Supporting Online Doctoral Students to Increase Persistence and Completion
The literature indicates that approximately 50% of those who seek a doctoral education complete the degree. Research indicates that persistence is one of the key issues that students struggle with and negatively impacts their ability to graduate. Other factors include the ability to maintain enrollment; topic selection; and ability to maintain a dissertation supervisor (Seagram, Gould, & Pike, 1998). The current paper discusses an organizational redesign to support students to increase persistence and completion rates among doctoral students in the online environment.
