Following the worldwide shift, partially or fully, to virtual education during the COVID-19 pandemic, online education has received renewed attention. Bal et al. (2020) noted the issues faced by higher degree students during that period in which they struggled with time management, access to resources, and balancing work and personal life. Over 61% of doctoral students writing their dissertations reported increased hardship during the transition, but not necessarily due to online education (Donohue et al., 2021). The most prominent struggles involved data collection during times of lockdown (Donohue et al., 2021), but many students also struggled with a shift to online mentorship with their chairs and committee members (Niño & Martinez, 2022). Given the changes and struggles, Atkinson et al. (2022) pondered the professional and societal value of earning a PhD, arguably due to some concerns that the partially or fully online process of doctoral education could not support students' academic outcomes and success. Therefore, perhaps the forced shift to virtual education methods elucidated a need to better understand the online doctoral education process (Mullen, 2021). Given that several online higher educational institutions developed models for providing online doctoral education prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, they may present an opportunity to understand the long-term online doctoral education experience during times of greater normalcy. Exploring how online higher education institutions support students who are writing dissertations should provide insight into best practices of supporting online students during their dissertation processes.