Improving professional IT doctorate completion rates

Authors

• Oliver Kisalay Burmeister, Charles Sturt UniversityFollow

Author ORCID Identifier

Oliver Kisalay Burmeister https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1800-9551

Document Type

Research Article

Abstract

Professional doctorates in Information Technology (IT) have been a relatively recent phenomenon, giving IT professionals career management choices not previously available to them. However, successful completion rates are the lowest of all disciplines. Completed doctorates rate in quality equivalent to PhDs, and retention has been identified as a major obstacle to completion. This qualitative study, involving 44 semi-structured interviews with students, supervisors and institutional support personnel, investigated the obstacles. Amongst the strategies discovered to improve completion rates were retention, student engagement with supervisors, feedback on progress, student engagement in the course, and student involvement in institutional communities of practice.

Recommended Citation

Burmeister, Oliver Kisalay (2015) "Improving professional IT doctorate completion rates," The Australasian Journal of Information Systems: Vol. 19: No. 1, Article 5.
DOI: 10.3127/ajis.v19i0.1073
Available at: https://aisel.aisnet.org/ajis/vol19/iss1/5