phd defense failure

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PhD Defence Process: A Comprehensive Guide

Embarking on the journey toward a PhD is an intellectual odyssey marked by tireless research, countless hours of contemplation, and a fervent commitment to contributing to the body of knowledge in one’s field. As the culmination of this formidable journey, the PhD defence stands as the final frontier, the proverbial bridge between student and scholar.

In this comprehensive guide, we unravel the intricacies of the PhD defence—a momentous occasion that is both a celebration of scholarly achievement and a rigorous evaluation of academic prowess. Join us as we explore the nuances of the defence process, addressing questions about its duration, contemplating the possibility of failure, and delving into the subtle distinctions of language that surround it.

Beyond the formalities, we aim to shed light on the significance of this rite of passage, dispelling misconceptions about its nature. Moreover, we’ll consider the impact of one’s attire on this critical day and share personal experiences and practical tips from those who have successfully navigated the defence journey.

Whether you are on the precipice of your own defence or are simply curious about the process, this guide seeks to demystify the PhD defence, providing a roadmap for success and a nuanced understanding of the pivotal event that marks the transition from student to scholar.

Introduction

A. definition and purpose:, b. overview of the oral examination:, a. general duration of a typical defense, b. factors influencing the duration:, c. preparation and flexibility:, a. preparation and thorough understanding of the research:, b. handling questions effectively:, c. confidence and composure during the presentation:, d. posture of continuous improvement:, a. exploring the possibility of failure:, b. common reasons for failure:, c. steps to mitigate the risk of failure:, d. post-failure resilience:, a. addressing the language variation:, b. conforming to regional preferences:, c. consistency in usage:, d. flexibility and adaptability:, e. navigating language in a globalized academic landscape:, a. debunking myths around the formality of the defense:, b. significance in validating research contributions:, c. post-defense impact:, a. appropriate attire for different settings:, b. professionalism and the impact of appearance:, c. practical tips for dressing success:, b. practical tips for a successful defense:, c. post-defense reflections:, career options after phd.

Embarking on the doctoral journey is a formidable undertaking, where aspiring scholars immerse themselves in the pursuit of knowledge, contributing new insights to their respective fields. At the pinnacle of this academic odyssey lies the PhD defence—a culmination that transcends the boundaries of a mere formality, symbolizing the transformation from a student of a discipline to a recognized contributor to the academic tapestry.

The PhD defence, also known as the viva voce or oral examination, is a pivotal moment in the life of a doctoral candidate.

PhD defence is not merely a ritualistic ceremony; rather, it serves as a platform for scholars to present, defend, and elucidate the findings and implications of their research. The defence is the crucible where ideas are tested, hypotheses scrutinized, and the depth of scholarly understanding is laid bare.

The importance of the PhD defence reverberates throughout the academic landscape. It is not just a capstone event; it is the juncture where academic rigour meets real-world application. The defence is the litmus test of a researcher’s ability to articulate, defend, and contextualize their work—an evaluation that extends beyond the pages of a dissertation.

Beyond its evaluative nature, the defence serves as a rite of passage, validating the years of dedication, perseverance, and intellectual rigour invested in the research endeavour. Success in the defence is a testament to the candidate’s mastery of their subject matter and the originality and impact of their contributions to the academic community.

Furthermore, a successful defence paves the way for future contributions, positioning the scholar as a recognized authority in their field. The defence is not just an endpoint; it is a launchpad, propelling researchers into the next phase of their academic journey as they continue to shape and redefine the boundaries of knowledge.

In essence, the PhD defence is more than a ceremonial checkpoint—it is a transformative experience that validates the intellectual journey, underscores the significance of scholarly contributions, and sets the stage for a continued legacy of academic excellence. As we navigate the intricacies of this process, we invite you to explore the multifaceted dimensions that make the PhD defence an indispensable chapter in the narrative of academic achievement.

What is a PhD Defence?

At its core, a PhD defence is a rigorous and comprehensive examination that marks the culmination of a doctoral candidate’s research journey. It is an essential component of the doctoral process in which the candidate is required to defend their dissertation before a committee of experts in the field. The defence serves multiple purposes, acting as both a showcase of the candidate’s work and an evaluative measure of their understanding, critical thinking, and contributions to the academic domain.

The primary goals of a PhD defence include:

• Presentation of Research: The candidate presents the key findings, methodology, and significance of their research.
• Demonstration of Mastery: The defence assesses the candidate’s depth of understanding, mastery of the subject matter, and ability to engage in scholarly discourse.
• Critical Examination: Committee members rigorously question the candidate, challenging assumptions, testing methodologies, and probing the boundaries of the research.
• Validation of Originality: The defence validates the originality and contribution of the candidate’s work to the existing body of knowledge.

The PhD defence often takes the form of an oral examination, commonly referred to as the viva voce. This oral component adds a dynamic and interactive dimension to the evaluation process. Key elements of the oral examination include:

• Presentation: The candidate typically begins with a formal presentation, summarizing the dissertation’s main components, methodology, and findings. This presentation is an opportunity to showcase the significance and novelty of the research.
• Questioning and Discussion: Following the presentation, the candidate engages in a thorough questioning session with the examination committee. Committee members explore various aspects of the research, challenging the candidates to articulate their rationale, defend their conclusions, and respond to critiques.
• Defence of Methodology: The candidate is often required to defend the chosen research methodology, demonstrating its appropriateness, rigour, and contribution to the field.
• Evaluation of Contributions: Committee members assess the originality and impact of the candidate’s contributions to the academic discipline, seeking to understand how the research advances existing knowledge.

The oral examination is not a mere formality; it is a dynamic exchange that tests the candidate’s intellectual acumen, research skills, and capacity to contribute meaningfully to the scholarly community.

In essence, the PhD defence is a comprehensive and interactive evaluation that encapsulates the essence of a candidate’s research journey, demanding a synthesis of knowledge, clarity of expression, and the ability to navigate the complexities of academic inquiry. As we delve into the specifics of the defence process, we will unravel the layers of preparation and skill required to navigate this transformative academic milestone.

How Long is a PhD Defence?

The duration of a PhD defence can vary widely, but it typically ranges from two to three hours. This time frame encompasses the candidate’s presentation of their research, questioning and discussions with the examination committee, and any additional deliberations or decisions by the committee. However, it’s essential to note that this is a general guideline, and actual defence durations may vary based on numerous factors.

• Sciences and Engineering: Defenses in these fields might lean towards the shorter end of the spectrum, often around two hours. The focus is often on the methodology, results, and technical aspects.
• Humanities and Social Sciences: Given the theoretical and interpretive nature of research in these fields, defences might extend closer to three hours or more. Discussions may delve into philosophical underpinnings and nuanced interpretations.
• Simple vs. Complex Studies: The complexity of the research itself plays a role. Elaborate experiments, extensive datasets, or intricate theoretical frameworks may necessitate a more extended defence.
• Number of Committee Members: A larger committee or one with diverse expertise may lead to more extensive discussions and varied perspectives, potentially elongating the defence.
• Committee Engagement: The level of engagement and probing by committee members can influence the overall duration. In-depth discussions or debates may extend the defence time.
• Cultural Norms: In some countries, the oral defence might be more ceremonial, with less emphasis on intense questioning. In others, a rigorous and extended defence might be the norm.
• Evaluation Practices: Different academic systems have varying evaluation criteria, which can impact the duration of the defence.
• Institutional Guidelines: Some institutions may have specific guidelines on defence durations, influencing the overall time allotted for the process.

Candidates should be well-prepared for a defence of any duration. Adequate preparation not only involves a concise presentation of the research but also anticipates potential questions and engages in thoughtful discussions. Additionally, candidates should be flexible and responsive to the dynamics of the defense, adapting to the pace set by the committee.

Success Factors in a PhD Defence

• Successful defence begins with a deep and comprehensive understanding of the research. Candidates should be well-versed in every aspect of their study, from the theoretical framework to the methodology and findings.
• Thorough preparation involves anticipating potential questions from the examination committee. Candidates should consider the strengths and limitations of their research and be ready to address queries related to methodology, data analysis, and theoretical underpinnings.
• Conducting mock defences with peers or mentors can be invaluable. It helps refine the presentation, exposes potential areas of weakness, and provides an opportunity to practice responding to challenging questions.
• Actively listen to questions without interruption. Understanding the nuances of each question is crucial for providing precise and relevant responses.
• Responses should be clear, concise, and directly address the question. Avoid unnecessary jargon, and strive to convey complex concepts in a manner that is accessible to the entire committee.
• It’s acceptable not to have all the answers. If faced with a question that stumps you, acknowledge it honestly. Expressing a willingness to explore the topic further demonstrates intellectual humility.
• Use questions as opportunities to reinforce key messages from the research. Skillfully link responses back to the core contributions of the study, emphasizing its significance.
• Rehearse the presentation multiple times to build familiarity with the material. This enhances confidence, reduces nervousness, and ensures a smooth and engaging delivery.
• Maintain confident and open body language. Stand tall, make eye contact, and use gestures judiciously. A composed demeanour contributes to a positive impression.
• Acknowledge and manage nervousness. It’s natural to feel some anxiety, but channelling that energy into enthusiasm for presenting your research can turn nervousness into a positive force.
• Engage with the committee through a dynamic and interactive presentation. Invite questions during the presentation to create a more conversational atmosphere.
• Utilize visual aids effectively. Slides or other visual elements should complement the spoken presentation, reinforcing key points without overwhelming the audience.
• View the defence not only as an evaluation but also as an opportunity for continuous improvement. Feedback received during the defence can inform future research endeavours and scholarly pursuits.

In essence, success in a PhD defence hinges on meticulous preparation, adept handling of questions, and projecting confidence and composure during the presentation. A well-prepared and resilient candidate is better positioned to navigate the challenges of the defence, transforming it from a moment of evaluation into an affirmation of scholarly achievement.

Failure in PhD Defence

• While the prospect of failing a PhD defence is relatively rare, it’s essential for candidates to acknowledge that the possibility exists. Understanding this reality can motivate diligent preparation and a proactive approach to mitigate potential risks.
• Failure, if it occurs, should be seen as a learning opportunity rather than a definitive endpoint. It may highlight areas for improvement and offer insights into refining the research and presentation.
• Lack of thorough preparation, including a weak grasp of the research content, inadequate rehearsal, and failure to anticipate potential questions, can contribute to failure.
• Inability to effectively defend the chosen research methodology, including justifying its appropriateness and demonstrating its rigour, can be a critical factor.
• Failing to clearly articulate the original contributions of the research and its significance to the field may lead to a negative assessment.
• Responding defensively to questions, exhibiting a lack of openness to critique, or being unwilling to acknowledge limitations can impact the overall impression.
• Inability to address committee concerns or incorporate constructive feedback received during the defense may contribute to a negative outcome.
• Comprehensive preparation is the cornerstone of success. Candidates should dedicate ample time to understanding every facet of their research, conducting mock defences, and seeking feedback.
• Identify potential weaknesses in the research and address them proactively. Being aware of limitations and articulating plans for addressing them in future work demonstrates foresight.
• Engage with mentors, peers, or advisors before the defence. Solicit constructive feedback on both the content and delivery of the presentation to refine and strengthen the defence.
• Develop strategies to manage stress and nervousness. Techniques such as mindfulness, deep breathing, or visualization can be effective in maintaining composure during the defence.
• Conduct a pre-defense review of all materials, ensuring that the presentation aligns with the dissertation and that visual aids are clear and supportive.
• Approach the defence with an open and reflective attitude. Embrace critique as an opportunity for improvement rather than as a personal affront.
• Clarify expectations with the examination committee beforehand. Understanding the committee’s focus areas and preferences can guide preparation efforts.
• In the event of failure, candidates should approach the situation with resilience. Seek feedback from the committee, understand the reasons for the outcome, and use the experience as a springboard for improvement.

In summary, while the prospect of failing a PhD defence is uncommon, acknowledging its possibility and taking proactive steps to mitigate risks are crucial elements of a well-rounded defence strategy. By addressing common failure factors through thorough preparation, openness to critique, and a resilient attitude, candidates can increase their chances of a successful defence outcome.

PhD Defense or Defence?

• The choice between “defense” and “defence” is primarily a matter of British English versus American English spelling conventions. “Defense” is the preferred spelling in American English, while “defence” is the British English spelling.
• In the global academic community, both spellings are generally understood and accepted. However, the choice of spelling may be influenced by the academic institution’s language conventions or the preferences of individual scholars.
• Academic institutions may have specific guidelines regarding language conventions, and candidates are often expected to adhere to the institution’s preferred spelling.
• Candidates may also consider the preferences of their advisors or committee members. If there is a consistent spelling convention used within the academic department, it is advisable to align with those preferences.
• Consideration should be given to the spelling conventions of scholarly journals in the candidate’s field. If intending to publish research stemming from the dissertation, aligning with the conventions of target journals is prudent.
• If the defense presentation or dissertation will be shared with an international audience, using a more universally recognized spelling (such as “defense”) may be preferred to ensure clarity and accessibility.
• Regardless of the chosen spelling, it’s crucial to maintain consistency throughout the document. Mixing spellings can distract from the content and may be perceived as an oversight.
• In oral presentations and written correspondence related to the defence, including emails, it’s advisable to maintain consistency with the chosen spelling to present a professional and polished image.
• Recognizing that language conventions can vary, candidates should approach the choice of spelling with flexibility. Being adaptable to the preferences of the academic context and demonstrating an awareness of regional variations reflects a nuanced understanding of language usage.
• With the increasing globalization of academia, an awareness of language variations becomes essential. Scholars often collaborate across borders, and an inclusive approach to language conventions contributes to effective communication and collaboration.

