Degree completion on theoretical time is a phenomenon seldom explored in the higher education literature. We applied variance components models and random coefficients models to the microdata of an entire entrant cohort of first-time, full-time undergraduate students who completed their three-year programme at a Portuguese institution during the…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to identify the learner characteristics attributable to the likelihood and the duration of programme completion in the Bachelor of Science (BSc) and Bachelor of Technology Honours in Engineering (BTech) degree programmes of the Open University of Sri Lanka (OUSL). Design/methodology/approach: Data were…

This fact sheet explores the association between parental income and the pathways of young adults in postsecondary education for students who began their studies in the 2012/2013 academic year. Students from low-income families have previously been shown to have lower rates of educational access and attainment. This fact sheet focuses on…

For institutions intent on improving their research student outcomes, it is important to identify the variables most strongly associated with timely or tardy completions, which the university has the potential to influence or amend. For this to occur the analyses of doctoral completion times need to be conducted at an institution or discipline…

Doctor of philosophy (PhD) degree holders are highly regarded in Kenya, especially in academia, and the Kenyan economy needs them to undertake administrative, research and innovation roles in academia and industry. However, attaining this qualification is arduous and Kenyan PhD programmes are characterised by low enrolment numbers, long degree…

Australia is following a global trend in doctoral education policy to improve PhD completion times and rates. It is widely believed that accurate data on PhD completion are needed to assess the success of reforms and drive changes in doctoral education. In this article, new national completion data (2005-2018) provided by the Australian Department…

Graduation efficiency is of top concern for institutions of higher education throughout the world. Increasingly, accountability metrics have come under scrutiny as policymakers seek to ensure public resources are efficiently used. Traditionally, higher education policymakers in the USA and Europe have used graduation rate as an accountability…

Purpose: This paper aims to compare the students enrolled to a three-year undergraduate, bachelor degree on Security of Computer Systems and Networks, offered in traditional, classroom fashion as well as online at the University of Milan (Italy). Its main purposes are to estimate the main characteristics of the two different student populations…

Postdoc is a special transitional position for those with a doctoral degree and is usually regarded as an investment to accumulate the additional human and social capital needed to facilitate future job searches or to add to an academic reserve army of unemployed PhDs. Given the prevalence of postdoctoral positions nowadays, it is crucial to…

Drawing on demographic data collected from interviews with 50 Indigenous Australians with a doctoral qualification and 33 of their supervisors, this paper provides the first detailed picture of Indigenous doctoral education in Australia, with the focus on study modes, age of candidates, completion times and employment. It also analyses data…

This paper investigates whether social origin has an impact on graduation age among university students. A large number of social background factors are applied on a large data set of 4 successive cohorts of Danish university graduates born 1960-1975. These are cohorts for whom university attendance increased steeply. Contrary to recent findings…

Background: Education of nurses from a diploma to a degree is a global phenomenon. However, bridging is often seen as a "backdoor" route to becoming a Registered Nurse and very little evaluation data exists to challenge this notion. Objectives: This research project was undertaken to explore student characteristics, academic performance,…

Issues related to attrition and completion time of graduate studies are certainly an internationally challenging and important area of higher education literature. In this paper, completion time dynamics of doctoral studies at Makerere University were investigated based on data extracted for all 295 candidates in the commencement cohorts from 2000…

Failure in higher education (HE) is the outcome of multiple time-dependent determinants. Interruptions in students' individual school trajectories are one of them, and that is why research on this topic has been attracting much attention these days. From an individual point of view, it is expected that interruptions in school trajectory, whatever…

This paper presents the first results of a project initiated in 2004 by the OECD in collaboration with Eurostat and the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, and aimed at developing a regular and internationally comparable production system of indicators on the careers and mobility of doctorate holders. A first data collection was launched in September…