Typically, administrators, faculty members, and students are faced with the following challenges associated with graduate student research:

1. Establishing parameters which are compatible with the needs of the profession, the mission of the institution and graduate school, and the expertise of the faculty.
- Absent these parameters, student research cannot efficiently and effectively build the knowledge base supporting the profession; cannot actualize the mission of the institution and the graduate school; and cannot align optimally with the expertise of the faculty.

2. Developing administrative policies and procedures that facilitate the orderly and timely progression of students through the dissertation process.
-Absent these policies and procedures, faculty supervision loads become uneven and eventually excessive; students are delayed in their progress, causing them to put greater pressures on their supervisors to move them along; and dissertation quality is sacrificed for expediency.

3. Supporting faculty dissertation supervisors in ways that allow them to bring their strengths to bear on the dissertation process, relieving them of the time-consuming logistics associated with taking each step.
-Absent this support, faculty members can spend an inordinate amount of time engaged in activities that others can do for them.

4. Providing student-friendly mentoring experiences that produce strong dissertations.
-Absent these experiences, students can struggle or fail to transfer research knowledge to the dissertation process which they have learned in previous coursework; become discouraged and/or stressed; focus on finishing the painful experience as quickly as possible either by doing poorly just to get it over with, or by dropping out.
-Any such maladaptive approaches can result in mediocre dissertations that reflect badly on the institution, the administrators and faculty members, and the students.

5. Monitoring external agencies to stay current with increasing expectations regarding student research.
- Absent this monitoring activity, institutions can be ‘blindsided’ by the current trend toward increasing demands for quality, accountability, and comparability from the U. S. Department of Education and regional/professional accrediting agencies.