How ‘Returner’ and ‘Direct-Pathway’ Graduate Students’ Experiences May Lead to Attrition from Doctoral Programs

This research full paper addresses how different pathways into graduate school may correspond with students’ attributions of the factors that impact their attrition decisions. Studying attrition in graduate engineering programs is important to understand and benefit graduate engineering students in their programs. Pathway into to graduate study and its effect on themes in questioning departure from programs has not been widely studied. Returners, defined as students who had a gap of at least 6 months between undergraduate degree completion and graduate program entry, are often an understudied group in graduate engineering attrition. In this study, narrative analysis methods were employed to investigate potential differences between returners and direct-pathway students experiences as they questioned departure from their graduate engineering programs. In this work, we found that returners commonly face challenges in finding a support network and direct-pathway students commonly struggle with unclear goals in their studies. Providing returners with better support and helping direct-pathway students understand their goals can help students persist in their graduate engineering program.