In summary, the choice between “PhD defense” and “PhD defence” boils down to regional language conventions and institutional preferences. Maintaining consistency, being mindful of the target audience, and adapting to the expectations of the academic community contribute to a polished and professional presentation, whether in written documents or oral defences.

Is PhD Defense a Formality?

• While the PhD defence is a structured and ritualistic event, it is far from being a mere formality. It is a critical and substantive part of the doctoral journey, designed to rigorously evaluate the candidate’s research contributions, understanding of the field, and ability to engage in scholarly discourse.
• The defence is not a checkbox to be marked but rather a dynamic process where the candidate’s research is evaluated for its scholarly merit. The committee scrutinizes the originality, significance, and methodology of the research, aiming to ensure it meets the standards of advanced academic work.
• Far from a passive or purely ceremonial event, the defence involves active engagement between the candidate and the examination committee. Questions, discussions, and debates are integral components that enrich the scholarly exchange during the defence.
• The defence serves as a platform for the candidate to demonstrate the originality of their research. Committee members assess the novelty of the contributions, ensuring that the work adds value to the existing body of knowledge.
• Beyond the content, the defence evaluates the methodological rigour of the research. Committee members assess whether the chosen methodology is appropriate, well-executed, and contributes to the validity of the findings.
• Successful completion of the defence affirms the candidate’s ability to contribute meaningfully to the academic discourse in their field. It is an endorsement of the candidate’s position as a knowledgeable and respected scholar.
• The defence process acts as a quality assurance mechanism in academia. It ensures that individuals awarded a doctoral degree have undergone a thorough and rigorous evaluation, upholding the standards of excellence in research and scholarly inquiry.
• Institutions have specific criteria and standards for awarding a PhD. The defence process aligns with these institutional and academic standards, providing a consistent and transparent mechanism for evaluating candidates.
• Successful completion of the defence is a pivotal moment that marks the transition from a doctoral candidate to a recognized scholar. It opens doors to further contributions, collaborations, and opportunities within the academic community.
• Research presented during the defence often forms the basis for future publications. The validation received in the defence enhances the credibility of the research, facilitating its dissemination and impact within the academic community.
• Beyond the academic realm, a successfully defended PhD is a key credential for professional advancement. It enhances one’s standing in the broader professional landscape, opening doors to research positions, teaching opportunities, and leadership roles.

In essence, the PhD defence is a rigorous and meaningful process that goes beyond formalities, playing a crucial role in affirming the academic merit of a candidate’s research and marking the culmination of their journey toward scholarly recognition.

Dressing for Success: PhD Defense Outfit

• For Men: A well-fitted suit in neutral colours (black, navy, grey), a collared dress shirt, a tie, and formal dress shoes.
• For Women: A tailored suit, a blouse or button-down shirt, and closed-toe dress shoes.
• Dress codes can vary based on cultural expectations. It’s advisable to be aware of any cultural nuances within the academic institution and to adapt attire accordingly.
• With the rise of virtual defenses, considerations for attire remain relevant. Even in online settings, dressing professionally contributes to a polished and serious demeanor. Virtual attire can mirror what one would wear in-person, focusing on the upper body visible on camera.
• The attire chosen for a PhD defense contributes to the first impression that a candidate makes on the examination committee. A professional and polished appearance sets a positive tone for the defense.
• Dressing appropriately reflects respect for the gravity of the occasion. It acknowledges the significance of the defense as a formal evaluation of one’s scholarly contributions.
• Wearing professional attire can contribute to a boost in confidence. When individuals feel well-dressed and put-together, it can positively impact their mindset and overall presentation.
• The PhD defense is a serious academic event, and dressing professionally fosters an atmosphere of seriousness and commitment to the scholarly process. It aligns with the respect one accords to academic traditions.
• Institutional norms may influence dress expectations. Some academic institutions may have specific guidelines regarding attire for formal events, and candidates should be aware of and adhere to these norms.
• While adhering to the formality expected in academic settings, individuals can also express their personal style within the bounds of professionalism. It’s about finding a balance between institutional expectations and personal comfort.
• Select and prepare the outfit well in advance to avoid last-minute stress. Ensure that the attire is clean, well-ironed, and in good condition.
• Accessories such as ties, scarves, or jewelry should complement the outfit. However, it’s advisable to keep accessories subtle to maintain a professional appearance.
• While dressing professionally, prioritize comfort. PhD defenses can be mentally demanding, and comfortable attire can contribute to a more confident and composed demeanor.
• Pay attention to grooming, including personal hygiene and haircare. A well-groomed appearance contributes to an overall polished look.
• Start preparation well in advance of the defense date. Know your research inside out, anticipate potential questions, and be ready to discuss the nuances of your methodology, findings, and contributions.
• Conduct mock defenses with peers, mentors, or colleagues. Mock defenses provide an opportunity to receive constructive feedback, practice responses to potential questions, and refine your presentation.
• Strike a balance between confidence and humility. Confidence in presenting your research is essential, but being open to acknowledging limitations and areas for improvement demonstrates intellectual honesty.
• Actively engage with the examination committee during the defense. Listen carefully to questions, respond thoughtfully, and view the defense as a scholarly exchange rather than a mere formality.
• Understand the expertise and backgrounds of the committee members. Tailor your presentation and responses to align with the interests and expectations of your specific audience.
• Practice time management during your presentation. Ensure that you allocate sufficient time to cover key aspects of your research, leaving ample time for questions and discussions.
• It’s normal to feel nervous, but practicing mindfulness and staying calm under pressure is crucial. Take deep breaths, maintain eye contact, and focus on delivering a clear and composed presentation.
• Have a plan for post-defense activities. Whether it’s revisions to the dissertation, publications, or future research endeavors, having a roadmap for what comes next demonstrates foresight and commitment to ongoing scholarly contributions.
• After successfully defending, individuals often emphasize the importance of taking time to reflect on the entire doctoral journey. Acknowledge personal and academic growth, celebrate achievements, and use the experience to inform future scholarly pursuits.

In summary, learning from the experiences of others who have successfully defended offers a wealth of practical wisdom. These insights, combined with thoughtful preparation and a proactive approach, contribute to a successful and fulfilling defense experience.

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The journey from a curious researcher to a recognized scholar culminates in the PhD defence—an intellectual odyssey marked by dedication, resilience, and a relentless pursuit of knowledge. As we navigate the intricacies of this pivotal event, it becomes evident that the PhD defence is far more than a ceremonial rite; it is a substantive evaluation that validates the contributions of a researcher to the academic landscape.

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How to Avoid Failing Your Ph.D. Dissertation

By  Daniel Sokol

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I am a barrister in London who specializes in helping doctoral students who have failed their Ph.D.s. Few people will have had the dubious privilege of seeing as many unsuccessful Ph.D. dissertations and reading as many scathing reports by examination committees. Here are common reasons why students who submit their Ph.D.s fail, with advice on how to avoid such pitfalls. The lessons apply to the United States and the United Kingdom.

Lack of critical reflection. Probably the most common reason for failing a Ph.D. dissertation is a lack of critical analysis. A typical observation of the examination committee is, “The thesis is generally descriptive and a more analytical approach is required.”

For doctoral work, students must engage critically with the subject matter, not just set out what other scholars have said or done. If not, the thesis will not be original. It will not add anything of substance to the field and will fail.

Doctoral students should adopt a reflexive approach to their work. Why have I chosen this methodology? What are the flaws or limitations of this or that author’s argument? Can I make interesting comparisons between this and something else? Those who struggle with this aspect should ask their supervisors for advice on how to inject some analytic sophistication to their thesis.

Lack of coherence. Other common observations are of the type: “The argument running through the thesis needs to be more coherent” or “The thesis is poorly organized and put together without any apparent logic.”

The thesis should be seen as one coherent whole. It cannot be a series of self-contained chapters stitched together haphazardly. Students should spend considerable time at the outset of their dissertation thinking about structure, both at the macro level of the entire thesis and the micro level of the chapter. It is a good idea to look at other Ph.D. theses and monographs to get a sense of what constitutes a logical structure.

Poor presentation. The majority of failed Ph.D. dissertations are sloppily presented. They contain typos, grammatical mistakes, referencing errors and inconsistencies in presentation. Looking at some committee reports randomly, I note the following comments:

• “The thesis is poorly written.”
• “That previous section is long, badly written and lacks structure.”
• “The author cannot formulate his thoughts or explain his reasons. It is very hard to understand a good part of the thesis.”
• “Ensure that the standard of written English is consistent with the standard expected of a Ph.D. thesis.”
• “The language used is simplistic and does not reflect the standard of writing expected at Ph.D. level.”

For committee members, who are paid a fixed and pitiful sum to examine the work, few things are as off-putting as a poorly written dissertation. Errors of language slow the reading speed and can frustrate or irritate committee members. At worst, they can lead them to miss or misinterpret an argument.

Students should consider using a professional proofreader to read the thesis, if permitted by the university’s regulations. But that still is no guarantee of an error-free thesis. Even after the proofreader has returned the manuscript, students should read and reread the work in its entirety.

When I was completing my Ph.D., I read my dissertation so often that the mere sight of it made me nauseous. Each time, I would spot a typo or tweak a sentence, removing a superfluous word or clarifying an ambiguous passage. My meticulous approach was rewarded when one committee member said in the oral examination that it was the best-written dissertation he had ever read. This was nothing to do with skill or an innate writing ability but tedious, repetitive revision.

Failure to make required changes. It is rare for students to fail to obtain their Ph.D. outright at the oral examination. Usually, the student is granted an opportunity to resubmit their dissertation after making corrections.

Students often submit their revised thesis together with a document explaining how they implemented the committee’s recommendations. And they often believe, wrongly, that this document is proof that they have incorporated the requisite changes and that they should be awarded a Ph.D.

In fact, the committee may feel that the changes do not go far enough or that they reveal further misunderstandings or deficiencies. Here are some real observations by dissertation committees:

• “The added discussion section is confusing. The only thing that has improved is the attempt to provide a little more analysis of the experimental data.”
• “The author has tried to address the issues identified by the committee, but there is little improvement in the thesis.”

In short, students who fail their Ph.D. dissertations make changes that are superficial or misconceived. Some revised theses end up worse than the original submission.

Students must incorporate changes in the way that the committee members had in mind. If what is required is unclear, students can usually seek clarification through their supervisors.

In the nine years I have spent helping Ph.D. students with their appeals, I have found that whatever the subject matter of the thesis, the above criticisms appear time and time again in committee reports. They are signs of a poor Ph.D.

Wise students should ask themselves these questions prior to submission of the dissertation:

• Is the work sufficiently critical/analytical, or is it mainly descriptive?
• Is it coherent and well structured?
• Does the thesis look good and read well?
• If a resubmission, have I made the changes that the examination committee had in mind?

Once students are satisfied that the answer to each question is yes, they should ask their supervisors the same questions.

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Peer-reviewed

Research Article

What Took Them So Long? Explaining PhD Delays among Doctoral Candidates

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliations Department of Methods and Statistics, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands, Optentia Research Focus Area, North-West University, Vanderbijlpark, South Africa

Affiliations Institute for Social Science Research, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

Affiliation Education and Child Studies, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

Affiliations Netherlands Centre for Graduate and Research Schools, Utrecht, The Netherlands, Tilburg Law School, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands

• Rens van de Schoot, 
• Mara A. Yerkes, 
• Jolien M. Mouw, 
• Hans Sonneveld

• Published: July 23, 2013
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0068839
• Reader Comments

A delay in PhD completion, while likely undesirable for PhD candidates, can also be detrimental to universities if and when PhD delay leads to attrition/termination. Termination of the PhD trajectory can lead to individual stress, a loss of valuable time and resources invested in the candidate and can also mean a loss of competitive advantage. Using data from two studies of doctoral candidates in the Netherlands, we take a closer look at PhD duration and delay in doctoral completion. Specifically, we address the question: Is it possible to predict which PhD candidates will experience delays in the completion of their doctorate degree? If so, it might be possible to take steps to shorten or even prevent delay, thereby helping to enhance university competitiveness. Moreover, we discuss practical do's and don'ts for universities and graduate schools to minimize delays.

Citation: van de Schoot R, Yerkes MA, Mouw JM, Sonneveld H (2013) What Took Them So Long? Explaining PhD Delays among Doctoral Candidates. PLoS ONE 8(7): e68839. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0068839

Editor: Matteo Convertino, University of Florida, United States of America

Received: February 15, 2013; Accepted: June 3, 2013; Published: July 23, 2013

Copyright: © 2013 van de Schoot et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Funding: The data collection for the first project was financed by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science and IVLOS at Utrecht University. The data collection for the second project was financed by The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). This research was made possible in part by a grant the first author received from The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research: NWO-VENI-451-11-008. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

Universities across the globe are increasingly focused on how to be competitive in global and national rankings, and are often looking for ways to improve research and teaching efforts. The role of PhD candidates is extremely important in this regard as they can potentially produce a large amount of scientific output, a factor crucial in most ranking systems. The Shanghai Ranking, one of the most recognized academic ranking systems, ranks universities in part based on the number of successful PhD completions. A delay in PhD completion, while likely undesirable for PhD candidates, can also be detrimental to universities if PhD delay leads to attrition (i.e. termination of the PhD trajectory). PhD termination can lead to individual stress, a loss of valuable time and resources because of all the training and supervision invested in the candidate [1] , and can also mean a loss of competitive advantage [2] .

