| Across all disciplines, approximately one-half of American doctoral students drop out before completing their degree. This issue entered center stage of the national higher educational community in the 1990s and remains there, under scrutiny from the Council of Graduate Schools, the Carnegie Foundation, and the National Research Council (NRC), among others. As the issue of PhD departure is idiosyncratic by individual, discipline, and site, the NRC recommended (1996) that the research on doctoral students be conducted accordingly.;This study follows the NRC's recommendation, focusing on two doctoral disciplines at one site to determine what builds student success in doctoral programs. Research questions related directly to what facilitated and what hindered PhD student success as well as what barriers might be reduced and how the program might be improved to facilitate doctoral-student success. Methods involved observation, field notes, and face-to-face interviews with 24 post-coursework PhD students, nine graduate faculty, and two graduate staff. Additional data included PhD program-completion information and various program documents.;I created and developed a conceptual framework based on the scholarship of Pierre Bourdieu (student success is related to social and cultural capital), the sociocultural writings of Lev Vygotsky (students move through the zone of proximal development), and the work of Lave and Wenger (students move from legitimate peripheral participation to full participation in a scholarly community). In short, students are transformed from novice to expert when their learning is assisted and scaffolded by experts and by more capable peers.;Findings indicate that a programmatic culture of success---including a prescreened matching of student applicants with faculty advisors---served to facilitate students moving through the PhD process. Another finding indicates that criteria for student benchmarks and expectations need to be more explicit for all students to have a level playing field. These findings suggest future studies, including doctoral-student assessment and PhD benchmark development. |
