Institutional Conflicts and Administrative Delays in Doctoral Dissertation defence: Evidence from Pakistani Universities

Abstract

This qualitative research investigated how institutional issues and administrative procrastination affect the extended doctoral dissertation defence in universities. The study involved twelve doctorate students in both public and private universities whose dissertations were already submitted but the process of dissertation defence was extremely time consuming. Semi-structured interviews were used as a source of data collection and thematic analysis of the data. The results showed that the institutional conflicts that were reported by almost all the participants were as a result of disagreements between supervisors and examiners, lack of coordination, and poor institutional policies. Ten participants pointed at administrative inefficiencies, namely, lagging documentation processing, lack of consistency in communication, and lengthy scheduling processes. These institutional issues all had the effect of stagnating academic growth, emotional burnout, and lessening of professionalization opportunities of the impacted scholars. The respondents highlighted that such delays demoralized them, lowered their self-esteem and their eagerness to be involved in future academic activities. Nevertheless, these difficulties did not stop most candidates, who were determined by self-motivation, networking among themselves and lobbying within institutions. The paper arrives at the conclusion of long delays in dissertation defence taking has strong structural and bureaucratic roots. It requires universities to formulate clear policies, prompt mediums of communication and mechanisms of conflict management so as to promote academic justice and on time degree delivery.