While many countries maintain a notional PhD duration of three or four years [3] , in reality, PhD candidates often take much longer to complete their doctoral studies. Using data from two studies of doctoral candidates in the Netherlands, we take a closer look at PhD duration and delay in doctoral completion. Specifically, we address the question: Is it possible to predict which PhD candidates will experience delays in the completion of their doctoral degree? If this is possible, then it is also possible to take steps to shorten or even prevent delay, thereby helping to enhance university competitiveness.

PhD completion in The Netherlands

The Dutch system of doctoral education has a number of characteristics specific to the Dutch context [4] . One important characteristic in relation to PhD completion and delay is the structure of funding and time given to PhD candidates to complete the PhD. Most PhD candidates are employed by the university for a set period of time to complete a PhD. The funding for these positions within the university often stems directly or indirectly from an external source, such as a research grant. As such, PhD projects consist primarily of a pre-specified trajectory of anywhere between three and five years. One consequence of this structure is that the contract duration for the PhD is set prior to a candidate starting a doctoral trajectory. Therefore, PhD candidates have no influence on the duration of the contract. Exceptions to this can only occur in special cases of delay, for example delay due to maternity leave or extended illness, or if a PhD candidate requests a decrease in working hours, which is a legislative right in the Netherlands. Individuals who have worked for their employer for 12 months or longer have a right to request an increase or decrease in working hours. If a business wishes to refuse such a request, the burden of proof is on employers to prove that granting the request would be harmful to the business. In these cases, the contract is likely to be extended pro rata to the time taken off work or the reduction in working hours.

It should be noted that the set time limit of the Dutch system does not mean PhD candidates cannot continue to work on the PhD thesis or graduate after the contract finishes. Rather, the set time limit refers to the period of time during which a candidate receives funding and can work (almost) full-time on the PhD thesis. Beyond this period, the candidate is responsible for finishing the thesis in his/her own time, which can lead to further delay. An advantage of this system is that PhD candidates have a period of guaranteed funding, during which they have the capacity to undertake field work, carry out research, and write, with minimal teaching obligations. While PhD candidates in the Netherlands may experience delays throughout the PhD trajectory, either within or beyond this set time period, these delays will most likely not be due to an absence of funding or the necessity of other professional work to finance one's PhD trajectory (for example teaching assistantships). This may not be the case with delays experienced by PhD candidates in other countries, such as the United States, where funding for doctoral research differs. What these different delays (financial, research-oriented, and supervisory) mean for PhD candidates and their success, and how this differs across countries, remains an important issue for further research.

Another characteristic of the Dutch system is that most PhD students are paid by way of the university as regular employees with a set salary level (set by collective agreement). While this is the case for most PhD candidates, it is not true for all of them. In the Netherlands, it is possible to differentiate between three different types of PhD status, including: (a) PhD candidates employed by the university (on the basis of university funding or external funding, such as funding from the national science foundation or third (private) parties), (b) scholarship recipients, and (c) external and/or dual PhD candidates. The first form is the exception and not the rule in most doctoral education programs in industrialized countries. The co-existence of multiple types of doctoral candidates is not unique to the Netherlands, however. Germany, Finland and Turkey also have doctoral systems where various types of PhD candidates co-exist, including PhD candidates employed by universities, scholarship recipients and external candidates who combine doctoral work with professional activities in other organizations [5] . What is unique about the Dutch system, however, is the high proportion of PhD candidates who are paid to work full-time or nearly full-time (0.8 FTE) on their research and PhD thesis. As noted above, a major advantage of this system is that by providing PhD candidates with a stable funding source, PhD candidates are often successful in completing the doctoral trajectory within the pre-set time period [6] . The average completion rate in the Netherlands, in general, is around 75 per cent. The existence of such a system is also useful for understanding PhD delay, a point we address below.

While the Dutch system provides most PhD candidates with a stable funding source, these external funding sources generally do not provide for the coverage of salary costs associated with an extension of a PhD contract. Therefore, any delay in the PhD trajectory in terms of salary costs has to be paid for by an academic department or institute. Alternatively, the PhD student must finish the thesis in his/her private time without drawing a salary from the university. Financially, delays can be costly for academic departments and are highly undesirable. If universities are not willing to cover the cost of an extension of the contract and a PhD candidate must finish the thesis in his/her own time, the risk increases that the thesis will not be completed [7] . In essence, the greater the duration of PhD delay, the greater the likelihood that a thesis may never be completed. Failure to complete the thesis translates into a significant loss in research investment and lost revenue for universities. In the Dutch case, this can also mean a significant financial loss because universities are rewarded financially by the government for PhD completions (€90,000 per successfully defended thesis).

Predictors of PhD-delay

While most other studies investigating variation in PhD completion typically focus on describing causes of (high) attrition rates [8] , predicting the timing of completion [2] , [9] , and/or time-to-degree [10] , [11] given the structure of the Dutch system we are able to measure the ‘true’ rate of delay. Rather than merely attempting to predict the timing and duration of PhD completion and/or time-to-degree, the structure of the Dutch system means we know a priori how long a PhD should take (expected duration) versus the actual duration. The expected duration is equal to the pre-determined end date minus the pre-determined starting date, whereas the actual duration is equal to the actual end date minus the actual starting date. The difference between these two is what we call ‘delay’. This measurement of the true rate of delay means we can focus on which factors predict PhD delay. Explanations for variation in PhD completion rates and/or time-to-degree can be sought in a number of areas and are often difficult to disentangle, but can be generalized into three categories [6] , [8] , [9] , [11] – [16] :

• Institutional or environmental factors , including field of study, departmental research climate, and resources and facilities available to the project;
• The nature and quality of supervision , entailing both the frequency of meetings as well as the support of research colleagues;
• Characteristics of the PhD candidate : including gender, ethnicity, age, having children, marital status, satisfaction with the project, academic achievement, and expectations about the project. In addition, certain personality traits, such as patience, a willingness to work hard, motivation and self-confidence have also been shown to influence PhD completion rates, but accounting for variation in these traits is beyond the scope of the research design here.

Factors most important in determining delay vary across university settings but some key warning signs, as noted by [17] , are:

• constant changes to the research topic;
• avoiding communication with the supervisor;
• PhD candidates isolating themselves;
• avoiding submitting work for review.

The above findings have, to our knowledge, never been included in a single quantitative study, which we ascribe to do here.

Before discussing the data and methodology, we call attention to one possible factor of interest: gender. Recent educational statistics show that women are increasingly taking part in higher education, including doctoral education [18] . Whereas a previous study conducted in the Netherlands in 1995 found that one fifth of PhD candidates were female [19] , a more recent study conducted in 2008–09 shows that this percentage has more than doubled to 47 per cent [20] . The effect of gender on the duration of the PhD trajectory is, however, disputed. While some studies find gender differences [21] , others do not [15] , [22] . Some studies report a positive relationship between being married or having children and delays in PhD completion for women [8] , however others suggest the effects of being married and having children are usually larger for men, as the behavioural changes accompanying marriage and parenthood are smaller for women than for men [23] . A recent article in Nature confirms the contradictions evident in research that investigates gender differences in relation to the PhD trajectory [24] . We address this issue by predicting PhD delay separately for male and female PhD candidates.

In the current paper we use data from two separate but related studies. While these studies are drawn from different populations and use various methods, they allow for a closer examination of PhD duration and delay in the Netherlands. We discuss the generalizability and possible limitations of these studies in our conclusions. The first dataset stems from a survey of doctoral recipients who completed their PhD in 2008–2009. Using these data we a) describe the occurrence of PhD delay and b) build a statistical model to predict which PhD candidates are likely to be delayed. The second dataset consists of PhD candidates surveyed in The Netherlands at Utrecht University in the final year of their PhD. These candidates were asked whether they expected to complete their PhD on time. Candidates expecting to be delayed were asked about possible reasons for this delay, including a number of open-ended questions. Data from this study allow us an opportunity to contextualize delays in PhD completion experienced by doctoral candidates. We provide a further discussion of the data and methodology for each study and turn to the results of each of these studies below.

It should be noted that the research discussed here has not been subjected to an ethics approval process. While obtaining ethics approval is standard practice in most Anglo-American systems, this is not (yet) the case for most social science research in the Netherlands. In our case, no approval by an ethical review committee was obtained because the planned surveys with adult academics are neither physically nor emotionally burdensome nor do they violate respondents' privacy. We did obtain consent from each of the local executive boards at participating universities, however, and the research was undertaken with the utmost care. This includes, but is not limited to, ensuring the privacy and confidentiality of respondents, explaining the research process to participants and minimizing the demands placed on respondents by using well-tested survey instruments. Research was not undertaken outside the country of residence, therefore no local authorities were contacted. The research was not conducted in relation to any medical facility. The quantitative and qualitative data presented here are not publicly available. However, a copy of the fully-anonymized quantitative dataset is available from the first author upon request.

Methods Study 1: PhD Duration and Completion

Participants.

The first study relies on survey data on Dutch doctoral recipients gathered between February 2008 and June 2009 (response rate 50.7%; n = 565; 47% female; 73.8% were of Dutch origin) in the Netherlands at four universities (Delft University of Technology, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Utrecht University, and Wageningen University and Research Centre). For more details see [25] .

Of the 565 respondents surveyed, the majority (71.1%) reported that their formal PhD status was ‘employee’ at a university with five per cent listing ‘scholarship recipient’ as their main PhD status. The share of external or dual PhD candidates was 23.9 per cent. In the current paper we focus solely on those respondents who reported their start and end date, and who reported their status as being an employee (n = 308) or scholarship recipient (n = 25), of which 48 per cent were female. This decision is based on the transparency of these PhD trajectories. PhD candidates employed by the university and scholarship recipients have unambiguous start and end dates and these candidates primarily work full-time on their PhD thesis, allowing for a clear look at PhD delay. The group of PhD candidates not employed by the university is highly heterogeneous, which makes it difficult to assess delay clearly. There were no significant differences on key background variables between respondents included/excluded from our study. The total sample size used for the analyses is therefore n = 301 and a summary of descriptive statistics on this sample can be found in Table 1 . Note that we also deleted two outliers because they reported unrealistic values for the gap between actual and completed project time, namely -31 (completed the PhD 31 months sooner than expected) and 91 (completed the PhD 91 months later than expected). We conducted the final analyses with and without these two cases and although some numerical differences appeared, our conclusions remained the same.

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0068839.t001

All PhD candidates who applied for permission to defend their thesis were invited to participate in the survey. Respondents were contacted through the Registrar's office (the pedel) , the university office in charge of organising the doctoral defence, at each of the participating universities. Note that in the Netherlands the so-called ‘all-but-dissertation’ (ABD) status does not exist, and registering for the defence is only allowed after official approval of the doctoral thesis by the defence (examination) committee. Outside of exceptional cases such as fraud, the degree will be conferred following a primarily ceremonial defence. When PhD candidates registered for their defence, they received an informational packet, which included a letter from the university Board of Governors ( College van Bestuur ) explaining the aim and objectives of this research project and asking for their participation. The Netherlands Centre for Graduate and Research Schools was then provided with a list of e-mail addresses of PhD candidates who registered for the defence at each university. Respondents were approached within 10–14 days after registering for graduation and were provided a login and password to complete the survey. Up to two reminder emails were sent if a respondent did not sign in to complete the survey. In sum, respondents received a maximum of three e-mails asking them to participate. Any identifying information has been removed from the data for purposes of confidentiality.

We asked the participants to provide information on certain background characteristics such as age, gender, citizenship (whether or not they were born in the Netherlands and/or have a Dutch passport), marital status (including cohabitation), both as a static category and whether their marital status changed during the PhD trajectory, and whether there are any children under the age of 18 living in the household. Furthermore, we asked them questions about any major changes occurring during the PhD trajectory. These changes included: [Did you change']… ‘[…] your main supervisor?’ '[…] daily supervisor?’ ‘[…] the institute or graduate school where you were completing the PhD?’, and ‘Did you change your thesis topic?’ In addition, respondents were asked about their publication record, including the number of submitted and accepted articles as well as conference visits. We then asked about perceived expectations from supervisors, including the expected number of journal articles, book chapters, conference papers, conference visits, etc. Finally, we asked respondents to reply to 15 statements about their supervisor and the academic climate in their department. Answers were scored on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. One example of these statements is ‘Prior to the start of the second year of my PhD trajectory, I had a clear idea which data I would need to answer my research questions’. All 15 statements can be found in Table 1 . Each of these predicting variables was added to the model in one step. In addition, we control for the relationship between age and having children by regression the variable having children on age, see also the syntax in the supplementary materials.

Statistical Analysis

As discussed above, the Dutch system is characterized by having PhD trajectories with primarily fixed durations. Consequently, a PhD project includes a pre-determined start and end date which makes it possible to compute an exact duration for the PhD, both actual and expected. In the survey, all respondents were asked to indicate the length of their contract (planned PhD duration) as well as how long it took them to complete their thesis (actual PhD duration). This information can then be used to compute the average gap between actual and planned duration, referred to as the gap .

