An adviser talking to his advisee said, "You're here to study life, you're here to find out who you are. That' s what this [dissertation] is all about for you." If the process of writing a dissertation and finishing a doctoral program is about finding out who we are, it is an adult development process. Often, major developmental processes require support and caring. In this study, nontraditional-aged women working on their dissertations spoke again and again of wanting a network of support and nurturing throughout the doctoral process. University professors need to become more aware that support networks and nurturing advisers could make a difference in women' s doctoral degree completion rates.
The purpose of the study was to determine the factors that promote or inhibit the completion of a doctoral dissertation by nontraditional-aged women. This chapter presents the conceptual framework of the case study methodology used for the research, describes the nontraditional-aged women who participated in the study, and summarizes the study' s results and conclusions. The chapter also lists recommendations for all important players in the dissertation process.
Thousands of men and women enter doctoral programs every year. Many of those entering students never complete the Ph.D. program (Sternberg, 1981; Digest of Education Statistics, 1992). Failure to complete a doctoral program has a negative impact on individuals, their families, universities, and society.
Individuals who complete all the course work for a Ph.D. program and successfully pass the comprehensive examination are sometimes labeled ABD (Sternberg, 1981). Many ABDs are women (Hanson, 1992) and are nontraditional-aged women (Digest of Education Statistics, 1992). There is evidence to indicate that graduate education as a whole has an aging and ever shrinking professoriat that