considering your program of study?, Overall quality of graduate level teaching, Overall, the climate in my program is positive, Interaction with faculty outside of the classroom, Satisfaction with your student life experience at this university, The opportunity to interact intellectually across disciplines, Coursework, seminars, labs, reading courses, etc., adequately prepared me for candidacy/comprehensive examinations, Students in my program are treated with respect by faculty, Would you enroll in the same doctoral program?, Interaction with fellow graduate students in your program, Assistance by faculty in developing your research skills, and Assistance by faculty in developing your writing skills. The survey items are measured on a five-point scale ranging from 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent), from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree), and from 1 (definitely not) to 5 (definitely). Factor 2: Advisor/faculty satisfaction. Nine survey items load onto Factor 2 related to students satisfaction with their advisor and faculty. These items are measured on a five-point scale ranging from 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent), from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree), and from 1 (definitely not) to 5 (definitely). One item is measured on a four-point scale ranging from 1 (not an obstacle) to 4 (a major obstacle). Factor 3: Program support. The five items that load onto Factor 3 relate to students satisfaction with their program support. These items include Students in my program are adequately funded, Rate the adequacy of support you were provided... in funding, Rate the adequacy of support you were provided in... your personal work space, Work/financial commitments (was an obstacle), and Overall, the climate of my program is positive. These

17 THE IMPACT OF THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE ON TIME TO THE DOCTORATE 17 items are measured on a five-point scale ranging from 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent), from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree), and a four-point scale ranging from 1 (not an obstacle) to 4 (a major obstacle). Factor 4: Perceptions of program related obstacles. The three survey items that load onto Factor 4 that identifies structural obstacles to degree progress, such as program structure/requirements, course scheduling, and availability of faculty, are measured on a fourpoint scale ranging from 1 (not an obstacle) to 4 (a major obstacle). Analytical Method Our interest in the completion times of doctoral students necessitates the employment of a methodological approach that is suitable for dealing with duration data. It has been found that when the dependent variable measures the elapsed time to an event, the error terms are frequently distributed non-normally (Cleves, et al., 2008). To appropriately accommodate the non-normal distribution of errors frequently associated with doctoral completion times, this study uses event history (or survival) analysis where an individual s event history measures the elapsed time-to-completion of the doctorate. In particular, the empirical model utilized in our study is a stratified Cox proportional regression model where the duration of an event is the number of days (converted to years) until the occurrence of completion. As described by Kleinbaum and Klein (2005), The stratified Cox model is a modification of the Cox proportional hazards (PH) model that allows for control by stratification of a predictor that does not satisfy the PH assumption (p. 176). Specifically, the model yields a hazard function:, exp where g represents the g-th stratum from a stratification variable (Kleinbaum & Klein, 2005).

18 THE IMPACT OF THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE ON TIME TO THE DOCTORATE 18 This approach was selected after diagnostics of our initial model specification had identified that several of the dichotomous variables included to control for the potential disciplinary differences in time-to-completion violated the proportional hazard assumption. Figure 2 provides the Kaplan-Meier estimates of time-to-completion by broad disciplinary area and helps illustrate this problem. To correct for this, we consequently created a stratification variable that differentiated between eleven broad disciplinary areas. Subsequent examination of the Schoenfeld residuals (Schoenfeld, 1982) yielded a global test result of χ 2 (27, N =548) = 22.71, p =.700. With none of the individual p-values associated with the remaining independent variables significant at.05 level, there is no statistical evidence that our revised stratified model violates the P-H assumption Kaplan-Meier survival estimates analysis time Agricultural Science Business Engineering Health Professions S Natural Resources an Social and Behaviora Biological and Biome Education Family, Consumer and Humanities Physical and Mathema Figure 2. Kaplan Meier Estimate of Time-to-Completion by Broad Field for Students Completing Their Doctoral Degree Between July 1, 2010 and June 30, 2011.

