Stifling Dissent: Engineering PhD Students’ Response when Considering Departing

The purpose of this Empirical Research paper presented in Research Brief format is to explore engineering students’ response when departing or considering departing from their doctoral programs. Although numerous studies of doctoral attrition have been published, attrition rates remain high, in particular in engineering, indicating that the influence of structure and process of graduate education on attrition remains to be understood. This study employed qualitative methods and analysis to understand how graduate engineering students express doctoral discontent which has led them to depart or consider departing, and what was the response (or lack thereof) to this discontent. In particular, we explored engineering doctoral students’ usage of ‘voice’ mechanism to express discontent with several groups including friends, family members, faculty, and university administrators. The main findings that resulted from this study show students’ decision to exit or consider existing their program were impacted due to a lack of support, response, and in some cases an active suppression of voice from faculty or graduate department. This study highlights that if institutions seek to learn about the underlying causes of graduate engineering attrition, they need to show a willingness to reflect on the importance of graduate students’ feedback and implement self-corrective actions.