Using the gap as our dependent variable, we can build a statistical model where we add predictors of the average gap for females and males separately. We provide the syntax of the model in the appendix (see Appendix S1 ), and the data can be requested by sending an email to the first author. We have used Bayesian statistics in the software package Mplus v7.0 [26] , [27] for all of the analyses. Mplus is a software package that can deal with many types of statistical models with continuous and categorical variables and different types of estimators, for example maximum likelihood, weighted least squares, bootstrapping and the Bayesian estimator. Bayesian statistics are becoming more common in academic research [28] . The number of papers published, for example, in the journal PLoS One with Bayes in the title or abstract has increased from only one in 2006 to 89 in 2011. The key difference between Bayesian statistics and ML-estimation concerns the nature of the unknown parameters. For example, following the frequentist framework approach to maximum likelihood estimation, a parameter of interest is assumed to be unknown, but fixed. That is, it is assumed that there is only one true population parameter in the population; for example, one true regression coefficient. In the Bayesian view of subjective probability, all unknown parameters are treated as uncertain and should therefore be described using a probability distribution. Hence, with Bayesian statistics, all parameters of the model (e.g., means, variances, regression parameters, etc.) are repeatedly estimated in an iterative process. This distribution of parameters can subsequently be used to compute the mean regression coefficient and its confidence interval. For a more detailed comparison and for an introduction to Bayesian statistics see the many textbooks on this topic, for example [29] .

In our case there are three main reasons why we have chosen to use Bayesian statistics. First, Bayesian estimation is less sensitive to the distribution of the parameters in our model because of the iterative process. This is an advantage in our case because of the highly skewed distribution of our dependent variable (see Figure 1 ). Second, in each iteration of the iterative process, missing data is automatically imputed. In our data, 75 per cent of the cases had complete data and another 20 per cent had missing data for only one or two variables. The remaining 5 per cent had missing data on multiple variables. The amount of missing data was not related to any of the variables in the model. Third, the use of Bayesian statistics results in slightly different interpretations of the results compared to maximum likelihood or a weighted least squares estimation. When Bayesian statistics are used, the confidence intervals (i.e., credibility intervals, or posterior probability intervals) are used to indicate the 95 per cent probability that the estimate will lie between the lower and upper value of the interval. When the interval does not include zero, the null hypothesis is rejected and the effect is assumed to be present.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0068839.g001

On a final methodological note, when analyzing statistical models, we may be interested in more than just confirming or rejecting a single hypothesis –we may want to evaluate the entire model. When using Bayesian statistics, classical model fit indices, such as the CFI, TLI, and RMSEA are not available. However, it is possible to obtain the predictive accuracy of the model (see [30] for a more detailed discussion). This evaluation of the model is also referred to as posterior predictive checking, see [31] . In Mplus, the posterior predictive p -value ( ppp-value ) is given and ppp -values around.50 indicate a good-fitting model.

Results Study 1: PhD Duration and Completion

Starting with results from our first study, the data show that female PhD recipients took an average of 59.8 months (95% CI: 57.18–61.82) to complete their PhD thesis and male PhD candidates an average of 59.67 months (95% CI: 57.46–61.91), see also Figure 2 . The average gap between actual and planned duration (i.e., the gap ) was 9.52 months for women (95% CI: 7.43–11.69) and 10.11 months for men (95% CI: 8.09–12.17), see also Figure 1 . Since the 95% CI for both variables for women and men completely overlap, no significant gender differences are found. While the duration of the gap does not differ for men and women, we do find significant differences in what causes the gap , or rather what is associated with the gap . Because our data is cross-sectional data, we cannot make assumptions about causal relationships.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0068839.g002

In the statistical model for female PhD candidates (n = 158), 30.0 per cent of the variance in the gap was explained and the ppp-value is.60, indicating a well-fitting model. Our results clearly show significant predictors, that is, the 95 per cent CI does not include zero, see Table 2 . For women, a change in marital status during the PhD trajectory (while controlling for the status itself) is associated with more than five months delay. In addition, having had opportunities through their supervisors to establish international contacts was associated with a three month delay. In contrast, for women, working together with other PhD candidates is associated with a four month gain in project time.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0068839.t002

In the statistical model for male PhD candidates (n = 173), 30.4 per cent of the variance in the gap was explained and the ppp-value is.52, also indicating a good-fitting model. In contrast to women, marital status was not associated with the gap for men, but having children is associated with almost four months delay. Moreover, for men, a change of supervisor or thesis topic was associated with a five-and-a-half month delay. Conference attendance, however, was associated with a decrease of the gap by 7 months. In addition, for men, whether the PhD candidate knew which research question to answer by the end of the first year was associated with a 3.8 month decrease in the gap.

Methods Study 2: Explaining PhD Delay

The second study relies on survey data on doctoral recipients gathered in 2010 at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, for more information see [32] . The sampling frame included all PhD candidates registered at Utrecht University. In other words, the frame consists of candidates employed by the university as well as external and dual PhD candidates (candidates who combined a PhD with another job or other activities), and scholarship-funded PhD candidates. Candidates were invited to rate various aspects of their PhD experience through an online questionnaire, including a series of open ended questions. In total, 2,870 candidates were approached and of these 2870 candidates, 1,504 (52%) completed at least one part of the survey. Similar to the previous study, most PhD candidates surveyed (79%) were employed by the university, 5% of respondents were on a PhD scholarship and external and/or dual PhD candidates (who combine a PhD with other activities) made up 12 per cent of the candidates surveyed. Nearly one third (31%) of the respondents had a non-Dutch nationality. The top three foreign nationalities included German (3%), Italian (3%) and Chinese (2%). Candidates' average age was 31. More than one–third of candidates (36%) were older than 31. Fifty-seven percent of the candidates were female and 43 percent were male.

In line with the previous study, while a survey carried out at one university in the Netherlands may not be representative of the population of PhD candidates as a whole, the data provide rich, contextual data on expectations of PhD duration and reasons for delay.

Results Study 2: Explaining PhD Delay

Using data from this second study, it was possible to determine the current stage of the PhD trajectory for 1,286 respondents: 25 per cent were in their first year, 19 per cent were in their last year, 53 per cent were somewhere in between and 3 per cent had recently graduated. When asked whether they were on track to finish their PhD thesis on time, 60.5 per cent of the PhD candidates reported they expected to finish on time, while 27.5 per cent expected difficulty in finishing on time and another 12 per cent did not know. If we select only those PhD candidates who were in the final year of their PhD, 88 out of 232 (38%) expected to experience problems in finishing on time. For the remainder of the analysis, we refer only to this group of respondents in the final year of their PhD. Not only do these candidates probably know best why they were experiencing a delay (the time to finish their PhD was quickly running out), it is also plausible that an expected delay in the first few years of the PhD trajectory may be resolved at a later stage. Due to the small sample size, we do not exclude external and/or dual PhD students from this study, whereas external and/or dual candidates are excluded from Study 1.

Respondents were asked about the reasons for the expected delay and could choose from ten answer categories, see Figure 3 . Multiple answers could be provided. Responses to this question illustrate that experiencing practical setbacks is the most common reason for a delay, followed by not adhering to the original thesis plan. In contrast to other countries like the US, Dutch PhD candidates do not wait to select a thesis topic until later in the PhD trajectory. Rather, PhD candidates start their trajectory with a clear topic and research plan laid out.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0068839.g003

We also asked respondents a number of open-ended questions about expected delays. The responses to these questions can be grouped into four broad themes thought to influence delay:

• Thesis-related issues , meaning additional work needed to be done ( n  = 16), such as extra papers being written or statistical analyses taking longer than expected; bad planning or a change in plans, and external circumstances ( n  = 15) such as waiting for donor material, waiting for ethics approval, or as one respondent replied, “experiments were affected due to renovations in the building”.
• Supervisor-related issues . For many respondents, clear guidance and communication were essential to their PhD trajectory ( n  = 17). Stated differently, an absence of clear guidance and communication were seen as integral in explaining their expected delay.
• Personal issues . This includes circumstances at home (n  = 15), such as care responsibilities, or more serious circumstances such as the death of a relative, a candidate suffering from severe illness; or personal difficulties in managing the project ( n  = 8).
• Combination problems . These issues involved trying to combine the PhD with other duties, such as other work (n  = 24); starting a new job before finishing the thesis; or as one respondent replied, needing “to spend time pleasing the grant provider.”

For many respondents, clear guidance and communication were essential to their PhD trajectory. Or rather, they perceived an absence of clear guidance and communication as fundamental in causing delay, as these two respondents discuss:

“I have been having a difficult time relating with my first project which I started with my supervisor, who moved to another institute and who doesn't pay attention to what I am doing anymore. [...] I fell in a void when my previous supervisor left, and no one noticed. It took me 1.5 years to find a new supervisor, start a project etc. That time is lost, and I do not get any (monetary) help on that point.” 4 th year PhD candidate in the Social Sciences, delayed by 6 months and still working on the thesis “My supervisor does not motivate or stimulate me scientifically or socially. He does not provide any practical supervision, nor does he ensure that a secondary supervisor does so, even when explicitly asked to do so and agreeing upon this. This has caused considerable and unnecessary delay in my project. When confronted, the supervisor denies any insufficiencies and does not show willingness to invest in improving the situation.” 4 th year PhD candidate in the Health Sciences delayed by approximately 1 year

The frustration caused by an absence of clear guidance and communication is summed up succinctly by the response of one PhD candidate who stated:

“HE'S LEFT ME ALONE”. (Emphasis in original) 4 th year PhD candidate in the Earth Sciences delayed by approximately 2 years

Answers to these open-ended questions provide interesting insights into PhD candidates' experiences and perceptions of delay. Together with the results from the first study, the data offer a starting point for developing practical tips for preventing delay. One creative and useful way of developing these tips is to apply the Machine Trick to these responses, suggested by famed sociologist Howard Becker [33] :

Take a second. Imagine that you have a spouse/partner. We ask you to tell us what your partner should do to keep you happy. You could talk for hours, mentioning dozens and dozens of examples of what the partner should or should not do. Now we apply the Machine Trick. What should your partner do to make you feel sad and unhappy as quickly as possible? Within five minutes you will be able to sum up the essential things, the opposite of which thus provides key insights into having and maintaining a happy relationship.

To understand key factors contributing to the successful completion of a PhD project, we should ask ourselves what key factors a “machine” would use to make a PhD project fail. Of course, as Becker tells us, in actuality we do not want a PhD project to fail. But utilizing such a machine-designing exercise offers a systematic means of considering which factors contribute to the failure (and conversely the success) of a PhD project.

Applying Becker's Machine Trick to our qualitative data, we can conclude that key steps likely to contribute to the failure of a PhD project include:

• Admit doctoral candidates who demonstrate the least amount of knowledge about their potential PhD topic.
• Base admission decisions on written material only – do not invite candidates for face-to-face interviews.
• Do not test the (English) language proficiency of PhD candidates from abroad.
• Restrict supervision to one supervisor who is overloaded with responsibilities, has multiple PhD candidates and offers no team supervision.
• Restrict supervision to a supervisor who does not care about PhD planning, who will meet with the candidate once every two or three months at the most and who will let the PhD candidate independently determine which criteria are applied in assessing the thesis and if/when progress will be monitored.
• Do not assess whether the candidate possesses the basic and necessary qualities for designing and completing a PhD project prior to enrolment.
• Have the candidate focus solely on reading and do not provide any training in rigorous, academic writing or any other research skills.
• Isolate the candidate: Communication with other experts or peers to discuss one's work should be avoided.
• And please, let the candidate teach for at least for three or four days a week.

These factors will guarantee a delay of the PhD candidate. While these tips may appear self-evident, few studies offer empirical evidence from the perspective of PhD candidates on which to base these recommendations. While further research is needed to test the generalizability of the results shown here, taking steps to develop policies aimed at addressing these concerns can minimize the chances of delay.

In this paper, we have taken a brief look at PhD delay. Results from the first study show significant gender differences in predicting PhD delay, confirming findings from [21] . What is associated with delay differs for men and women. For women, work and social contacts are associated with a reduction in delay, whereas for men, conference attendance and knowing precisely which research questions the candidate wants to answer at the end of the first year is associated with a decrease in delay. We also find that for women, a change in marital status (while controlling for marital status itself), and having had opportunities through their supervisors to establish international contacts are associated with delay. For men, having children younger than 18 in the household or experiencing a change of supervisor or thesis topic is associated with a delay in finishing the PhD. In part, then, our results appear to confirm findings from Waite [23] , that the effects of having children are larger for men than for women. In fact, we find no significant effect of having children under the age of 18 on the PhD delay experienced by women. The absence of a finding here could be a reflection of when women choose to have children. Mastekaasa [34] finds, for example, that there is no relationship between having children and completion rates of doctoral candidates in Norway, as long as children were born prior to commencement of a PhD program. Female doctoral candidates may make a conscious choice to delay childbearing until after PhD completion. However, more research is needed to determine the validity of such an argument.

