An Early Entry PhD Option: Ten Year Review of Student Diversity, Productivity and Progression

An Early Entry PhD Option (EEO) is available to students beginning the nursing major.  The option is designed for undergraduate students who are interested in academic research careers.  A key component of the EEO is early research training with an established researcher.  The program was selected to receive program evaluation funding from  the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) *.

The overall study compares qualitative and quantitative data from three distinct groups of students: 

• Early-Entry:  students admitted to the PhD program while undergraduates or directly upon graduation;
• Mid-Entry:  students with a baccalaureate degree in nursing and at least one year of work experience;
• Delayed-Entry: students with an earned master’s degree in nursing and subsequent clinical or educator experience. 

In this poster descriptive statistics and visual graphics will be used to compare the three groups of students on measures of diversity, progression, and productivity.

Early-Entry students are younger and more ethnically diverse than Mid- and Delayed-Entry students.  They are more productive on average on a variety of measures than students with more conventional entry points.  The average time for Early-Entry students to complete course work and the degree are only slightly longer (< 1 year) than for Mid-Entry or Delayed-Entry students.  Proportionally fewer Early-Entry students withdrew from the PhD program as graduate students.  However, attrition of EEO students while they are undergraduates is high.  Upon graduation, Early-Entry graduates complete postdoctoral study and assume faculty and research positions that mirror the post graduation employment of Mid- and Delayed-Entry students.

Early entrance to PhD study is a successful approach to increasing the number of PhD prepared nurses and the number of years in which PhD prepared nurses are able to make significant contributions to the discipline. 

*RWJF Evaluating Innovations in Nursing Education (EIN) Grant Number 70183