Teaching & Mentoring for Doctoral Students

For several years, the dropout rate for Ph.D. students has hovered around 50%. Over the same period, the time between admission to graduate work and completion of a dissertation has lengthened by several years in the social sciences and the humanities. Lack of continuing financial support is an obvious factor. But according to the sociologist Barbara E. Lovitts, other important causes are (1) the difficulty of switching from being a good course- taker to becoming an independent researcher and (2) departmental culture, where there is a lack of rewards and support for faculty who take on responsibilities as dissertation advisors.

Probably because I was the advisor to over 30 doctoral students and a committee member for another 20, I was the first person to receive in 2004 the newly instituted Mentoring Award from the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University. My experience as an advisor is the basis of my book, A Path to Discovery: A Guidebook for Dissertation Students and Their Advisors. It is different from other guidebooks in the following ways:

1. A Six-chapter format based on Lovitts’ interviews and focus groups with faculty at ten universities as well as my own experience at Heller, as follows: (1) the research question; (2) theory; (3) methodology; (4) description of results: (5) explanation; (6) conclusions and implications.

2. A proposal of limited length (circa 35- 50 pages). Rather than the proposal as a “pre-dissertation,” the proposal is a plan of action focused on question, theory, and method, to be completed fairly soon after comprehensive exams and as a gateway to candidacy.

3. A literature review distributed throughout that appears wherever relevant. It is a necessary precursor to writing a good proposal, but I believe that in the completed dissertation it should appear wherever relevant, not as a separate chapter.

4. Real-life examples from actual dissertations. My “how-to” book uses reproductions of conceptual models, graphs, tables, maps, and narrative passages from my own students’ dissertations (available online through ProQuest) as well as from published exemplars. These examples make the point that there are many different styles and methods for answering a research question and are meant to encourage creativity and original thinking.

While self-help and guidebooks can encourage students to proceed more surely and quickly, sociologists also know that structural factors in the department influence faculty behavior and student progress. Dissertation seminars are one direct way of providing consultation and support. Faculty receive more rewards for teaching courses than for advising. Students are pretty much on their own after finishing coursework. The challenge is to find faculty members who are willing to be advisors. Faculty members may find little reward for advising; it takes their time so that a heavy burden falls on the kindhearted advisors who are willing to spend the time helping students.

But innovations are possible, as in the case of Harvard University when sociologist Theda Skocpol as Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences devised an incentive to encourage timely completion of the dissertation proposal. Graduate students were not eligible for additional financial aid until they had an approved proposal.

Social influences are also important on the student side. Several of my students found that dissertation support groups with other students were extremely helpful by giving them encouragement as well as support for their ideas. In addition, term papers in each course that were focused on their particular interest could add up to a dissertation topic. These support groups also provide word-of-mouth advice to avoid unhelpful advisors and find those who are helpful. Another tip is to be cautious about working with someone else’s data set because it may have limitations that outweigh any possible advantages of saving time and effort.

In writing my dissertation advice book, I also drew on my own experience as a doctoral student in the 1950s at Harvard University in the Department of Social Relations, where some of the great authorities in social science such as the sociologist Talcott Parsons were on the faculty. Although in the end, Professor Parsons was my dissertation advisor, I first worked with a younger faculty member whose important contribution was to ask me repeatedly about my research question. By his questioning, he helped me put together my interests in deviance, social movements, and women’s changing roles with a plan to compare the women’s temperance and suffrage movements in the 19th century. Well ahead of the new feminist movement that emerged a few years later, my thesis was nominated for a prize and was eventually published as Two Paths to Women’s Equality.

Still, when I look back at my dissertation proposal, I see that it was only 12 pages long! Produced on a typewriter and reproduced on purple Ditto paper, I see now that it nevertheless had all the key elements that a proposal should have, and this is probably why I suggest that the dissertation proposal should be comparatively brief. Although I completed my dissertation successfully, I have to concede that I floundered for almost a year to produce that proposal, and it would have been immensely helpful to have had more guidance from an advisor, a support group of fellow students, and a self-help book to show me step -by-step how to proceed and how to value my own ideas.

My suggestions for advising and mentoring doctoral students are based on my own experience both as a student long ago and as a faculty advisor since then, I would like to hear from others about their current perspectives as faculty members and their prior experience as students themselves. How do we improve our support of graduate students?