The second study, looking in more detail at reasons for expected delays, demonstrates that practical setbacks can lead to unnecessary delays in the PhD trajectory. This may not be a surprising finding, given that practical setbacks, such as problems with data, are part of doing research more generally and the PhD experience in particular. However, an individual's ability to deal with these practical setbacks may be what separates a successful scientist from a less successful one. In addition, the open-ended responses provided by PhD candidates in the second study suggest that universities and graduate schools can work with PhD candidates to minimize these delays by:

• ensuring PhD planning takes place within a reasonable timeframe;
• by conducting structural reviews of PhD progress;
• working to ensure effective communication between candidates and supervisors;
• and providing structural support to PhD candidates, for example support for those individuals with caring duties.

We note a number of limitations, however. Our studies were conducted in the Netherlands, and while the Dutch system provides a clear-cut case for examining PhD delay, the PhD system in the Netherlands may not necessarily share characteristics common to doctoral systems in other countries. Internationally comparable data would be welcome in this regard. In addition, we have not been able to control for the diversity in funding sources. The source of funding for a PhD project may be directly or indirectly related to experienced delays. For example, PhD supervisors may be involved as Principle/Chief Investigators on multiple projects, which can lead to reduced time for PhD advising and supervision, which can lead to delay. Conversely, certain funding sources may require regular updates and have structures in place which help to prevent delay. Future research that can account for variation in funding is needed to investigate this further.

Despite these limitations, the results presented here offer important insights for universities and graduate schools. A major lesson we can take from this research is to evaluate the work of potential PhD students before they start their PhD trajectory. The necessity for such an evaluation is one reason that many European graduate schools are considering or have already implemented special tracks within Master degree programs that allow for the development and evaluation of potential PhD research proposals prior to any undertaking of a PhD trajectory. This often occurs in cooperation with a potential supervisor. In this manner, the qualities of the potential candidate can be evaluated before either the candidate or the graduate school invests further time and money into a (sometimes lengthy) PhD trajectory. It can also be a means of testing the working relationship between a candidate and their potential supervisor. An essential component of this approach, however, is that students participating in these special tracks still compete for a position as a PhD candidate. While a proposal developed during a special Master track might be of high quality, this quality should be tested in relation to other candidates applying for the same position.

But more importantly, our results indicate that it is possible to predict which PhD candidates will be delayed:

• Female PhD candidates who experience a change in marital status;
• Female PhD candidates who invest time in international contacts;
• Male candidates with children;
• Male candidates who experience a change in supervisor;
• Candidates who experience practical setbacks (such as problems with data collection);
• Candidates who do not adhere to the original thesis plan;
• Candidates suffering from the absence of clear communication with and guidance from their supervisor(s); and
• Candidates with extenuating personal circumstances.

Of course these findings have to be replicated over time, across countries and in different university settings, but they provide a starting point for policy recommendations. The delays in PhD projects are not inevitable; universities and graduate schools would be well placed to investigate further the reasons for delay and steps that could be taken to minimize this delay. Taking steps to avoid the “machine-generated” fail factors can improve PhD completion rates and reduce PhD delay. Such improvements are not only beneficial to individual PhD candidates, but on a more aggregate scale can lead to an improvement in university competitive advantage and global rankings.

Supporting Information

Appendix s1..

Mplus Syntax.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0068839.s001

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: RS MY HS. Performed the experiments: HS MY. Analyzed the data: JM RS. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: RS MY HS JM. Wrote the paper: RS MY HS JM.

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• 6. Bair C, Hawort J. (2005) Doctoral student attrition and persistence: A meta-synthesis of research. In: JC Smart, editor. Higher Education: Handbook of theory and research. Amsterdam: Springer Netherlands. 481–534.
• 7. Phillips EM, Pugh DS. (2010) How to get a PhD; chapter 4. United Kingdom: Open University Press.
• 14. Latona K, Browne M. (2001) Factors associated with completion of research higher degrees. Higher Education Series 37.
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• 26. Muthén LK, Muthén BO. (2012) Mplus: The comprehensive modeling program for applied researchers users' guide.: Los Angeles, CA: Muthén & Muthén.
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• 32. Sonneveld H, Hello E, van de Schoot R. (2011) Promovendimonitor 2011: Promovendi van de universiteit Utrecht. hun oordeel over opleiding, begeleiding en onderzoeksfaciliteiten [PhD monitor 2011: PhD from Utrecht university. their opinion on training, mentoring and research facilities]. Utrecht: Universiteit Utrecht: IVLOS. Available: http://www.phdcentre.eu/nl/publicaties/index.html . Accessed 2013 Jun 6.
• 33. Becker HS. (1998) Tricks of the trade: How to think about your research while you're doing it. University of Chicago Press.

PhD Dissertation Defense Slides Design: Start

• Tips for designing the slides
• Presentation checklist
• Example slides
• Additional Resources

Purpose of the Guide

This guide was created to help ph.d. students in engineering fields to design dissertation defense presentations. the guide provides 1) tips on how to effectively communicate research, and 2) full presentation examples from ph.d. graduates. the tips on designing effective slides are not restricted to dissertation defense presentations; they can be used in designing other types of presentations such as conference talks, qualification and proposal exams, and technical seminars., the tips and examples are used to help students to design effective presentation. the technical contents in all examples are subject to copyright, please do not replicate. , if you need help in designing your presentation, please contact julie chen ([email protected]) for individual consultation. .

• Example Slides Repository
• Defense slides examples Link to examples dissertation defense slides.

Useful Links

• CIT Thesis and dissertation standards
• Dissertations and Theses @ Carnegie Mellon This link opens in a new window Covers 1920-present. Full text of some dissertations may be available 1997-present. Citations and abstracts of dissertations and theses CMU graduate students have published through UMI Dissertation Publishing. In addition to citations and abstracts, the service provides free access to 24 page previews and the full text in PDF format, when available. In most cases, this will be works published in 1997 forward.
• Communicate your research data Data visualization is very important in communicating your data effectively. Check out these do's and don'ts for designing figures.

Power Point Template and other Resources

• CEE Powerpoint Slide Presentation Template 1
• CEE Powerpoint Slide Presentation Template 2

Source: CEE Department Resources https://www.cmu.edu/cee/resources/index.html

• CMU Powerpoint Slide Template

Source: CMU Marketing and Communications

https://www.cmu.edu/marcom/brand-standards/downloads/index.html

• Use of CMU logos, marks, and Unitmarks

Email me for questions and schedule an appointment

Top 7 tips for your defense presentation

1. show why your study is important, remember, your audience is your committee members, researchers in other fields, and even the general public. you want to convince all of them why you deserve a ph.d. degree. you need to talk about why your study is important to the world. in the engineering field, you also need to talk about how your study is useful. try to discuss why current practice is problematic or not good enough, what needs to be solved, and what the potential benefits will be. , see how dr. posen and dr. malings explained the importance of their studies..

• Carl Malings Defense Slides with Notes
• I. Daniel Posen Defense Slides with Notes

2. Emphasize YOUR contribution 

Having a ph.d. means that you have made some novel contributions to the grand field. this is about you and your research. you need to keep emphasizing your contributions throughout your presentation. after talking about what needs to be solved, try to focus on emphasizing the novelty of your work. what problems can be solved using your research outcomes what breakthroughs have you made to the field why are your methods and outcomes outstanding you need to incorporate answers to these questions in your presentation. , be clear what your contributions are in the introduction section; separate what was done by others and what was done by you. , 3. connect your projects into a whole piece of work, you might have been doing multiple projects that are not strongly connected. to figure out how to connect them into a whole piece, use visualizations such as flow charts to convince your audience. the two slides below are two examples. in the first slide, which was presented in the introduction section, the presenter used a flow diagram to show the connection between the three projects. in the second slide, the presenter used key figures and a unique color for each project to show the connection..

• Xiaoju Chen Defense Slides with Notes

4. Tell a good story 

The committee members do not necessarily have the same background knowledge as you. plus, there could be researchers from other fields and even the general public in the room. you want to make sure all of your audience can understand as much as possible. focus on the big picture rather than technical details; make sure you use simple language to explain your methods and results. your committee has read your dissertation before your defense, but others have not. , dr. cook and dr. velibeyoglu did a good job explaining their research to everyone. the introduction sessions in their presentations are well designed for this purpose. .

• Laren M. Cook Defense Slides with Notes
• Irem Velibeyoglu Defense with Notes

5. Transition, transition, transition

Use transition slides to connect projects , it's a long presentation with different research projects. you want to use some sort of transition to remind your audience what you have been talking about and what is next. you may use a slide that is designed for this purpose throughout your presentation. , below are two examples. these slides were presented after the introduction section. the presenters used the same slides and highlighted the items for project one to indicate that they were moving on to the first project. throughout the presentation, they used these slides and highlighted different sections to indicate how these projects fit into the whole dissertation. .

You can also use some other indications on your slides, but remember not to make your slides too busy.  Below are two examples. In the first example, the presenter used chapter numbers to indicate what he was talking about. In the second example, the presenter used a progress bar with keywords for each chapter as the indicator. 

Use transition sentences to connect slides 

Remember transition sentences are also important; use them to summarize what you have said and tell your audience what they will expect next. if you keep forgetting the transition sentence, write a note on your presentation. you can either write down a full sentence of what you want to say or some keywords., 6. be brief, put details in backup slides , you won't have time to explain all of the details. if your defense presentation is scheduled for 45 minutes, you can only spend around 10 minutes for each project - that's shorter than a normal research conference presentation focus on the big picture and leave details behind. you can put the details in your backup slides, so you might find them useful when your committee (and other members of the audience) ask questions regarding these details., 7. show your presentation to your advisor and colleagues, make sure to ask your advisor(s) for their comments. they might have a different view on what should be emphasized and what should be elaborated. , you also want to practice at least once in front of your colleagues. they can be your lab mates, people who work in your research group, and/or your friends. they do not have to be experts in your field. ask them to give you some feedback - their comments can be extremely helpful to improve your presentation. , below are some other tips and resources to design your defense presentation. .

• Tips for designing your defense presentation

How important is your presentation, and cookies?

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• CAREER COLUMN
• 18 October 2018

Teach undergraduates that doing a PhD will require them to embrace failure

• Irini Topalidou 0

Irini Topalidou is a molecular biologist and geneticist who works as a research scientist in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Washington in Seattle. Twitter: @irinakitop

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

My own graduate experience and 20 years in academic research have taught me that someone can be a good student without necessarily having what it takes to get a PhD or a career in academia. Often, students I see think that a solid undergraduate degree should guarantee later academic success, but the reality is quite different.

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How would one fail a master thesis defense?

So I have to defend my master thesis in computer science in two weeks. It's in Germany and the thesis is 30 credits. I'm wondering what could make someone fail his defense? In my thesis I mainly compare different approaches and algorithms and did experiments on them to answer some research questions. Would I fail if, for example, during the discussion a mistake in my comparison and evaluation approach is discovered which makes my results meaningless? Although I discussed my approach and everything I did with my advisor (postdoc not the prof), yet I still fear that I might have done something wrong and then everything collaps.

I still remember reading a question on this site where someone mentioned that he discovered a vital mistake in his PhD thesis after two years of the defense which made almost his entire thesis useless. Yet of course he didn't lose his PhD degree. So if something like this happens, but during the defense, what could happen?

So how would one fail his master thesis defense? Just to calm down a bit and feel safe and secure!

Edit: I passed with an excellent grade :D.

• 16 Your advisor should not let you defend if you are not ready. Ergo, your advisor thinks you are ready. Stop worrying and go for it! –  Bob Brown Commented Mar 15, 2015 at 18:24
• 1 Ideally, an advisor should not let you defend if you are not ready; unfortunately, some advisors still do let not-quite-there-yet advisees defend anyway. –  Mad Jack Commented Jun 1, 2016 at 17:27

3 Answers 3

Would I fail if, for example, during the discussion a mistake in my comparison and evaluation approach is discovered which makes my results meaningless? Although I discussed my approach and everything I did with my advisor (postdoc not the prof), yet I still fear that I might have done something wrong and then everything collaps.

This should not happen unless:

• The mistake is blatantly obvious and something you should have really known better. And with blatantly obvious, I mean something that somebody who has not even studied computer science or a related field could easily spot. Even then you may have chances, if the rest of your work is appropriate – almost everybody brainfarts now and then.
• You made not only one mistake but a lot of big mistakes.
• It becomes obvious that you deliberately ignored that mistake, to avoid being stuck or to get “nicer” results.

(In the first two cases, your advisor is in big trouble, too.) The point of the master thesis is that you should demonstrate that you can investigate a scientific question under supervision (or something similar – check the regulations, if you wish to know). One mistake does not change this.

Moreover, in some examination regulations I am aware of, there is a procedure for the case that some important but localised flaw is detected in your thesis. For example, you could be given a month to amend your thesis.

I have not experienced or heard of such a case but from what I have gathered, you pass if you:

• Give a talk about your thesis.
• Be able to answer questions about it.
• Are not detected to have been cheating.

Even if you suffer from a mental breakdown due to nervousness or similar, you probably can repeat the defense – at least with any reasonable examination regulation and examination committee. I am aware of one case where somebody had a nervous breakdown for understandable reasons¹ and the examination board let him repeat the exam. If you look into your examination regulations, there are probably some clauses that allow the examination board to do some things at their own discretion in exceptional cases.

Be aware though that being very difficult to fail does not make the defense unimportant. A bad defense may seriously (and in particular more than nominally) affect your thesis degree, which in turn has a huge impact on your total degree. In particular having passed a thesis with the lowest possible degree (or something close to it) is something you definetely do not want to have in your vita².

