When Doctoral Progress Stalls: Five Ways to Keep Students on Track

By Chastity M. Richardson, LPC, NCC, MBA

September 2026

Doctoral persistence is often framed as grit, yet counselor education and supervision programs shape progress through advising, milestone clarity and program climate. Several practical, research-informed moves can help to reduce stalled progression and lower attrition risk, particularly for Black women in predominantly white training contexts.

Why Stalled Progress Is a Systems Issue

In counselor education and supervision, we ask doctoral students to grow into multiple roles at once: clinician, teacher, supervisor, researcher and leader. Most programs have rigorous milestones that are appropriate for the profession’s responsibility to the public. The problem is that rigor can quietly turn into drift when timelines are unclear, feedback cycles stretch and gatekeeping decisions feel unpredictable.

When progress stalls, students often carry the burden alone. However, stalled progression rarely reflects a single deficit. It is more often the accumulation of small program conditions that compound over time, such as unclear expectations, inconsistent chair communication, limited access to mentoring and climates where microaggressions go unaddressed. For Black women, these conditions can also include intensified scrutiny and reduced psychological safety, which makes normal developmental struggle easier to misread as inadequacy.

What the Research Tells Us

Recent research suggests relationships and structures matter. In a 2023 study published in the journal Counselor Education and Supervision, Vaishnav and Wester found that racial microaggressions were associated with lower social connectedness for counselor education doctoral students of color, while relational mentoring was associated with stronger connectedness.

A 2020 qualitative study by Preston and colleagues identified relationships, mission alignment, counselor educator identity development and inclusiveness as markers of high-quality counselor education and supervision doctoral programs. Advising research also points to four supportive behaviors that promote completion: encouragement, accessibility, dependability and expertise, as described by Roy and colleagues in a 2023 study published in NACADA Review.

Taken together, the message is plain: Programs reduce attrition when they move from informal norms to visible structures that protect the advising relationship and prevent students from drifting.

Program Moves to Reduce Stalled Progression

These moves can be implemented without rewriting a curriculum. They focus on clarity, consistency and relational accountability. 

1. Make Milestone Expectations Visible and Stable
   • Publish a program milestone map that includes required checkpoints and decision criteria.
   • Set written turnaround expectations for chair feedback on drafts, with a backup plan for when life happens (co-chair review or temporary writing coach).
   • Use brief, structured milestone memos after meetings to document expectations.
2. Regard Doctoral Advising as a Professional Competence, Not a Personal Style
   • Train chairs and committee members in common advising dilemmas, including how power, identity and institutional role influence student experience.
   • Encourage chairs to practice four visible behaviors: encouragement (naming strengths and progress), accessibility (predictable contact), dependability (following through) and expertise (concrete guidance on research and writing).
   • Normalize early repair when misattunement occurs. A short, direct conversation can prevent months of quiet withdrawal.
3. Build Relational Mentoring Beyond a Single Chair
   • Create a small mentoring team for each doctoral student that includes one research mentor, one professional identity mentor and the chair.
   • Formalize peer mentoring among cohorts, including writing groups and milestone accountability partners.
   • Protect mentoring time as program work, not an optional service.
4. Address Microaggressions and Climate Issues with Urgency
   • Teach and practice microinterventions in faculty meetings and doctoral seminars so students see how to name and address concerns in real time.
   • Use climate check-ins at predictable points in the program, especially during dissertation-stage benchmarks when power is most concentrated.
   • Offer multiple pathways for students to raise concerns without fear of retaliation, including an ombudsperson process or an external point of contact.
5. Support Development of Identity as a Scholar Through Early and Repeated Research Participation
   • Invite doctoral students into research and writing teams early, with transparent criteria for authorship and leadership opportunities.
   • Make the hidden curriculum explicit: how conference proposals are reviewed, how peer review works and how to respond to revision requests.
   • Offer structured opportunities for students to connect their cultural identities to their scholarly questions, rather than asking them to leave identity at the door. 

Ethical Practices in Advising and Gatekeeping

Ethical practice in doctoral education is not limited to human subjects research. Advising and gatekeeping are also ethical responsibilities because they occur within relationships marked by unequal power. Programs can lower risk by documenting expectations, separating evaluation from informal favoritism and ensuring students know what “good standing” means at each milestone.

When stalled progression is framed as a private failure, students may hide problems until they become crises. A more ethical stance treats delayed progress as a signal to examine the environment, expectations and support structure. Programs can still uphold standards while refusing to normalize avoidable ambiguity.

What to Watch Next

If your program is seeing extended time-to-degree or a rise in “all but dissertation” status, start with one question: Where does the process become unclear? Often, the answer sits in the dissertation stage, where feedback cycles, committee alignment and unspoken expectations can slow progress more than any research method ever will.

Strengthening the advising ecology is practical and a statement of professional values. Counselor educators train a profession committed to wellness, justice and ethical relationships. Doctoral training should reflect those commitments in the way we structure progress.