• The Doctoral Student Math Problem: Evidence indicating most doctoral students' underdeveloped math skills lead to attrition

    Author(s):
    Carlo Morelli (see profile)
    Date:
    2021
    Item Type:
    Article
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/5z1h-1z76
    Abstract:
    This paper presents evidence indicating doctoral students' mathematical, logical, and statistical skills are too underdeveloped to understand, validate, and replicate findings in scholarly research or conduct such researches on their own leading to high attrition rates. The status quo in doctoral education is in dire need of enhanced mathematical, logical, and statistical training—remediation is needed now. According to Cronley, Black, and Killian (2019), most doctoral students pursuing PhDs in non-STEM related disciplines fail to complete their dissertations and attrite. While many factors contribute to doctoral attrition, among the most commonly identified reasons students fail are their impoverished mathematical abilities, misuse and misunderstanding of logical reasoning, and lack of computational and analytical skills needed to calculate and evaluate statistics (Cronley et al., 2019). Statistical analysis is one of the core skills required for successful doctoral research Harrington, Petr, Black, Cunningham-Williams, & Bentley (2014).
    Metadata:
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    6 months ago
    License:
    All Rights Reserved

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