“Researchers also have found that the socialization process can leave students feeling isolated and frustrated and, as a result, possibly questioning and doubting their academic worth and abilities. Beeler formulated a graduate student academic adjustment framework to ascertain how first-year graduate students adjusted to their academic studies. The framework includes four stages across multiple dimensions of consciousness and competency. Beeler suggested that in the first year, graduate students progress through four stages, beginning with unconscious incompetence and ending in conscious competence. [...] Doctoral students in the first year of their journey often ask questions, such as, "Can I do this ... Do I want to be a graduate student ... Do I want to do this work ... [and] Do I belong here?" (p. 56). In addition to questioning academic capabilities, other issues found to impact the doctoral student experience are perceptions of faculty support and encouragement, financial support, and personal characteristics, such as previous employment, age, educational background, and family situation. There is no denying that doctoral education can be challenging in myriad ways for students.
Some critical scholars also have found that black and Latina/o students' experiences in doctoral education is complicated by race, racialization, and racism inherent in the social practice of higher education...Through a qualitative study with four recent Ph.D. graduates and four current Ph.D. students, Lewis, Ginsberg, Davies, [et al.] used Beeler's four-stage graduate student academic adjustment framework to explore the experiences of African American Ph.D. students at a top research, predominately white, institution. They found that in addition to the aforementioned possible issues faced by most doctoral students, African American students dealt with perceived individual and institutional racism. Other scholars include feelings of racialized and cultural isolation and tokenism, often exhibited by experiences such as being expected to represent one's racial and ethnic group, being the lone person of color in class, lack of mentoring, and lack of diverse epistemological perspectives in the curriculum.
The landscape does not appear better for Latina/o doctoral students. In a report to the Lumina Foundation, Padilla uncovered a sobering reality—out of every 100 Latino students in the K-20 educational pipeline, less than one earns a doctoral degree. [A] qualitative study of 12 recently graduated Latina faculty illuminated the many issues Latinas/os face in their doctoral experiences. [P]articipants reported facing isolation, alienation, lack of support, low expectations from faculty based on racial and ethnic discrimination as well as linguistic bias, and discouragement from using more culturally appropriate epistemologies, theories, and frameworks (i.e., Chicana feminism). Several other scholars report similar findings about the educational experiences of Latinas/os.
These experiences are part of black and Latina/o doctoral students' socialization processes and contribute to a disheartening state of affairs in doctoral education. Several scholars have looked at both groups simultaneously and yielded similar results: Doctoral education can result in some dehumanizing experiences for Latina/o and black doctoral students. Findings from the aforementioned studies suggest that black and Latina/o students, in particular, must endure a socialization process that has the potential to push them out of doctoral education. This pushing out inhibits these students' progress toward doctoral degrees and takes shape in the form of failed and insufficient advising and mentoring relationships with faculty, academic and personal invalidation, lack of departmental and institutional support, alienation, and isolation.”
—Gildersleeve, Croom, and Yasquez, “‘Am I going crazy?!’: A Critical Race Analysis of Doctoral Education.” Equity & Excellence in Education 44:1 (2011).