19 THE IMPACT OF THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE ON TIME TO THE DOCTORATE 19 Results To estimate the potential effects of student attitudes about their graduate experiences on the time to doctoral completion, this study utilizes a stratified Cox proportional hazard model. In this model, the hazard rate indicates the probability of the occurrence of the event (completion in this study) being modeled within each unit of time. Specifically, a hazard ratio lower than 1 is indicative of a reduced hazard (or risk) of experiencing the event and subsequently corresponds with prolonged completion times, while a higher hazard ratio greater than 1 is indicative of increased hazard (or risk) of experiencing an event and corresponds with a reduced time-tocompletion. Table 3 provides the associated results and indicates that the student s reported experiences in graduate school are in fact associated with doctoral duration times. More specifically, the model results suggest that after controlling for individual and program related factors, student experiences in graduate school appear to be associated with the time it takes to complete the doctorate. According to model estimates, only one of the demographic and personal characteristics was determined to be associated with doctoral completion times. Specifically, respondents with at least one child at home faced 75.3% (hazard ratio = 0.753, p <.01) of the hazard of completion compared to their childless counterparts. In other words, the hazard rate lower than 1 for students with children at home suggests that those students will take longer to complete their program than their fellow students without children. There is insignificant evidence in our sample to suggest that a respondent s age, gender, minority, international identification, or marital status is associated with completion times of doctoral students. This is not to say that these characteristics may not differentiate between successful and non-successful students, but

20 THE IMPACT OF THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE ON TIME TO THE DOCTORATE 20 rather results from Table 3 suggest that among successful doctoral candidates demographic characteristics are unrelated to the time required to complete the doctorate. Characteristics of the program, on the other hand, do appear to contribute to the completion times of successful doctoral students. Program size, for example, is associated with prolonged completion times as students in larger programs are predicted to be less likely to experience the hazard of completion (hazard ratio = 0.998, p <.05) compared to students in smaller programs. Additionally, a doctoral program s average GRE verbal score (hazard ratio = 0.995, p <.01) is negatively associated with completion, while a program s average GRE quantitative score (hazard ratio = 1.003, p <.10) is positively associated with completion; reflecting many of the things we know about differences in the completion times in the sciences versus the humanities. Neither selectivity nor a prerequisite of a master s degree is associated with doctoral completion times. At the individual experience level, the primary source of financial support also influences a successful doctoral candidate s time-to-completion. Students reporting an institutional fellowship as one of their top sources of financial support face a 44.0% (hazard ratio = 1.439, p <.01) greater hazard of completion than their counterparts without an institutional fellowship. Conversely, students relying on teaching assistantships face 79.6% (hazard ratio = 0.796, p <.05) the hazard of completion than students who did not report a teaching assistantship as a major form of aid. The amount a student borrows to finance doctoral education is negatively associated with experiencing completion, as each increment of $10,000 lowers the completion hazard by approximately 5.7% (hazard ratio = 0.943, p <.05). Nevertheless, it is difficult to discern whether this predicted relationship reflects the consequence of a student s borrowing

21 THE IMPACT OF THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE ON TIME TO THE DOCTORATE 21 behavior or, perhaps more plausibly, longer completion times are simply associated with larger debt loads. A similar situation occurs in the case of student performance. Of the four measures included to control for individual performance in the program, only the variable identifying that the respondent received a teaching award was significant. Specifically, students who reported receiving a teaching award were 69.9% (hazard ratio = 0.699, p <.05) as likely to experience completion as students not receiving an award. However, our research is unable to discern whether this relationship is a causal one or whether students with prolonged time-to-completion have more opportunities to teach, refine their teaching skills, and subsequently be awarded for it. Neither the number of presentations nor the number of publications is associated with a respondent s completion time. While the hazard ratio associated with a dissertation award is sizable (a hazard rate of is associated with a 13.7% increase in the likelihood of experiencing completion) the result is not significant (p >.10). Student reflections on their doctoral experience provide us with additional insights into how a student s experience in graduate school may be associated with time to the doctorate. The associated parameter estimates, for example, suggest that increased levels of satisfaction are associated with longer completion times as a one-unit increase in the program satisfaction factor reduces the hazard rate by slightly more than 15% (hazard ratio = 0.841, p <.01). Conversely, advisor/faculty satisfaction is positively associated with the risk of experiencing completion as students reporting a one unit increase in the advisor/faculty satisfaction are predicted to be 19.2% (hazard ratio = 1.192, p <.01) more likely to experience completion over their counterparts. While this result perhaps appears counter-intuitive, it is important to recall that our study utilized oblique (or correlated) factors. Given that the correlation coefficient between the

