Exit, Voice, Loyalty: Using an Exit Phone Interview to Mitigate the Silent Departure Phenomenon
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Exit, Voice, Loyalty: Using an Exit Phone Interview to Mitigate the Silent Departure Phenomenon Wendy Y. Carter-Veale 1 & Michelle Beadle Holder 2 & Lenisa N. Joseph 3 # Springer Nature B.V. 2019
Abstract Doctoral student attrition is often referred to as a silent epidemic whereby students tacitly withdraw without ever being given an exit interview or follow-up. While most studies focus on the departing students, few studies focus on the institution’s implicit and explicit policies and practices that encourage silence. Drawing upon the BExit, Voice, Loyalty^ framework, we examined how the pathways to student voice that institutions provide for departing students contribute to the silent departure phenomenon. We recommend that campus stakeholders, policymakers, and administrators solicit critical feedback from departing students and develop instruments to assess their own departure process, rather than relying on national assessments. Keywords Exit phone interview . Silent departure . Doctoral attrition . Exit-voice-loyalty . Doctoral training . Graduate audience In the United States between 40% and 50% of graduate students who begin a doctoral program fail to earn a Ph.D. (Bauer, 2004; Bowen & Rudenstine, 1992; Lovitts, 2001; Lovitts & Nelson, 2000; Nettles & Millett, 2006; Sowell, Allum, & Okahana, 2015). Doctoral students Wendy Y. Carter-Veale received the Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is the former Program Coordinator for the Ph.D. Completion Project and now serves as the Social Science Research Coordinator and Interim Director of PROMISE Academy in the Graduate School at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Her special interests are graduate student retention and Ph.D. completion. Email contact: [email protected] Michelle Beadle Holder received the Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Maryland, College Park, and she currently serves as Founder and CEO of Food at the Center, Inc. Her interests are nutrition and health. Lenisa N. Joseph received the Ph.D. in Early Childhood Special Education from the University of Maryland, College Park, and now owns and operates SOONER than LATER, an education intervention business in Trinidad and Tobago.
* Wendy Y. Carter-Veale [email protected]
1
Graduate School, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD 21250, USA
2
Department of Sociology, University of Maryland, 3834 Campus Dr., College Park, MD 20742, USA
3
Early Childhood Special Education, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA
Innovative Higher Education
who prematurely withdraw often do so after completing all, or a significant amount, of their course work, thus gaining significant knowledge (Golde, 2000). However, they frequently leave the institution silently, that is, without giving formal notice (Bowen & Rudenstine, 1992; Golde, 2000; Lovitts, 2001); and sometimes they are laden with significant student loan debt and lingering emotional scars (Lovitts, 2001). This silent departure process is marked by a lack of institutional enga
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