Nearly half of all doctoral students in the United States never complete their degrees, according to a multi-year study by the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) that tracked completion and attrition rates across dozens of U.S. and Canadian research universities. The study found that only 56.6% of students who begin doctoral programs earn their degrees within 10 years. The remaining 43% invest years of their lives, accumulate significant debt and walk away without the credential they came for.
If you are reading this with a completed coursework record, a passed qualifying exam and an unfinished dissertation sitting on your hard drive, you already know the statistics personally. What you may now want to know is what you can do about it. This article provides an overview of why ABD candidates stall, what it takes to restart and how programs like Alverno College’s Doctor of Education (EdD) Dissertation Completion program can help candidates cross the finish line in about two years.
What Does ABD Mean?
ABD stands for “All But Dissertation,” and it describes a doctoral student who has completed all required coursework and comprehensive exams but has not yet submitted or defended their dissertation. ABD refers to status. It is not a credential.
Most institutions do not award a degree for reaching ABD status, though some recognize the milestone with “doctoral candidacy.” The term captures both an achievement (you made it further than most students) and a gap (the finish line is visible but not yet crossed).
ABD status is more common than most people realize. Attrition rates for doctoral programs in the United States range from 36 to 51% across engineering, life sciences, social sciences, mathematics and humanities, according to research published in PLOS ONE. The dissertation phase accounts for a disproportionate share of that attrition.
Why Do ABD Students Stop?
Understanding why candidates stall is the first step toward finishing. The transition from coursework to dissertation is the most dramatic structural shift in doctoral education, and most programs fail to adequately support students through it.
Structure Disappears at the Wrong Moment
During coursework, your doctoral program has a rhythm. Semesters begin and end. Assignments have deadlines. Classes meet on fixed schedules.
Once you begin the dissertation phase, all of that disappears. There are no weekly due dates, no one checks in unless you initiate contact and the built-in accountability of the coursework phase is gone. For students who have spent their academic careers succeeding within structured environments, this freedom can be paralyzing, not liberating. The dissertation is not a longer version of a seminar paper. It requires you to create and maintain your own structure from scratch over months or years.
Advisor Access Narrows
The advising relationship changes after coursework too. Contact with faculty that once happened naturally through classes and office hours becomes student-initiated and sporadic. A faculty member advising multiple doctoral candidates while managing teaching, research and service commitments cannot give every candidate the attention they need. Response times stretch, momentum stalls and candidates interpret silence as a sign that their work is not worth finishing.
The Scale of the Project Overwhelms
A dissertation can run 150 to 300 pages of original research, unlike anything most candidates have written before. Without a system for breaking that scope into manageable phases, the project feels infinite. Candidates get stuck before they start, or stall midway through with no clear next step.
ABD Completion Rates: The Hard Truth
The Council of Graduate Schools study puts doctoral completion within 10 years at 56.6%, meaning roughly 1 in 2 students who enter doctoral programs never finish. However, non-completion rates vary by field. Humanities and some social sciences see attrition rates as high as 40% of program entrants, while STEM and professional programs tend to be lower.
For candidates who do finish after reaching ABD status, the dissertation phase typically takes 13 to 20 months of active work, according to research drawn from doctoral coaching programs. The key word is active. Candidates who disengage for extended periods face compounding obstacles when they return: an outdated literature review, changed committee membership, expired program standing or revised institutional review board (IRB) requirements.
The longer a candidate waits to re-engage, the harder it becomes to finish. Outdated literature reviews, shifted committee membership and changed program requirements can all pile up during an extended absence, turning a manageable gap into a much larger restart challenge.
How to Finish Your Dissertation: Four Critical Moves
Finishing a dissertation after stalling requires structural and psychological shifts. These four areas account for the majority of ABD stalls, and successful restarts.
1. Rebuild your committee with intention
Your dissertation committee significantly impacts whether you finish. Candidates who stall often do so because their advising relationships have drifted. Perhaps a chair changed institutions, a methodologist is no longer available or there is a mismatch between the candidate’s needs and what the committee provides.
When restarting, assess your committee deliberately. Your chair should have a track record of guiding students to completion. Ask other doctoral candidates about their experience before committing.
According to guidance from Statistics Solutions, committee members should be chosen based on content expertise, methodological background and your ability to work with them effectively, not based on academic prestige alone.
If your committee has changed since you started, work with your dissertation advisor to formalize a new structure before resuming active writing. Trying to make progress without a functional committee in place is the single most common reason restarts fail.
2. Navigate IRB early — not after your proposal defense
Every dissertation involving human subjects research must clear IRB approval, and the process takes longer than most candidates expect. The process can include completing CITI certification training, securing a faculty sponsor, drafting and submitting your research protocol, responding to reviewer feedback and receiving a formal approval letter. Doctoral students should plan to submit IRB documentation at least nine months before their anticipated graduation date and have approval in hand at least one month before beginning data collection. If your intended research setting also requires its own IRB approval, this can extend this process even further. Make sure you learn early in your dissertation design process what approvals will be required for you.
