Prepare to conduct research as a faculty member, researcher, government employee, or policy scholar. You’ll work with faculty with a range of interests and expertise to examine issues of access and equity, state and federal policy development, workplace learning, and institutional leadership, development, and assessment. Full-time PhD students are eligible for our competitive funding package.

Our curriculum includes an extensive and rigorous sequence of research courses that will prepare you for the dissertation, which focuses on a question that requires the combined use of literature, and a research problem that is empirically investigated. The curriculum offers significant flexibility to ensure that you can construct an individualized program to support your research interests.

To be admitted to PhD candidacy, you will prepare and defend a candidacy paper, which is an analytical synthesis of the research and related scholarly literature on a researchable problem of significant interest to higher and postsecondary education. Your PhD dissertation will be an empirical study that results in the creation of new knowledge.