# Narratives of quitting and quests for teaching reform: an affective event perspective on Chinese doctoral students' intentions to drop out

## TL;DR

This study explores why Chinese doctoral students consider dropping out, identifying environmental factors that trigger negative emotions and suggesting reforms to improve their academic experience.

## Contribution

The study offers culture-specific insights and practical guidelines for reforming doctoral education in China.

## Key findings

- Negative environmental factors like completion difficulty and lack of academic autonomy trigger dropout sentiments.
- Supervisor-centric learning communities contribute to competition and conflict, worsening students' experiences.
- Improving communication and support systems can enhance the doctoral learning environment.

## Abstract

In the field of higher education, the phenomenon of doctoral students dropping out has gained attention from researchers. Yet the reasons driving this phenomenon remain underexplored in the Chinese context. Guided by the Affective Event Theory, this study investigated the environmental characteristics of education that trigger the dropout emotions among doctoral students. Based on thematic analyses of the dropout narratives within a Chinese doctoral students' online community, this study reveals that certain negative yet stable environment characteristics trigger a series of negative events, resulting in doctoral students' dropout sentiment. Specifically, these characteristics include completion difficulty, a lack of academic autonomy, competition and conflict within the shi-men (a supervisor-centric learning community for postgraduate students), and low employment expectations. Based on the findings, this study provides suggestions to improve doctoral students' learning environment, for example, humanizing the power of supervisors and their advising process, helping doctoral students to form communities of learning that give them more channels to communicate their progress and receive feedback and support. This paper contributes to the higher education reform by offering culture-specific directions for research and by providing guidelines for the training of university leaders and supervisors.