Candidates who treat IRB as an afterthought routinely lose entire semesters waiting for approval while their committee and timeline sit idle. Build IRB submission into your dissertation timeline as a defined milestone, not a footnote.
3. Break the dissertation into phases, not chapters
Most candidates think about the dissertation in terms of chapters. That mental model makes the work feel larger and less tractable than it actually is. A more useful frame is in terms of phases: proposal development, IRB submission, data collection, analysis, write-up, revision and defense preparation.
Each phase has defined inputs, outputs and a clear completion signal. When you finish a phase, you have accomplished something concrete, which builds the momentum that carries you through the next one. Thinking in chapters produces a never-ending draft; thinking in phases produces a sequence of completable milestones.
4. Protect writing time as non-negotiable
Finishing a dissertation while working full-time and managing life responsibilities requires treating writing time like a work commitment: fixed schedule, non-optional. Two focused hours per day, six days a week will produce more than occasional weekend marathons followed by weeks of inactivity.
Research on doctoral candidate productivity consistently shows that consistency outperforms intensity. Candidates who write daily, even in short sessions, finish at significantly higher rates than those who rely on bursts of motivation.
Alverno’s Structured Path to ABD Completion
For ABD candidates seeking to complete their EdD dissertation with structured institutional support, Alverno College’s ABD completion program directly addresses the core reasons candidates stall. It combines immediate advisor assignment, a structured dissertation course sequence and built-in IRB support to eliminate the structural gaps that derail independent completion attempts.
The program assigns an experienced faculty advisor/dissertation chair at enrollment, before any coursework begins. That immediate advisor relationship replaces the drift and silence that causes many ABD candidates to stall in the first place, helping them make measurable progress toward milestones:
Dissertation Advisory I: Identify your research area, form your dissertation committee, develop your research question and complete a draft literature review.
Research in Educational Contexts: Read broadly across scholarly sources in your area and develop your literature review bibliography in APA format, building the foundation for your full literature review. This course helps candidates situate their research question within the existing scholarly conversation before moving into methodology.
Dissertation Advisory II: Complete the introduction and literature review and begin development of the methodology chapter. This milestone marks the transition from framing the research problem to designing how you will investigate it.
Special Topics in Education Research Method: Evaluate research designs, select your methodology, develop and evaluate your research instruments and build a defensible rationale for your approach. Students examine both quantitative and qualitative paradigms to ensure the chosen design genuinely fits their research question.
Dissertation Advisory III: Defend your research proposal and compile, receive feedback on and submit your Institutional Review Board (IRB) documentation. IRB navigation receives dedicated course support at this stage, removing a major obstacle that stalls independent candidates.
Dissertation Advisory IV: Conduct data gathering and analysis and begin the full dissertation write-up. This is the phase where the research plan becomes original findings, with faculty support throughout both collection and interpretation.
Dissertation Defense and Dissemination: Defend your dissertation, incorporate committee feedback and complete final revisions. Successful defense marks the formal completion of all doctoral degree requirements.
Candidates also complete nine credits of coursework in the Teaching and Learning in Higher Education concentration, qualifying them to teach at the postsecondary level upon graduation. This concentration broadens career options, making graduates competitive for faculty positions.
Alverno’s Prior Learning Assessment (PLA) reviews prior coursework, experience and scholarship, with candidates eligible for up to 30 credits of transferred credits from their prior doctoral studies. The structured, advisor-supported program operates primarily online with one on-campus weekend residency in Milwaukee, and most candidates finish in about two years.
ABD Is Not the End of the Story
Reaching ABD status means you have already done the hardest work of doctoral education: building disciplinary expertise, producing original scholarship and demonstrating the intellectual capacity to earn a doctorate. The dissertation is the final requirement, not a second graduate degree.
Candidates who finish consistently report that the dissertation was more manageable than they expected once they had the right structure and support in place. The path forward starts with two decisions: rebuild a functional committee and commit to a realistic timeline.
For candidates who want institutional structure to support that timeline, Alverno’s ABD completion program — finish in 2 years offers a defined path from ABD status to EdD in approximately two years.
About Alverno College’s EdD Program
Alverno College’s Doctor of Education program is built around direct faculty engagement from day one, with advisors selected for their professional field experience and demonstrated record of guiding students to completion. The program offers multiple concentrations, including K–12 Leadership, Higher Education Leadership and Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, alongside the Doctoral Completion track for ABD candidates, all delivered in a primarily online format with one on-campus weekend residency in Milwaukee.
Alverno College is a Milwaukee-based institution with a long tradition of outcomes-focused, ability-based education that emphasizes practical competency alongside academic rigor. If you are a candidate for the ABD path, your specialization would be Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. If you are beginning the doctoral journey and are interested in the Alverno EdD, you may select from K-12 Leadership, Higher Education Leadership, and Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. All paths are delivered in a primarily online format.