$1.15 Million USU Study Examines Graduate Student Retention

Much has been written on the barriers students encounter on the way to completing their graduate degrees. Now, a longitudinal Utah State University study will examine what makes them successful — and how their own acquisition of skills plays into the equation.

Throughout the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields, 30 to 50 percent of students don’t finish their degrees, said David Feldon, principal investigator of a $1.15 million grant examining the trajectory of research skill development among graduate students. Feldon directs the STE2M Center at USU and is an associate professor in the Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Department within the Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services.

Previous studies on graduate student attrition have focused on aspects like program culture and the students’ own feelings about their programs. But the part that interests Feldon is skill development. How do students’ perceptions of their success change as they acquire real skills?

To help answer that question, Feldon and his colleague Josipha Roska of the University of Virginia will follow a sample of 280 new PhD students in the biological sciences over a period of four years. The students will be selected from universities from across the United States. The study will be the first to use performance-based data to evaluate skills.

The researchers will track how the students are spending their time, how valuable and confident they feel in the tasks they are asked to do, what influences help them to develop skills and what their scholarly productivity is like. The goal is to understand what contributes to success, how it plays out over time and how to improve equality in STEM fields. Currently, Feldon said, some ethnicities have a better completion rate than others.

A small subset of students will undergo annual interviews for more in-depth study.

Feldon said the research focuses on the biological sciences, which currently has equal gender representation. The field retains as many women as men, but they may be taking different paths to success.

Skill acquisition has interested both Feldon and Roska. Feldon’s research interests focus on skill development within STEM disciplines. Roska, a sociologist, sent a ripple through the academic world with her 2011 book, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses. In it, she argued that after two years, 45 percent of the undergraduates she studied were not showing any significant improvement in skills like critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing.

Their current study is funded by the National Science Foundation. The grant awarded $1.5 million to the project, while USU’s portion will be $1.15 million.