DUAL ANCHORING: Advancing a Framework for Nontraditional Doctoral Degree Student Success

This chapter focuses on the growing but underrepresented population of doctoral recipients in American, Westernized universities. In its initial discourse, this population will be referred to as nontraditional doctoral degree students. The chapter provides a quick overview of traditional and alternative frameworks for examining the nontraditional doctoral degree student. The traditional frameworks used to assess student success and persistence in higher education focused primarily on the undergraduate experience, with an emphasis on the first year of college. The chapter advances the idea of dynamic dual anchoring as a framework to understand and support the nontraditional doctoral degree student. The anchor of professional life for the nontraditional doctoral degree student represents an existence in which the student has been heavily invested in for some time. The academic anchor represents a complex intersection of new and old. The professional and academic anchors of the nontraditional doctoral degree student can be a push or pull factor for the pursuit of an advanced degree.