The Influence of Tenured Faculty on Doctoral Student Retention

• In Event: Roundtable Session 23
  In Roundtable Session: Examining Faculty and Practitioner Issues in Graduate Education

Abstract

This study examines the role of tenured faculty in doctoral completion and time to degree among 5,004 doctoral programs at 212 universities in the United States. We use fixed-effect analyses to determine the relationships between faculty composition and doctoral completion and time to degree in both departmental and institutional levels.

Analyzing the National Research Council (NRC)’s data collected for 2005-2006 academic year, the analyses suggest that the increased tenured faculty is negatively related to doctoral completion rates and increased doctoral time to degree. These findings provide a better understanding of how faculty composition are related to both doctoral completion and time to degree in the departmental level.

Author

• Enyu Zhou, University of Missouri-Columbia