With a new academic year in full swing, millions of students are just setting out on their college journeys. But for many of their professors, advisors and mentors, an important academic journey of their own stalled long ago.
While precise data are scarce, studies suggest that as many as half of all doctoral candidates never complete their degree. The issue is so common that it has its own shorthand in academia: All But Dissertation, or ABD.
These individuals have finished the bulk of their coursework but never completed the final step — often because of life events, caregiving responsibilities or financial hardship. The result is a massive loss of time, money and talent — and often a feeling of defeat for these students.
Many want to return and complete their work, but they face significant barriers to re-entry or finding programs that better fit their lives.
Nowhere is this challenge more pressing than among community college faculty, staff and administrators, who juggle heavy teaching loads and student support responsibilities that leave little room to complete their own advanced degrees.
A solitary marathon
Supporting ABD candidates — especially those working in two-year institutions — is about far more than helping people check a box for their resume. It is about repairing a talent pipeline that has been leaking for decades. Without new ways to help doctoral students finish what they started, higher education leaves too much ability untapped and too many communities short of the expertise they need.
The reasons so many do not finish their programs are not mysterious. Once traditional coursework ends, so does much of the structure that helps students stay on track. Instead of weekly classes and regular deadlines, the dissertation becomes a solitary marathon.
For people already working full-time, raising families or caring for relatives, it is easy for that marathon to stretch into years and then to stall altogether. Community college faculty are especially vulnerable to this fate, carrying heavier teaching and advising loads than their peers at universities and operating in environments where scholarly work is often seen as a luxury.
The costs of this unfinished business are real. On the individual level, it can mean a career that never fully advances, promotions that remain out of reach and the nagging sense of work left undone.
For institutions, it means relying on faculty who may be deeply committed teachers but lack the doctoral training that can expand research opportunities, grant funding and academic leadership. For higher education as a whole, it represents a squandered investment in people who were proving their ability to succeed at the highest levels of study.
A different approach
Some colleges and universities have begun to take this problem seriously. National University, where I serve as the vice president of community college relations, created a Dissertation Completion Pathway (DCP) that strategically guides ABD students back into an academic structure rather than leaving them to navigate the process alone.
The online program offers short bridge courses to reintroduce students to research and writing before moving them into dissertation work backed by close faculty mentorship and flexibility.
It does not erase the challenge of finishing a dissertation, but it recognizes that students returning after years away need a different kind of personalized support and scaffolding than those moving straight through. Other institutions are trying similar approaches.
New York’s Manhattanville University, for example, offers a Dissertation Completion Pathway for advanced doctoral candidates in educational leadership who finished their coursework elsewhere but never cleared the dissertation hurdle. Students can transfer in up to 39 post-master’s credits, then complete additional credits over two to four years in a synchronous online cohort supported by targeted dissertation advising.
Wisconsin’s Alverno College, meanwhile, has created an online Ed.D. in Educational Leadership that includes a doctoral-completion option designed for working professionals. Coursework is almost entirely online with a single weekend residency in Milwaukee.
Dissertation support begins from day one, with students required to take a refresher course in research methods. Efforts like these, however, remain too few and far between.
Too many scholars have invested years of study and money, only to stop just short of the finish line. Giving them a structured path to finish their dissertations is one of the most direct ways higher education can reinforce its pipeline of talent. It restores opportunities for individuals, strengthens institutions and enriches the communities where these scholars live and teach.
Institutions should no longer ignore the unfinished college journeys in their own ranks. Helping ABD candidates finally cross the finish line is central to making good on the promise of higher education itself.
