This study was focused on the factors that contribute to the high attrition rates in doctoral programs, particularly emphasizing the impact of online education on student persistence and completion rates. The primary intent of the research was to gain a deeper understanding of the various challenges that doctoral candidates faced and how they…

The purpose of this qualitative case study is to understand the experiences of adult graduate students who stop-out, or take a break from enrollment, but who ultimately persist by reenrolling. The participants in this study were enrolled in an online master's degree program. Symbolic interactionism was the theoretical framework for this study…

Social, financial, and academic stress often generate difficulties and may be associated with students' self-efficacy and enrollment status. A large percentage of students who initially enroll in college often do not make it to graduation. There are several reasons why college students drop out or stop out and there is a crying need for a solution…

The Internet is poised to open access to higher education for students no matter where they live. However, many students still live in places where barriers keep them from getting and staying connected to online coursework. These barriers include power outages, high internet data costs, and lack of computers or smartphones. BYU-Pathway Worldwide's…

This study focused on postsecondary students who participated in solely online educational programs. The study sought to determine if there was a correlation between student personality traits and their ability to persist in online programs. In addition, this study revealed if a certain personality profile, based on the dominant trait, correlated…

Persistence in distance learning has become problematic. This quantitative nonexperimental study examined whether perceived connectivity, perceived internal locus of control, and age predict persistence in online master's degree programs. Rotter's locus of control theory, Moore's transactional distance theory, and Rovai's composite persistence…

This research study focuses on evaluating the effectiveness of improvement efforts made for ENG 111 online courses at Brunswick Community College (BCC). The primary goal is to enhance student satisfaction, increase course completion rates, and improve course success rates. The study assesses the strategic redesign of ENG 111 courses and aims to…

This study examined the journeys of first-year undergraduate theological students during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic to figure out what, if anything, aided the students in completing their coursework with passing grades. COVID-19 has impacted organizations and individuals around the world, prompting changes to ensure that things kept…

Effective academic advising is well-recognized as a central component of student success within higher education. The exponential growth of online education, in combination with an increasingly diverse student population, prompts the need to reexamine best practices in advising. This exploratory, action research study examined the relationships…

The general problem to be addressed by the current study is the increasing percentage/count of dropouts of non-traditional students from online college degree programs. Guided by the theory of Perceived Organizational Support (POS), the purpose of this quantitative study was to investigate how POS is related to perceptions of faculty support,…

The problem addressed in this study was that online college learners were experiencing a high attrition rate during the first year of participation (Jobe et al., 2018). The purpose of this qualitative exploratory case study was to examine the lived experiences of online college learners, which influenced students completing online college courses…

Nontraditional students make up a majority of post-secondary online learners in the United States. The development of online learning modalities continues to grow and transform the educational landscape, providing expansive options and vastly improving student access to completing an undergraduate program. Unfortunately, with this growth, online…

This transcendental phenomenological study aimed to understand the time management decisions of persistent non-traditional online learners over 30 at large institutions offering online programs in the United States. The central research question is: What are the shared time management experiences of persistent non-traditional online students over…

This dissertation sought to determine the impact of online dual enrollment (DE) coursework on first-generation students' college GPAs and persistence/graduation outcomes. Further, this dissertation intended to discover whether increased dosages of online DE coursework result in increased persistence/graduation rates of first-generation students.…

Despite the growing popularity of online education, online schools have lower retention rates than their brick-and-mortar counterparts. Student retention is affected by multiple factors including the characteristics of the students, the characteristics of the educators, and the characteristics of the schools. However, there is a lack of…