22 THE IMPACT OF THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE ON TIME TO THE DOCTORATE 22 program satisfaction factor and the advisor satisfaction factor is high (r = 0.56), Factor 1 is more appropriately interpreted as the predicted effect of program satisfaction that is uncorrelated with advisor satisfaction. Similarly, Factor 2 is the predicted effect of satisfaction that is independent of program satisfaction. Armed with this information, a clearer picture emerges as successful students satisfied with their program (but not necessarily satisfied with their advisor) are expected to experience prolonged completion times. Conversely, students who are satisfied with their advisor (but not necessarily satisfied with their program) can be expected to complete their program more expediently than their counterparts. Unexpectedly, a respondent s perceptions of program related barriers is positively associated with completion suggesting that students reporting a one unit increase in the program obstacle factor are 11.8% (hazard ratio = 1.118, p <.10) more likely to experience completion than their counterparts. Conclusions and Implications This research provides several important contributions to the study of graduate education and time to the doctorate. First, to our knowledge, it represents the first study to explore the relationship between doctoral students experiences in and satisfaction with their program and time to the doctorate. Generally, previous research on doctoral time to completion has tended to rely on secondary, or institutional, data to build models of the correlates of completion time. By expanding this approach to also incorporate the attitudes and opinions of successful students, we believe we are able to demonstrate the importance of students institutional experiences and validate the applicability of Tinto s (1993) longitudinal model of doctoral persistence to the study of doctorate. time to the

23 THE IMPACT OF THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE ON TIME TO THE DOCTORATE 23 Second, while this study suffers from the obvious limitations associated with a single institution design, we believe that this work is illustrative of the type of questions researchers can begin to answer by utilizing doctoral exit survey data. Given the adoption of the AAU/AGS Doctoral Exit Survey by a large number of AAU institutions means that other institutions are able to use these data to not only describe the doctoral experience but also explore how it may shape graduate education outcomes, such as time-to-completion, something our paper was able to take advantage of. Third, the empirical results of this study suggest that there are substantive areas that programs can engage in order to help doctoral students complete their degrees in a timely manner. This is especially true of the institutional level factors that affect time to the doctorate. While it is impossible to have control over some of the individual level factors, our research highlights areas where programs can target strategic initiatives to help improve doctoral completion times. Results from our study suggest that being enrolled in smaller programs with strong student-faculty relationships is conducive to shorter doctoral completions giving programs a potential target for strategic action. Our results also confirm the findings of previous research that suggest how students fund their doctoral education contributes to their completion times. In this respect, providing students with diversified university funding which would reduce graduate education loan debt burden can positively impact on doctoral completion times. Finally, institutional/program leaders can do a lot in terms of removing program related barriers to student success, such as program structure and requirements, course scheduling, availability of faculty, etc.

24 THE IMPACT OF THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE ON TIME TO THE DOCTORATE 24 References Abedi, J., & Benkin, E. (1987). The effects of students academic, financial, and demographic variables on time to the doctorate. Research in Higher Education, 27(1), Ampaw, F. D., & Jaeger, A. J. (2012). Completing the three stages of doctoral education: An event history analysis. Research in Higher Education, 53, doi: /s Baird, L. L. (1990). Disciplines and doctorates: The relationships between program characteristics and the duration of doctoral study. Research in Higher Education, 31(4), Baird, L. L. (1993). Using research and theoretical models of graduate student progress. New Directions for Institutional Research, 80, Bowen, W. G., & Rudenstine, N. L. (1992). In pursuit of the Ph.D. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Cleves, M., Gould, W. W., Gutierrez, R. G., & Marchenko, Y. (2008). An introduction to survival analysis using Stata. College Station, TX: Stata Press. Council of Graduate Schools. (2008). Ph.D. Completion and attrition: Analysis of baseline program data from the Ph.D. Completion Project. Washington, D.C.: Council of Graduate Schools. de Valero, J. F. (2001). Departmental factors affecting time-to-degree and completion rates at one land-grant research institution. The Journal of Higher Education, 72(3), Ehrenberg, R. G., & Mavros, P. G. (1995). Do doctoral students financial support patterns affect their times-to-degree and completion rates? The Journal of Human Resources, 30(3),

