The Taboo of Withdrawal: Firsthand Perspectives From Former Doctoral Candidates in Poland and Portugal

ABSTRACT In knowledge‐based societies, withdrawal from doctoral education is often seen and spoken about as embarrassing, undesirable, and awkward. Emerging from complex conditions—a mix of profoundly personal factors and weighty contextual factors—withdrawal tends to be a silenced or shamed process, producing a layered dynamic of taboo upon taboo upon taboo. In the hope of helping to challenge this silencing and shaming, this qualitative study explores how former doctoral candidates perceive and experience withdrawal from doctoral education as a taboo. Drawing on a perspectivist approach, the analysis is based on in‐depth interviews with 22 former doctoral candidates in Portugal and Poland, and examines how withdrawal is shaped by underlying, often unspoken, factors and processes. The findings fall into two overarching themes—the taboos of withdrawal and withdrawal as a taboo—and highlight the deeply emotional and ambivalent nature of withdrawal for both individuals and higher education institutions, as well as identify taboos rooted in academic culture and pedagogical, social, and economic structures. By exposing the perversities of a culture marked by academic feudalism and academic capitalism simultaneously, this study calls for recognition of the grief embedded in withdrawal and affirms doctoral candidates' right to mourn what is lost when they leave this chapter behind.