¹ It’s very complicated, but you might compare it to the following: In the middle of the defense, somebody who was the defender’s girlfriend until six months ago enters the room being obviously pregnant in her ninth month. ² Unless you are in one of those few disciplines where this is the norm.

• You really calmed me down. A nervous breakdown means crying or what do "you" mean by it? –  Jack Twain Commented Mar 14, 2015 at 22:06
• 3 Why are you putting you in quotation marks? It’s not my story; if that’s what you were thinking. Nervous or mental breakdown here can mean all sorts of symptoms that make you psychologically incapable of holding your defense. –  Wrzlprmft ♦ Commented Mar 14, 2015 at 22:16
• 3 @JackTwain: 1) I am perfectly calm and what you describe is not a good explanation to use quotation marks at all. 2) About 40 % of the final exams in law in Germany are passed with the lowest grade – though there is no thesis involved in this. Also, obtaining a doctor of law with the lowest degree (rite) is not unusual (though I have no numbers for this). –  Wrzlprmft ♦ Commented Mar 15, 2015 at 10:00
• 1 Great answer, however note that grading of the thesis or the thesis defense is no globally applicable. –  posdef Commented Mar 15, 2015 at 12:07
• 1 The only person I've ever heard of to fail his thesis defense (Austria) in CS was a guy that started an answer to "What is object oriented programming?" with "Umm.. good question!" and everyone wondered ever after how the hell he cheated his way through all the exams leading up to the defense. It's pretty much impossible to fail your exam. I'd say it's more something to look forward to: Discussing a topic you're intimately familiar with some colleagues should be fun. –  Voo Commented Mar 15, 2015 at 14:07

Evaluation criteria varies vastly, not only across different countries and cultures but even amongst different institutions within a country.

The only way I can imagine anyone failing a thesis defense here in Sweden is if you have a mental breakdown during presentation or questioning.

Alternatively if the defending student has plagiarised parts his/her work, that would also be a likely fail but otherwise, if you are allowed to defend, then you have practically passed already.

• I believe the academia atmosphere in Sweden is similar to that in Germany. What does 'mental breakdown' mean? Gone mad?! –  Jack Twain Commented Mar 14, 2015 at 12:47
• 9 Mental breakdown would stand for a blackout where you transiently forget everything you know due to being overly nervous. Likewise, in Ireland, where I did my PhD, if your supervisor allows you to defend your thesis it would take unlikely catastrophic circumstances to fail the actual examination. –  Miguel Commented Mar 14, 2015 at 14:01
• @Miguel thank you. That gave me some kind of relief and security. –  Jack Twain Commented Mar 14, 2015 at 15:13
• 1 @JackTwain The possibility of being wrong is always present in research, and is a fundamental part of doing new stuff. You are exploring uncharted territory. Until your ideas have over the years been tested by others or applied to different problems you cannot be certain of the relevance or even correctness of your results. Only a tiny fraction of the original research literature enters the textbooks. You have done what you must: make sure that to the best of your knowledge and ability your thesis is a sincere record of your research. –  Miguel Commented Mar 14, 2015 at 19:29
• 2 Just to add: there is a grade associated with a Master's defense, so it is possible to get a low grade, if you don't present or answer questions well. But actually failing is very unlikely, as this answer explains. –  Lubo Antonov Commented Mar 14, 2015 at 21:00

It's pretty rare for a student to fail the defense of a master thesis in the Swedish systems, but I have seen a few over the years. The three most common reasons include:

• Did not show up to defend the thesis (AKA: Lose on walkover)
• Doesn't know the material of the thesis (AKA: Didn't write it)
• Unable to hold a discussion about the thesis (AKA: hid in a corner)

Note that unlike a PhD thesis the professor does not have lot of skin in the game. Having a PhD student fail a defense is extremely embarrassing and can end the career of a professor. Having a master student fail a defense isn't considered such a big deal.

• 12 "can end the career of a professor"? Haven't heard of that, ever. –  Dirk Commented Mar 14, 2015 at 15:35
• 3 @Dirk good. Now you know so you can make sure that doesn't happen with your PhDs :D –  Jack Twain Commented Mar 14, 2015 at 15:36
• 1 Actually I still doubt that this really has ever happened. –  Dirk Commented Mar 14, 2015 at 15:38
• @Dirk would you fail a master student in his defense if turns out that he did a mistake and the results of the thesis are as a result useless because of this mistake? Suppose that this gets discovered only during the defense, and it was an honest mistake. –  Jack Twain Commented Mar 14, 2015 at 15:40
• 3 Dirk: I know of two cases, one in nursing and one in molecular biology over the last decades where a PhD student was recommended to defend and failed. In both cases this ended the research careers of several people involved. –  pehrs Commented Mar 14, 2015 at 15:49

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10 easy ways to fail a Ph.D.

The attrition rate in Ph.D. school is high.

Anywhere from a third to half will fail.

In fact, there's a disturbing consistency to grad school failure.

I'm supervising a lot of new grad students this semester, so for their sake, I'm cataloging the common reasons for failure.

Read on for the top ten reasons students fail out of Ph.D. school.

Focus on grades or coursework

No one cares about grades in grad school.

There's a simple formula for the optimal GPA in grad school:

Anything higher implies time that could have been spent on research was wasted on classes. Advisors might even raise an eyebrow at a 4.0

During the first two years, students need to find an advisor, pick a research area, read a lot of papers and try small, exploratory research projects. Spending too much time on coursework distracts from these objectives.

Learn too much

Some students go to Ph.D. school because they want to learn.

Let there be no mistake: Ph.D. school involves a lot of learning.

But, it requires focused learning directed toward an eventual thesis.

Taking (or sitting in on) non-required classes outside one's focus is almost always a waste of time, and it's always unnecessary.

By the end of the third year, a typical Ph.D. student needs to have read about 50 to 150 papers to defend the novelty of a proposed thesis.

Of course, some students go too far with the related work search, reading so much about their intended area of research that they never start that research.

Advisors will lose patience with "eternal" students that aren't focused on the goal--making a small but significant contribution to human knowledge.

In the interest of personal disclosure, I suffered from the "want to learn everything" bug when I got to Ph.D. school.

I took classes all over campus for my first two years: Arabic, linguistics, economics, physics, math and even philosophy. In computer science, I took lots of classes in areas that had nothing to do with my research.

The price of all this "enlightenment" was an extra year on my Ph.D.

I only got away with this detour because while I was doing all that, I was a TA, which meant I wasn't wasting my advisor's grant funding.

Expect perfection

Perfectionism is a tragic affliction in academia, since it tends to hit the brightest the hardest.

Perfection cannot be attained. It is approached in the limit.

Students that polish a research paper well past the point of diminishing returns, expecting to hit perfection, will never stop polishing.

Students that can't begin to write until they have the perfect structure of the paper mapped out will never get started.

For students with problems starting on a paper or dissertation, my advice is that writing a paper should be an iterative process: start with an outline and some rough notes; take a pass over the paper and improve it a little; rinse; repeat. When the paper changes little with each pass, it's at diminishing returns. One or two more passes over the paper are all it needs at that point.

"Good enough" is better than "perfect."

Procrastinate

Chronic perfectionists also tend to be procrastinators.

So do eternal students with a drive to learn instead of research.

Ph.D. school seems to be a magnet for every kind of procrastinator.

Unfortunately, it is also a sieve that weeds out the unproductive.

Procrastinators should check out my tips for boosting productivity .

Go rogue too soon/too late

The advisor-advisee dynamic needs to shift over the course of a degree.

Early on, the advisor should be hands on, doling out specific topics and helping to craft early papers.

Toward the end, the student should know more than the advisor about her topic. Once the inversion happens, she needs to "go rogue" and start choosing the topics to investigate and initiating the paper write-ups. She needs to do so even if her advisor is insisting she do something else.

The trick is getting the timing right.

Going rogue before the student knows how to choose good topics and write well will end in wasted paper submissions and a grumpy advisor.

On the other hand, continuing to act only when ordered to act past a certain point will strain an advisor that expects to start seeing a "return" on an investment of time and hard-won grant money.

Advisors expect near-terminal Ph.D. students to be proto-professors with intimate knowledge of the challenges in their field. They should be capable of selecting and attacking research problems of appropriate size and scope.

Treat Ph.D. school like school or work

Ph.D. school is neither school nor work.

Ph.D. school is a monastic experience. And, a jealous hobby.

Solving problems and writing up papers well enough to pass peer review demands contemplative labor on days, nights and weekends.

Reading through all of the related work takes biblical levels of devotion.

Ph.D. school even comes with built-in vows of poverty and obedience.

The end brings an ecclesiastical robe and a clerical hood.

Students that treat Ph.D. school like a 9-5 endeavor are the ones that take 7+ years to finish, or end up ABD.

Ignore the committee

Some Ph.D. students forget that a committee has to sign off on their Ph.D.

It's important for students to maintain contact with committee members in the latter years of a Ph.D. They need to know what a student is doing.

It's also easy to forget advice from a committee member since they're not an everyday presence like an advisor.

Committee members, however, rarely forget the advice they give.

It doesn't usually happen, but I've seen a shouting match between a committee member and a defender where they disagreed over the metrics used for evaluation of an experiment. This committee member warned the student at his proposal about his choice of metrics.

He ignored that warning.

He was lucky: it added only one more semester to his Ph.D.

Another student I knew in grad school was told not to defend, based on the draft of his dissertation. He overruled his committee's advice, and failed his defense. He was told to scrap his entire dissertaton and start over. It took him over ten years to finish his Ph.D.

Aim too low

Some students look at the weakest student to get a Ph.D. in their department and aim for that.

This attitude guarantees that no professorship will be waiting for them.

And, it all but promises failure.

The weakest Ph.D. to escape was probably repeatedly unlucky with research topics, and had to settle for a contingency plan.

Aiming low leaves no room for uncertainty.

And, research is always uncertain.

Aim too high

A Ph.D. seems like a major undertaking from the perspective of the student.

But, it is not the final undertaking. It's the start of a scientific career.

A Ph.D. does not have to cure cancer or enable cold fusion.

At best a handful of chemists remember what Einstein's Ph.D. was in.

Einstein's Ph.D. dissertation was a principled calculation meant to estimate Avogadro's number. He got it wrong. By a factor of 3.

He still got a Ph.D.

A Ph.D. is a small but significant contribution to human knowledge.

Impact is something students should aim for over a lifetime of research.

Making a big impact with a Ph.D. is about as likely as hitting a bullseye the very first time you've fired a gun.

Once you know how to shoot, you can keep shooting until you hit it.

Plus, with a Ph.D., you get a lifetime supply of ammo.

Some advisors can give you a list of potential research topics. If they can, pick the topic that's easiest to do but which still retains your interest.

It does not matter at all what you get your Ph.D. in.

All that matters is that you get one.

It's the training that counts--not the topic.

Miss the real milestones

Most schools require coursework, qualifiers, thesis proposal, thesis defense and dissertation. These are the requirements on paper.

In practice, the real milestones are three good publications connected by a (perhaps loosely) unified theme.

Coursework and qualifiers are meant to undo admissions mistakes. A student that has published by the time she takes her qualifiers is not a mistake.

Once a student has two good publications, if she convinces her committee that she can extrapolate a third, she has a thesis proposal.

Once a student has three publications, she has defended, with reasonable confidence, that she can repeatedly conduct research of sufficient quality to meet the standards of peer review. If she draws a unifying theme, she has a thesis, and if she staples her publications together, she has a dissertation.

I fantasize about buying an industrial-grade stapler capable of punching through three journal papers and calling it The Dissertator .

Of course, three publications is nowhere near enough to get a professorship--even at a crappy school. But, it's about enough to get a Ph.D.

Related posts

• Recommended reading for grad students .
• The illustrated guide to a Ph.D.
• How to get into grad school .
• Advice for thesis proposals .
• Productivity tips for academics .
• Academic job hunt advice .
• Successful Ph.D. students: Perseverance, tenacity and cogency .
• The CRAPL: An open source license for academics .

• PhD Failure Rate – A Study of 26,076 PhD Candidates
• Doing a PhD

The PhD failure rate in the UK is 19.5%, with 16.2% of students leaving their PhD programme early, and 3.3% of students failing their viva. 80.5% of all students who enrol onto a PhD programme successfully complete it and are awarded a doctorate.

Introduction

One of the biggest concerns for doctoral students is the ongoing fear of failing their PhD.

After all those years of research, the long days in the lab and the endless nights in the library, it’s no surprise to find many agonising over the possibility of it all being for nothing. While this fear will always exist, it would help you to know how likely failure is, and what you can do to increase your chances of success.

Read on to learn how PhDs can be failed, what the true failure rates are based on an analysis of 26,067 PhD candidates from 14 UK universities, and what your options are if you’re unsuccessful in obtaining your PhD.

Ways You Can Fail A PhD

There are essentially two ways in which you can fail a PhD; non-completion or failing your viva (also known as your thesis defence ).

Non-completion

Non-completion is when a student leaves their PhD programme before having sat their viva examination. Since vivas take place at the end of the PhD journey, typically between the 3rd and 4th year for most full-time programmes, most failed PhDs fall within the ‘non-completion’ category because of the long duration it covers.

