Steve Tippins argues that half of PhD students don't finish because universities fail them, not because they lack ability. He says institutions blame difficulty when the real problem is poor mentorship, and calls for universities to train advisors and measure success by graduation rates instead of faculty research output.
When 50% of doctoral students don't finish, that's not a student problem, that's an institution problem. We need to stop saying that doctoral education is supposed to be hard as an excuse for poor mentoring. Hard should mean intellectually challenging, not devastating due to lack of support. Our students are doing groundbreaking research and they deserve the support to match. It's time that higher education took responsibility to train the faculty to actually mentor, not just research. So what would change if we measured our success by student completion rates, not just our own research So Steve Tippins Ph.D. has created a free dissertation help community to help students complete their dissertations and graduate. Just comment "help" and we will send you the link. You've got this!
