School Daze: Understanding Black Doctoral Persistence Through Student Experiences at Historically Black Colleges and Universities

• In Event: Creating Inclusive Spaces: Diversity, Equity, and Belonging in Graduate Education

Abstract

Research indicates that Black doctoral students face programmatic challenges in Historically White Institutional graduate schools due to the lack of faculty and administrative support (Anderson & Hrabowski, 1977; Allen, 1992). In contrast, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have received praise for their successful mentoring practices and other strategies aimed at fostering academic success of their students (Palmer, et al., 2015, Crewe, 2017). This qualitative paper explores the phenomenon of late-stage Black doctoral students at HBCUs, their experiences, and their relationship to the resources their institutions provide to support their retention. Those successful practices can be replicated in non-historically Black institutions to help reduce the fifty percent attrition rate of doctoral students (Berelson, 1960; Bowen & Rudenstein, 1992; Lovitts, 2001).

Author

• Hillary D. Webb-Ganaway, New York University