Culture of Care: Exploring Perceptions of Support from Online Doctoral Students

This qualitative research study of 1,800 doctoral students was conducted to explore institutional goals around student retention and a new culture of care initiative within four online doctoral programs with a current persistence rate of 42%-50%. This group included graduates of the programs, as well as those who dropped out within the past three years.  This problem of persistence in doctoral students is significant for our online universities, as well as others.  Additionally, data around what is enhancing students’ experiences as compared to the barriers our students are facing have not been readily explored.  A new university initiative around providing empathy and flexibility has been rolled out without a specific lens to the doctoral student experience across all programs and faculty expectations. Additionally, exploring the barriers and challenges that online doctoral students face can help generate a greater understanding of support services universities and others to set up systems for proactively navigating these. Insights from the study help to create more cohesive curriculum adjustments, reveal resource and service gaps and clarify where additional supports could be added. 

A brief review of existing literature on the topic finds that three areas appear consistently as barriers to success in doctoral programs: unrealistic expectations coming in, unpreparedness (writing, study skills), and lack of support from advisors and schools. Students entering a doctoral program may not have a complete understanding of what is needed to be successful. This suggests that there is a need for the design of programs and their supports that consider items outside the typical realm of academic support for students to be successful. The literature describes a “culture of neglect,” whereas our university focus has been pushing for a “culture of care.”  This includes demonstrating flexibility, empathy and building relationships.  It is unclear if the intentional efforts by faculty that include opportunities to revise assignments, extended due dates, and offering one-on-one Zoom sessions or group work sessions, as well as a virtual In-Residence, make any sort of difference in the students’ perception of support.  Additionally, how this perception translates into the practices of persistence and motivation is unclear.  

Indeed, with flexible deadlines and allowance on a revision cycle for assignments, some questions have emerged about maintaining academic rigor and high expectations.  It has not been captured how these intentional efforts have been received by students or even recognized as impacting their doctoral journey.

Our doctoral student makeup is diverse, with 44% Black, 28% White, and 13% Hispanic.  Additionally,70% of the students identify as female, and 60% of the students are between the ages of 30-64 years old.  The majority of our students are working parents who are on some type of financial aid, and 25% of our students are military-affiliated.  Given this student profile, the complexity of the factors that impede our doctoral students’ persistence rates can be intense and humbling.  As a university and a program, there have not been intentional efforts to gather the information around why students leave the doctoral programs and what specifically is a barrier to persisting to completing their dissertation or applied doctoral project.  These types of data can help develop a more comprehensive picture of the challenges faced by students so that programs can more intentionally advertise resources, provide support services, and leverage expertise from student-facing departments to potentially better help students sooner.

These types of findings from this qualitative, exploratory study could be transferable to other disciplines and programs.  This presentation is designed to share the findings and insights from this specific study while gathering insight from the participants through a collaborative conversation about successes and challenges around student retention, perseverance, and success.