There are many reasons why a student may decide to leave a programme early, though these can usually be grouped into two categories:

• Motives – The individual may no longer believe undertaking a PhD is for them. This might be because it isn’t what they had imagined, or they’ve decided on an alternative path.
• Extenuating circumstances – The student may face unforeseen problems beyond their control, such as poor health, bereavement or family difficulties, preventing them from completing their research.

In both cases, a good supervisor will always try their best to help the student continue with their studies. In the former case, this may mean considering alternative research questions or, in the latter case, encouraging you to seek academic support from the university through one of their student care policies.

Besides the student deciding to end their programme early, the university can also make this decision. On these occasions, the student’s supervisor may not believe they’ve made enough progress for the time they’ve been on the project. If the problem can’t be corrected, the supervisor may ask the university to remove the student from the programme.

Failing The Viva

Assuming you make it to the end of your programme, there are still two ways you can be unsuccessful.

The first is an unsatisfactory thesis. For whatever reason, your thesis may be deemed not good enough, lacking originality, reliable data, conclusive findings, or be of poor overall quality. In such cases, your examiners may request an extensive rework of your thesis before agreeing to perform your viva examination. Although this will rarely be the case, it is possible that you may exceed the permissible length of programme registration and if you don’t have valid grounds for an extension, you may not have enough time to be able to sit your viva.

The more common scenario, while still being uncommon itself, is that you sit and fail your viva examination. The examiners may decide that your research project is severely flawed, to the point where it can’t possibly be remedied even with major revisions. This could happen for reasons such as basing your study on an incorrect fundamental assumption; this should not happen however if there is a proper supervisory support system in place.

PhD Failure Rate – UK & EU Statistics

According to 2010-11 data published by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (now replaced by UK Research and Innovation ), 72.9% of students enrolled in a PhD programme in the UK or EU complete their degree within seven years. Following this, 80.5% of PhD students complete their degree within 25 years.

This means that four out of every five students who register onto a PhD programme successfully complete their doctorate.

While a failure rate of one in five students may seem a little high, most of these are those who exit their programme early as opposed to those who fail at the viva stage.

Failing Doesn’t Happen Often

Although a PhD is an independent project, you will be appointed a supervisor to support you. Each university will have its own system for how your supervisor is to support you , but regardless of this, they will all require regular communication between the two of you. This could be in the form of annual reviews, quarterly interim reviews or regular meetings. The majority of students also have a secondary academic supervisor (and in some cases a thesis committee of supervisors); the role of these can vary from having a hands-on role in regular supervision, to being another useful person to bounce ideas off of.

These frequent check-ins are designed to help you stay on track with your project. For example, if any issues are identified, you and your supervisor can discuss how to rectify them in order to refocus your research. This reduces the likelihood of a problem going undetected for several years, only for it to be unearthed after it’s too late to address.

In addition, the thesis you submit to your examiners will likely be your third or fourth iteration, with your supervisor having critiqued each earlier version. As a result, your thesis will typically only be submitted to the examiners after your supervisor approves it; many UK universities require a formal, signed document to be submitted by the primary academic supervisor at the same time as the student submits the thesis, confirming that he or she has approved the submission.

Failed Viva – Outcomes of 26,076 Students

Despite what you may have heard, the failing PhD rate amongst students who sit their viva is low.

This, combined with ongoing guidance from your supervisor, is because vivas don’t have a strict pass/fail outcome. You can find a detailed breakdown of all viva outcomes in our viva guide, but to summarise – the most common outcome will be for you to revise your thesis in accordance with the comments from your examiners and resubmit it.

This means that as long as the review of your thesis and your viva examination uncovers no significant issues, you’re almost certain to be awarded a provisional pass on the basis you make the necessary corrections to your thesis.

To give you an indication of the viva failure rate, we’ve analysed the outcomes of 26,076 PhD candidates from 14 UK universities who sat a viva between 2006 and 2017.

The analysis shows that of the 26,076 students who sat their viva, 25,063 succeeded; this is just over 96% of the total students as shown in the chart below.

Students Who Passed

The analysis shows that of the 96% of students who passed, approximately 5% required no amendments, 79% required minor amendments and the remaining 16% required major revisions. This supports our earlier discussion on how the most common outcome of a viva is a ‘pass with minor amendments’.

Students Who Failed

Of the 4% of unsuccessful students, approximately 97% were awarded an MPhil (Master of Philosophy), and 3% weren’t awarded a degree.

Note : It should be noted that while the data provides the student’s overall outcome, i.e. whether they passed or failed, they didn’t all provide the students specific outcome, i.e. whether they had to make amendments, or with a failure, whether they were awarded an MPhil. Therefore, while the breakdowns represent the current known data, the exact breakdown may differ.

Summary of Findings

By using our data in combination with the earlier statistic provided by HEFCE, we can gain an overall picture of the PhD journey as summarised in the image below.

To summarise, based on the analysis of 26,076 PhD candidates at 14 universities between 2006 and 2017, the PhD pass rate in the UK is 80.5%. Of the 19.5% of students who fail, 3.3% is attributed to students failing their viva and the remaining 16.2% is attributed to students leaving their programme early.

The above statistics indicate that while 1 in every 5 students fail their PhD, the failure rate for the viva process itself is low. Specifically, only 4% of all students who sit their viva fail; in other words, 96% of the students pass it.

What Are Your Options After an Unsuccessful PhD?

Appeal your outcome.

If you believe you had a valid case, you can try to appeal against your outcome . The appeal process will be different for each university, so ensure you consult the guidelines published by your university before taking any action.

While making an appeal may be an option, it should only be considered if you genuinely believe you have a legitimate case. Most examiners have a lot of experience in assessing PhD candidates and follow strict guidelines when making their decisions. Therefore, your claim for appeal will need to be strong if it is to stand up in front of committee members in the adjudication process.

Downgrade to MPhil

If you are unsuccessful in being awarded a PhD, an MPhil may be awarded instead. For this to happen, your work would need to be considered worthy of an MPhil, as although it is a Master’s degree, it is still an advanced postgraduate research degree.

Unfortunately, there’s a lot of stigma around MPhil degrees, with many worrying that it will be seen as a sign of a failed PhD. While not as advanced as a PhD, an MPhil is still an advanced research degree, and being awarded one shows that you’ve successfully carried out an independent research project which is an undertaking to be admired.

Finding a PhD has never been this easy – search for a PhD by keyword, location or academic area of interest.

Additional Resources

Hopefully now knowing the overall picture your mind will feel slightly more at ease. Regardless, there are several good practices you can adopt to ensure you’re always in the best possible position. The key of these includes developing a good working relationship with your supervisor, working to a project schedule, having your thesis checked by several other academics aside from your supervisor, and thoroughly preparing for your viva examination.

We’ve developed a number of resources which should help you in the above:

• What to Expect from Your Supervisor – Find out what to look for in a Supervisor, how they will typically support you, and how often you should meet with them.
• How to Write a Research Proposal – Find an outline of how you can go about putting a project plan together.
• What is a PhD Viva? – Learn exactly what a viva is, their purpose and what you can expect on the day. We’ve also provided a full breakdown of all the possible outcomes of a viva and tips to help you prepare for your own.

Data for Statistics

• Cardiff University – 2006/07 to 2016/17
• Imperial College London – 2006/07 to 2016/17
• London School of Economics (LSE) – 2006/07 to 2015/16
• Queen Mary University of London – 2009/10 to 2015/16
• University College London (UCL) – 2006/07 to 2016/17
• University of Aberdeen – 2006/07 to 2016/17
• University of Birmingham – 2006/07 to 2015/16
• University of Bristol – 2006/07 to 2016/17
• University of Edinburgh – 2006/07 to 2016/17
• University of Nottingham – 2006/07 to 2015/16
• University of Oxford – 2007/08 to 2016/17
• University of York – 2009/10 to 2016/17
• University of Manchester – 2008/09 to 2017/18
• University of Sheffield – 2006/07 to 2016/17

Note : The data used for this analysis was obtained from the above universities under the Freedom of Information Act. As per the Act, the information was provided in such a way that no specific individual can be identified from the data.

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• PhD Defense

Preparing for a PhD Defense

Table of contents, preparing to start, nominate a faculty member to serve as chair for your defense, selecting a defense date, international students and work visas, registration categories for defense, dissertation writing and guidelines, preparing your dissertation for defense, registering your dissertation for the final oral exam, know the rituals.

• Use PowerPoint

Public Lecture

Dress Professionally

Items to Bring to the Defense

The Closed Examination

Address Questions with Confidence

Student Status

Final corrected copies of the dissertation, publishing your final dissertation, binding your final dissertation, before defense.

Before you can start your thesis you must:

• Complete all courses, exams, and research requirements
• Meet with your advisory committee to ensure that everyone agrees that the work is ready to defend
• Decide on a date for the defense
• Inform your graduate administrator that you have started the process to prepare for your defense

A chair is appointed for each PhD oral defense to monitor and promote fairness and rigor in the conduct of the defense. To help eliminate pre-established judgments on the candidate’s work, the chair should be from a different program/department than the student. For more information about chair responsibilities, read the instructions for the chair .

You must identify a faculty member to serve as chair for your defense. The chair must be:

• A current full-time faculty member at assistant professor rank or higher
• Outside the department offering the degree program, or outside your advisor's department (interdisciplinary degree programs only)
• Someone who has not had prior involvement in your research

The selection of the chair is subject to the approval of the department/program, th Arts, Sciences and Engineering dean of graduate education and postdoctoral affairs, and the University dean of graduate studies.

The chair must be physically present during the entire defense, including the public oral presentation (if applicable) and the questioning session. The chair is welcome to read and comment on the dissertation and/or the defense presentation, but this is not required. The chair does not need to be an expert in your research area.

It is your responsibility to get a copy of the final dissertation to the chair at least one week prior to the defense.

You should begin scheduling the actual defense date three months in advance to ensure that your advisor, committee members, and chair are able to be present and that rooms are available on the date and time selected.  

Defenses can be held on any day the University’s Graduate Studies Office is open (not weekends, evenings, holidays, or the days between Christmas and New Year’s). Check the  academic calendar  for important dates and deadlines.

Use the  PhD calendar  to determine the deadline dates for getting your paperwork to the Office of Graduate Education and Postdoctoral Affairs and department committee.

When all committee members and your chair agree to a specific date and time for the defense, inform your graduate administrator as soon as you possibly can, but no later than six weeks prior to your defense date . Your graduate administrator will advise you of any program-specific requirements for the defense as well as work with you to prepare for your thesis defense. They will also help you determine who will schedule the room for your thesis defense.

You should provide your committee members at least two weeks to read and comment on your dissertation before the date you need to register your dissertation.

Participating Via Video Conferencing

While you, your advisor, and the chair must all be physically present in the room for the defense, other committee members are allowed to participate in the defense remotely via Skype or other video conferencing technology so long as all committee members agree to the arrangement. This must also be approved by the AS&E dean of graduate education and postdoctoral affairs and the University dean of graduate studies before the dissertation is registered for defense.

Someone other than you and your committee must handle the IT setup and be on standby for any problems. If anyone involved finds that remote participation is interfering with the defense, he or she can request that the defense be rescheduled.

We strongly recommend that international students meet with an  International Services Office (ISO)  representative as soon as permission to start writing is granted. The ISO will provide information on visa options, documentation, and timelines for applying for a visa for employment in the United States.

You will register for one of the following categories while preparing your defense:

• 999: Dissertation —Indicates the PhD student has completed all of the requirements for the degree except the dissertation and is in residence as a full-time student
• 995 : Continuation of Enrollment —Indicates the PhD student has completed all of the requirements for the degree except the dissertation and is not in residence as a full-time student

See the registration page for more information about these categories.

The Preparing Your Doctoral Dissertation manual is a great resource to help you bring your dissertation up to the required standard of organization, appearance, and format for the University of Rochester. Before preparing the defense copy of your dissertation, check the contents of the manual carefully to help avoid mistakes that can be time-consuming and costly to correct.

Before beginning your dissertation, you should consult with your advisor for your department or program’s preferred style guide (APA, MLA, Chicago).

Including material produced by other authors in your dissertation can serve a legitimate research purpose, but you want to avoid copyright infringement in the process. For detailed instructions on avoiding copyright infringement, please see ProQuest’s  Copyright Guide .

The University requires that you provide copies of the dissertation to your committee members and exam chair. You should check with your committee members to see if they prefer printed or electronic copies (or both). Printed copies do not need to be printed on heavyweight, expensive paper unless there is the need to do so for figures and images. 

Printing and binding a dissertation can be expensive. You can use the Copy Center or FedEx Office to print and bind your dissertation.

In order to register your dissertation, you or your graduate administrator will need to create a record on the Graduate Studies PhD Completion website . This record will include:

• Degree information
• Past degrees
• Contact information
• The defense version of your dissertation as a PDF
• Other relevant documents

The version of your dissertation attached to your online record is considered the registration copy.

When your PhD completion record is finalized, committee members will receive emails with links to access your record and approve your dissertation to progress to defense. You’ll need to provide copies of the dissertation identical to the registration copy to all members of your committee, including the chair, at least two weeks before the record is finalized. Everyone but the chair is required to comment or sign off on the dissertation before it is submitted.

There may be deadlines for registering your dissertation specific to your program. Consult with your graduate administrator to ascertain those deadlines and follow them carefully.

