Visiting scholar at Center for International Higher Education, Boston College

The topic of my PhD-project is student departure in higher education in Norway. Students leaving university without completing a degree or a diploma is perceived as a fairly common challenge in higher education. This trend has been more extensively resear ched in the US then in other countries. Hence, the majority of the research findings in the field are based on American higher education and are presented in books and journals published in the US. Previous research on student departure in Norway has sh own that student?s leaving their initial institution before degree completion is quite common. However, though register data can provide information on student completion and non-completion there is less knowledge on why students leave, and what Norwegian universities potentially can do to try to prevent student departure. An ambition of my PhD thesis is to contribute to reduce this knowledge gap. I will focus on working on my articles and getting updated on the latest research in the field while at Bos ton College. Both the library access and the opportunity to sit in on courses at Boston College and Harvard Graduate School of Education will facilitate this. I will work in close contact with my faculty sponsor, professor Altbach.