Doctoral Students’ Migration to Other Universities: Expectations, Challenges and Coping Strategies

Author(s) : Nadia Gilani 1 , Syed Abdul Waheed 2 , Ekaterina Gavrishky 3

Abstract:

Pursuing doctoral studies is a challenging journey, and the higher education institutions where doctoral students are registered should support this endeavor. The present study aims to navigate doctoral students' journey of pursuing their studies in two different institutes when they had to migrate from one university to another for specific reasons. A phenomenological approach was employed to examine doctoral students’ lived experiences of migrating to another university. Eleven doctoral students were selected purposively and were approached for data collection through a semi-structured interview guide. Six doctoral students were from the field of studies in arts, social science, and language, and the remaining participants were studying in physical science disciplines for the last two semesters before they migrated to other universities. The data was analyzed following the steps given by Smith et al. (2009). After the analysis of the data, three themes were identified: migrating to another university, challenges and coping strategies, and expectations from the ‘new’ university. The findings show that doctoral students faced various academic, social, and financial problems in their first university, and they were not supported in integrating, keeping in view their academic and personal challenges. Thus, they had to migrate to other universities with ‘new’ expectations and hopes. The study has implications for the public and private sector universities, which are required to restructure their support system that may facilitate students in fulfilling their academic requirements and financial needs and allow them to integrate into the universities.

Keywords: Financial needs, doctoral students, Phenomology study, support mechanism, academic integration.