After all committee members have provided their approval, your thesis will be reviewed by your faculty director/department chair, the AS&E dean of graduate education and postdoctoral affairs, and the office of the University dean of graduate studies. When all of these officials have approved your committee and dissertation for defense, your dissertation is considered registered. You will be able to track these approvals in your online record and will receive a confirmation email when approvals are complete.

The GEPA Office and the AS&E dean of graduate education and postdoctoral affairs, as well as the University Graduate Studies Office, may make corrections to the PDF of your dissertation. This annotated copy of your dissertation, along with the original version, will be stored in the PhD completion website. You are not allow to distribute updated versions of your dissertation prior to the defense, but be sure to incorporate any corrections before uploading your final dissertation to ProQuest®. 

After the defense, if the committee has required major revisions to be approved by one or more of its members, it is your responsibility to provide them with the corrected final version for their approval.  They will be asked to submit written confirmation of that approval to the University Graduate Studies Office. Failure to do so could delay conferral of your degree.

After the defense, you will receive additional instructions by email for completion of all PhD degree requirements.

It is important to walk into the defense knowing that your committee wants you to pass. Even if criticism is harsh, it is meant to be constructive. The defense is not solely an opportunity for the committee to compliment and congratulate you for the work you have done. It is also meant to challenge you and force you to consider tough questions.

The Defense

The best way to prepare for your defense is to regularly attend the defenses of your colleagues throughout your graduate program, not just several weeks prior to your own defense.

You can also talk to people in your department who already defended to find out what their defenses were like. You should also speak with your advisor to get a sense of his/her specific expectations of a defense.

Guidelines for Presentations

Use PowerPoint or Other Software to Create Slides

You should prepare a presentation of the research that comprises the thesis. Your slides should encapsulate the work and focus on its most salient contributions. In preparing, ask yourself these questions: “What do I want people to know about my thesis? What is the most important information that I can present and talk about?”

Here are some basic tips:

• Use text large enough to be read by the audience (especially text from figures)
• Ensure graphics and tables are clear
• Don’t clutter your slides—if necessary, have things come up on mouse clicks
• Use spell check and proofread your slides
• Practice your presentation with your peers
• Work on pronunciation, if required
• Time your presentation to ensure it will fit the allotted time while allowing time for questions

If your defense includes a public lecture, we recommended that you do a trial run a day or two before in the room that has been booked for your lecture. This will allow you to familiarize yourself with the space and the equipment and to address any problems that arise during the trial run. 

Plan your public lecture to allow enough time for questions. Present enough information so that the audience understands what you did, why you did it, what the implications are, and what your suggestions are for future research.

Friends and family are welcome to attend your public lecture. Faculty and students in the audience are given the opportunity to ask questions.

Plan to dress professionally for the defense in the same way you would if presenting a paper at a conference or for a job interview. You will be standing for a long time on the day of your defense. You might want to keep this in mind when selecting the shoes you will wear for your defense.

Essentials for your public lecture include:

• Your presentation
• A laser pointer
• A copy of your dissertation
• A pen or pencil
• A bottle of water 

You will be asked to leave the room while your committee reviews your program of study, and decides whether:

• The thesis is acceptable/not acceptable
• Whether members will ask sequential questions or whether each member will be allotted a specific time period for questioning

The person to start the questioning is designated. You will be called back into the examining room and questioning will begin. After all questions have been addressed, you will be asked to leave the room while your committee decides the outcome of the exam. You will be asked to return to the room to be informed of the outcome by the chair of your exam committee.

• Listen  to the entire question no matter how long it takes the faculty member or student to ask it (take notes if necessary).
• Pause and think  about the question before answering.
• Rephrase  the question.
• Answer  the question to the best of your ability; if you do not know the answer, remain calm and say so in a professional way.
• Remember  that no one will know the ins and outs of the thesis and your research materials as well as you.  You  are the foremost expert in the thesis topic and  YOU know the research involved. Be positive!

Possible outcomes include:

• Acceptable with minor or no revisions (no further approval required)
• Acceptable with major revisions in content or format (in this case, one or more committee members must be responsible for overseeing and approving the major revisions before the final copies are submitted)
• Not acceptable

After the Defense

You can submit the final corrected copies of your dissertation as soon as you address any remaining comments that were brought up during the defense or noted in the registration copy of your dissertation, which will be returned to you usually within a few days before or after the defense. You can take up to one semester following the defense to address any comments, during which you can remain a full-time student. Your degree conferral date will depend on when you submit the final corrected copies of your dissertation.

The day after your defense, you will receive an email from the University dean of graduate studies that provides instructions on how to:

• Submit the final corrected copies of your dissertation through ProQuest
• Provide authorization for the release of your dissertation through UR Research
• Complete a mandatory online exit survey
• Verify to the University dean of graduate studies’ office that the dissertation has been submitted

The University of Rochester requires all doctoral candidates to deposit their dissertations for publication with ProQuest Dissertation Publishing and with the University libraries. Hard copies are not required. The library receives an electronic copy of the dissertation from ProQuest, but students must give the University permission to obtain it.

For questions regarding publishing through ProQuest, contact Author Relations at [email protected] or (800) 521-0600 ext. 77020.

Check with your graduate administrator to see if your department wants a bound copy of your dissertation, and, if so, how the cost of binding is covered.

If you want a bound copy for yourself or your family, you can purchase one through ProQuest .

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Dissertation Genius

The Six Laws of PhD Failure

September 9, 2019 by Dissertation Genius

To give you a dose of reality, the attrition rate at any PhD school is very high. Anywhere from a third to half of those that enroll at a PhD university will not end up graduating and finishing their dissertation. In fact, the figure of 40%-50% of failing PhD students has been fairly stable over the past three decades. In 1990, Baird reported that PhD completion rates in most disciplines hover around 50% and are even lower in the arts and humanities. In 2003, Elgar conducted a detailed study of North American PhD students and found that “only about half of all students who enter PhD programs…actually complete” (p. iii). The Higher Education Funding Council (HEFCE) for England also reported similar numbers in 2007.

Based on my two decades experience in PhD dissertation consulting, this 50% failure rate is a real number; and the attrition rate for PhD and dissertation students has always been extremely high especially when compared to undergrad and master’s programs. The reason has to do with many factors but, in this article, I’d like to focus on the negative factors that will prevent you from PhD graduation. Towards this end, I’ve inserted what I think are the six most relevant factors correlated to failing PhD students.

1st Law of PhD Failure – Choosing the wrong dissertation adviser

Choosing your dissertation adviser is one of the most important decisions of your academic career and one recipe for disaster is to choose a dissertation adviser because you ‘like’ him or her or because you find this person ‘cool’ meaning charismatic, well-published, and has similar research interests as yourself. While these characteristics are admirable, in the end, they won’t help you in completing a quality dissertation and acquiring your PhD.

Lunenberg and Irby (2008) completed a masterly work about successful dissertation writing and, in chapter two of this work, they mention the key factors in choosing a dissertation adviser. The most important two factors they mention are:

• Accessibility
• Feedback turnaround times

Too many doctoral students fail to take these factors into account when choosing their dissertation adviser even though these two things are the most common source of complaints regarding dissertation advisers.

You must make sure your potential dissertation adviser satisfies these two criteria and that you are clear about whether your potential candidate will satisfy your expectations in these areas. You should also ask colleagues about the dependability of the candidate in the aforementioned areas to make sure you are choosing a suitable candidate that will give a realistic amount of his or her time to hear you out and attend to your dissertation needs (to the extent appropriate for a doctoral student). 

2nd Law of PhD Failure – Expecting Dissertation Hand-holding from your Peers

Too many new doctoral students hold mistaken expectations of what they will find in postgraduate school and among these mistaken assumptions is expecting lots of help and hand-holding. As a doctoral student, you should clearly understand that you must take charge of your own doctoral program.

Although you should get help from your dissertation supervisor, chair, and committee members at certain times, you are the person that will make it happen. For example, there will be no one to remind you of certain courses you should enroll in, or particular forms you need to complete by a certain deadline. Only you are responsible for engraving your intellectual path. And under no circumstances should you ever expect your dissertation supervisor, or anyone else for that matter, in holding your hand and telling you which literature to read, which journals to subscribe to, which peer groups and seminars to attend, or which grants and funding to apply for.

While you should seek help and guidance, you should not expect this help to come, and you must develop an independent and persevering mindset in doctoral school, or else you risk a huge disappointment.

3rd Law of PhD Failure – Choosing too Broad a Dissertation Topic

Doctoral students should understand that when it comes to doctoral school and acquiring that PhD, the dissertation is everything. Because most doctoral students understand this, they unfortunately bring with them the mistaken impression that their dissertation should include everything, cover everything, and attack the topic from every conceivable angle using a variety of different research methodologies.

This mindset and mistaken assumption is absolutely wrong. You must narrow down your research topic and zone in on a particular area. Too many doctoral students end up having a broad research topic and realize too late that they have bit off way more than they could chew and taken on much more than they have anticipated.

Here, make sure you work closely with your dissertation adviser and chairperson and keep working on narrowing down your topic appropriately. You may have always dreamt of your dissertation being all-inclusive and having an immediate impact on your field but you must realize that this is near impossible with the normal resources a typical doctoral student has at his or her disposal. Therefore, make your mark by working with the resources you have and beware of defining a research topic that is too broad.

4th Law of PhD Failure – Procrastination

I am not talking about lazy students since this law doesn’t apply to them (laziness is not usually a personality trait for those enrolling in doctoral school). In fact, this particular law applies to the typical doctoral student who is usually a perfectionist that sets very high standards.

“Understand: obsessive perfectionists, aka doctoral students, tend to be procrastinators!”

In general, PhD and doctoral students got to where they are by being obsessive perfectionists (to a certain extent), setting the standard extremely high and working to get near-perfect grades and submissions. This is fine in high doses up to the point of getting into doctoral school, where your dissertation (not your gpa) defines your success. And a doctoral dissertation reflects more the realities of life where you will stumble several times and find yourself doubting your abilities at many points, no matter how smart you think you are . Therefore, many doctoral students are not used to facing massive obstacles and perplexing problems in their academic life. And when finally facing them, most doctoral students tend to turn inward and face away, rather than confronting, these problems. They simply tend to procrastinate as a method of coping with something they are not used to.

To eliminate this idea, understand that life, real life, is not like school. It is filled with perplexing problems, challenges, and many obstacles. To succeed in anything you do, you must face down these problems and simply start by not running away or putting things off because you subconsciously find it easier on your ego to do so.

5th Law of PhD Failure – Ignoring your Dissertation Committee

Yes, you did not read this wrong. Many PhD students nowadays seem to forget that their committee must sign off and approve of their dissertation in order to graduate. Many doctoral students tend to forget the importance of the dissertation committee and forget to maintain contact with committee members, especially in the latter stages of a dissertation. It’s also very easy for doctoral students to forget particular pieces of advice that a committee member has given since the presence of a committee member is not as dominating as that of a dissertation adviser. On the flip side of this, committee members rarely forget the dissertation advice they give to students.

Hopefully it doesn’t happen to you, but many dissertation committee members give advice during the proposal stage of a student’s dissertation only to have this advice ignored or forgotten by the students. Once it comes time for the thesis defense, the committee members will bring up the unfollowed advice and, many times, it becomes a problem for doctoral students who have to postpone their PhD graduation by a semester (if one is lucky) or more. Don’t let this happen to you and make sure you are in periodic contact with your dissertation committee members and also make sure you record, and follow , any advice given by them.

6th Law of PhD Failure – Getting Romantically Involved with Faculty Members

Although this issue is rarely discussed in online dissertation consulting and writing forums, doctoral students and academic faculty members may become romantically involved. Keep in mind I am not talking about sexual harassment or assault, but rather about completely consensual relationships. Although one may be tempted to think a relationship between two fully-grown adults is not anyone’s business, the reality is that the power dynamics involved in such a relationship are not usually conducive in the long run since the faculty member usually has much more formal and informal power over the doctoral student. Thus, even in seemingly consensual relationships, moral questions of how much the student’s free will was actually involved do arise (e.g. how free was the student to actually decline the relationship). The problem is even more serious if it involves a dissertation adviser or committee member sleeping with a student. Although there are cases of successful long-term faculty-member and student relationships, in my experience these are few and far between. Moreover, what may look like a serious caring relationship could actually be a pattern on the part of the faculty member in ‘cycling’ through impressionable or vulnerable students.

Regardless of the situation, you should simply keep in mind to be careful and keep your guard up. Finally, understand that if things go wrong in the relationship, it could become a serious impediment to success. Moreover, even with successful relationships, your academic success may be hindered by reports of gossip and peers linking any progress of your work to the relationship itself rather than to your own hard work. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

Baird, L.L. (1990). Disciplines and doctorates: The relationship between program characteristics and the duration of doctoral study. Research in Higher Education, 31, 369-385.

Elgar, F. J. (2003). Phd completion in Canadian universities: Final report . Retrieved from Graduate Student’s Association of Canada website: http://careerchem.com/CAREER-INFO-ACADEMIC/Frank-Elgar.pdf

HEFCE. (2007). Phd research degrees: Update . Retrieved from Higher Education Funding Council for England website: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20100202100434/http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/hefce/2007/07_28/07_28.pdf

Lunenburg, F. C., & Irby, B. J. (2008). Writing a successful thesis or

dissertation: Tips and strategies for students in the social and behavioral sciences. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

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