Completing the Three Stages of Doctoral Education: An Event History Analysis

Doctoral programs have high dropout rates of 43% representing the highest among all post-baccalaureate programs. Cross sectional studies of doctoral students?? retention have showed the importance of financial aid in predicting degree completion. These studies however, do not estimate the labor market??s effect on doctoral student retention and neglect the longitudinal nature of doctoral study and the multiple requirements that make doctoral education a three-stage process. This research study examines the effect of various factors, including financial aid and labor market conditions, on the likelihood that doctoral students will complete the three stages of doctoral education: transition, development, and research. The results show that although financial aid as a whole is important, the type of financial aid received is even more significant and has differential impacts on doctoral students?? retention at each stage. The study concludes that research assistantships have the highest likelihood of degree completion compared to students with other forms of financial support. Labor market conditions are also an important factor affecting doctoral student retention with higher expected earnings motivating doctoral students in the later part of their programs to complete their degrees.     

Using income effects to market undergraduate education abroad participation in higher education

Relying heavily on case or regional studies, higher education institutions market the perceived global skills that students acquire from education abroad as a value-added commodity. As industries increase their global reach, understanding the labor market effects of education abroad from a national perspective is necessary and timely. This study isolates many factors known to influence education abroad using the 2008–2012 Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study dataset (B&B: 08/12). Through a 2-level hierarchical linear regression analysis model, earning levels of graduates of undergraduate programs are analyzed, offering a national perspective. The findings revealed that students who participated in education abroad earned more money within the labor market, even during harsh recessionary times. While income differences observed between men and women existed in both samples, initial incomes during the first three years post-graduation demonstrated significantly higher wages for some students who studied abroad when compared to their non-participating peers.     

How linguistically‐informed are phonics programmes?

Successive UK government policies have strengthened the phonics element of the National Curriculum for English in England. The policies have included inviting publishers to submit completed self‐assessments of their systematic phonics programmes. The self‐assessment criteria focus on what is deemed to be ‘high‐quality provision’, as defined in the Independent Review of the Teaching of Early Reading chaired by Jim Rose. The programmes whose self‐assessments were judged to be accurate by small panels of independent evaluators have been subsequently listed on a central government website. The authors have acted as independent evaluators in this process and, between them, had the opportunity to inspect the content of over 100 phonics programmes. They have noted that many of these programmes (most of which did not meet the Rose criteria) contained numerous linguistic inaccuracies, particularly in relation to the English spelling system and its grapheme‐phoneme correspondences. The existence, number and range of these errors jeopardise policy implementation and National Curriculum delivery and pose risks for the quality of teaching and learning. The article suggests some reasons for these findings in related published debates and in policy documents, and that phonics programmes need to be more linguistically‐informed. The article concludes with some implications for practice.