25 THE IMPACT OF THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE ON TIME TO THE DOCTORATE 25 Ethington, C., & Pisani, A. (1993). The RA and TA experience: Impediments and benefits to graduate study. Research in Higher Education, 34(3), Gillingham, L., Seneca, J. J., & Taussig, M. K. (1991). The determinants of progress to the doctoral degree. Research in Higher Education, 32(4), Girves, J. E., & Wemmerus, V. (1988). Developing models of graduate student degree progress. The Journal of Higher Education, 59(2), Groen, J. A., Jakubson, G. H., Ehrenberg, R. G., Condie, S., & Liu, A. Y. (2008). Program design and student outcomes in graduate education. Economics of Education Review, 27(2), Higher Education Funding Council for England. (2007). Ph.D. research degrees: update: Entry and completion. London: HEFCE Issues Paper October 2007/28. Retrieved from Haldaway, E., Deblois, C., & Winchester, I. (1995). Supervision of graduate students. The Canadian Journal of Higher Education, XXV(3), Jiranek, V. (2010). Potential predictors of timely completion among dissertation research students at an Australian faculty of sciences. International Journal of Doctoral Studies, 5, Kleinbaum, D. G., & Klein, M. (2005). Survival analysis: A self-learning text (2 nd ed.). New York, NY: Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. Nerad, M., & Miller, D. S. (1996). Increasing student retention in graduate and professional programs. New Directions for Institutional Research, 92, Park, C. (2005). War of attrition: patterns of non-completion amongst postgraduate research students. Higher Education Review, 38(1),

26 THE IMPACT OF THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE ON TIME TO THE DOCTORATE 26 Picciano, J., Rudd, E., Morrison, E., & Nerad, M. (2008). Does time-to-degree matter? CIRGE Spotlight on Doctoral Education #3. CIRGE: University of Washington, Seattle, WA. Retrieved from Seagram, B. C., Gould, J., & Pyke, S. W. (1998). An investigation of gender and other variables on time to completion of doctoral degrees. Research in Higher Education, 39(3), Schoenfeld, D. (1982). Partial residuals for the proportional hazards model. Biometrika, 69(1), Stricker, L. J. (1994). Institutional factors in time to the doctorate. Research in Higher Education, 35(5), Tinto, V. (1993). Leaving college: Rethinking the causes and cures of student attrition. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Wendler, C., Bridgeman, B., Cline, F., Millett, C., Rock, J., & McAllister, P. (2010). The Path forward: The future of graduate education in the United States. Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service.

27 THE IMPACT OF THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE ON TIME TO THE DOCTORATE 27 Table 1 Factor Loadings for Exploratory Factor Analysis With Oblimin With Kaiser Normalization Rotation of Doctoral Student Experiences Component Satisfaction with the program Advisor/faculty satisfaction Program Support Perceptions of program related obstacles Overall program quality Overall quality of the graduate curriculum in your department Would you recommend this university to someone considering your program of study? Overall quality of graduate level teaching Overall, the climate of my program is positive Interaction with faculty outside of the classroom Satisfaction with your student life experience at this university Opportunity to interact intellectually across disciplines Coursework, seminars, labs, reading courses, etc., adequately prepared me for candidacy/comprehensive examinations Students in my program are treated with respect by faculty Would you enroll in the same doctoral program? Interaction with fellow graduate students in your program Quality of academic advising and guidance Overall, my dissertation advisor performed

28 THE IMPACT OF THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE ON TIME TO THE DOCTORATE 28 the role well Assistance by faculty in developing your research skills Assistance by faculty in developing your writing skills Availability of faculty (was an obstacle) Students in my program are adequately funded Rate the adequacy of support you were provided...in financial support Rate the adequacy of support you were provided...in your personal work space (e.g., desk or office) Work/financial commitments (was an obstacle) Program structure or requirements (was an obstacle) Course scheduling (was an obstacle) Note. Factor loadings >.50 are in boldface.

29 THE IMPACT OF THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE ON TIME TO THE DOCTORATE 29 Table 2 Descriptive Statistics Variable n M SD Min Max Elapsed time to degree Background characteristics Enrollment age Female Under-represented minority student International student Married Kids Previous master s degree Undergraduate loans ($) Program characteristics Department size Selectivity (admission yield) GRE verbal score GRE quantitative score Master s degree required Mentor Performance in the program Number of presentations Number of publications Teaching award Dissertation award Primary sources of financial support Fellowship

30 THE IMPACT OF THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE ON TIME TO THE DOCTORATE 30 Teaching assistantship Research assistantship Loans Graduate loans ($) Program experiences and satisfaction factors Factor 1. Satisfaction with the program Factor 2. Advisor/faculty satisfaction Factor 3. Program Support Factor 4. Perceptions of program related obstacles