Initiative for Optimal Doctoral Completion

Doctoral completion and non-completion are certainly not novel ideas.

All of us have witnessed the phenomenon both as students during our own training and as professors.

However, in policy circles, the term doctoral completion is being considered

as:

A measure of program quality

Why does doctoral completion matter?

It depends on whom you ask.

It matters to the to those who provide funding for doctoral programs

• Each doctoral student represents a substantial investment in terms of time, scarce intellectual resources, and public and private dollars

• In a very real sense, doctoral non-completion is a waste of finite resources

• Society expects to receive a return on their investment in doctoral education

It matters to doctoral students

• Failure to complete can leave individuals with psychological damage

• family turbulence • massive debt• limited career potential

It matters to faculty members

• More of the investments they make in teaching and mentoring pay off for their chosen field

• They do not waste time and energy on those who ultimately will not be in a position to contribute to the field

• They will be prepared when program reviews of various types begin using these completion figures as an indicator of program quality

It matters to the Graduate School

A key function of the Graduate School is to support faculty in building strong,

internationally recognized doctoral programs.

And that’s why we are launching . . .

Initiative for Optimal Doctoral Completion

• Since 2004, The Graduate School has been working closely with 12 UGA programs and 25 programs at University of Florida and North Carolina State University

• The initiative is an effort to share the lessons learned with the other 70 doctoral programs at UGA

Goals of the Initiative for Optimal Doctoral Completion

1. To ensure that all graduate faculty members are well informed about trends and issues surrounding doctoral completion,

2. To provide faculty with the information they need to assess realistically their own program’s success with respect to doctoral completion, and

3. To support individual programs in their efforts to improve doctoral completion.