Last week I came across a LinkedIn discussion about how doctoral programs are often unnecessarily stressful. Many people commented about insensitivity and poor treatment from faculty. Others noted that drop out rates can be high and that mental health can be compromised. No doubt doctoral training, whether it is a PhD, MD, DBA (doctor of business administration), or other degree, is hard. There is a lot of work that is very challenging. After all, a doctoral degree is personally transformative, and that takes work. But it doesn’t have to be traumatic. Faculty can make doctoral training better by reducing unnecessary stress and being more supportive.
Stress Versus Distress
There is an important distinction between stress and distress. Stress itself is just about physical and mental demands as we perform tasks–in other words, workload. As we work and consume energy, we eventually experience fatigue. You can see it as you exercise and after some repetitions you feel the burn in your muscles. Mental work also produced fatigue. Study chapters in a textbook, and over time it gets harder and harder to maintain concentration. Fatigue is a natural by-product of being awake and performing work. Rest and the fatigue subsides, making you ready for more work.
Distress, on the other hand, is what happens when you have a negative experience. It can occur when you do a task you dislike or find boring. It can happen when someone mistreats you, such as someone insulting you are yelling at you. It can occur because of difficult circumstances, like financial problems and not knowing where next month’s rent is coming from. Distress not only causes fatigue, it causes emotional upset such as anger, anxiety, or sadness, and in the extreme emotional trauma. It erodes positive mental health.
Research shows that the body’s reaction to stress due to working is different from distress. During work our bodies produce adrenaline that energizes our actions. When we stop, the adrenaline dissipates, which is one reason that we often don’t feel the fatigue until we stop and relax. When we are distressed the body also produces cortisol, which prepares us for fight or flight. Continual cortisol exposure can have detrimental effects on us physically and mentally. The distinction between exerting effort while working and feeling distress distinguishes what is sometimes noted as good stress versus bad stress.
The Stress of Doctoral Training
Doctoral training is intense and busy. Students need to acquire a tremendous amount of knowledge and skill in a relatively short time. For a full-time program, students experience total immersion working more than 40 hour weeks. In part-time programs, like executive DBAs, students are working full-time. Their academic work is a second job adding that for many is already a heavy workload. There is stress that comes with the territory, but there is stress created by faculty that is unnecessary that can lead to distress. The stresses of doctoral programs include
- Quantitative workload. There is a lot of work. There are materials to read, exams to study for, papers to write, and other activities. For those who went into a program because they loved the area, much of this work is enjoyable and rewarding. Students might be tired at the end of the day, but it is a good tired. They wake up refreshed and ready to dive into more.
- Qualitative workload. Many of the things doctoral students do is mentally challenging. It requires a lot of concentration and focus. Learning complex statistical analysis, for example, is something that for most students is not easy. But conquering something you weren’t sure you could ever learn builds confidence and pride.
- Mistreatment. Being treated poorly by others, whether they are students or faculty, can lead to distress. Mistreatment can take many forms ranging from passive acts of exclusion and ostracism to active bullying. One professor might refer to a student as dumb. Another might tell a student that the program made a mistake in accepting them. A third might embarrass students in front of a class. Such comments by faculty can be devastating.
- Harsh feedback. Students need honest feedback, but it should be constructive and build the student up not down. Telling a student that their dissertation idea is stupid is not a way to get better work. There can be a fine line between honest feedback and harsh feedback, but too often faculty are way over that line.
Faculty Can Make Doctoral Training Better
As I write this I am reminded about what my MA thesis advisor, Lou Penner, would say about dealing with students, “Treat them like a human being”. Too often faculty in their efforts to produce a rigorous educational experience forget that. Faculty should serve as mentors and supports to doctoral students, helping them to manage the heavy workload, and to cope with the stress of graduate school.
- Acknowledge the Stress. School is hard and sometimes students need someone to listen to their challenges. One of the principles of providing helpful help is to listen and validate the person’s experiences. Comments like “suck it up” are not helpful when someone is struggling and having doubts.
- Offer Guidance. When students are struggling, faculty can guide them in developing better coping strategies. This is particularly the case with managing workloads. Tips like making lists of tasks, prioritizing and scheduling deliverables, or learning to say no to requests can be helpful. Sometimes all a student needs is someone to help them think through a problem.
- Constructive feedback. The opposite of harsh feedback is constructive feedback. A student needs to know when their point is correct and when it is not. That feedback should be delivered in an honest but kind way. Often an issue is nuanced, and it is about strengths and weaknesses. Being able to identify them is something that faculty can help students identify.
- Psychological safety. A psychologically safe classroom is one in which students feel free to express their ideas without being made to feel stupid by the faculty or peers. Faculty need to create a program culture in which students can brainstorm and share ideas with one another without being attacked. This is done by faculty providing constructive feedback, encouraging the sharing of ideas, and guiding critical analysis of ideas in a spirit of mutual collaboration. Faculty need to model the behavior they expect from students.
A doctoral program is stressful due to the heavy workload and for many students, life circumstances. Faculty can make graduate training better by keeping that in mind. Graduate school is a place for personal development, where students are built up not down. Doctoral training is an intense experience with high demands and expectations. Faculty should support students to help them cope with those demands, and do their best not to create additional unnecessary stress.
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