Experiences of graduates in a Master’s Degree completion program: A phenonomenological perspective

Abstract

This study aims to understand the meanings that graduates of a Master’s degree in Pedagogy attribute to their participation in an institutional degree-completion program with continuous academic support, within the context of a teacher education college (escuela normal) in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico. Adopting a qualitative approach, hermeneutic phenomenology is employed to explore the lived experience of degree competition beyond its administrative or credentialing dimensions. The research is based on the analysis of written narratives produced by twenty graduates who, despite having completed all postgraduate coursework, had not obtained their degree and later resumed the process through the institutional program. The phenomenological analysis identified structures of meaning that reveal degree completion as a complex formative experience, characterized by the rupture represented by entry into the program, the structuring and sustaining of the process, academic support as a pedagogical presence, the return to the role of student, the re-signification of research, and the construction of the professional oath as an anticipated horizon of meaning. The findings indicate that participation in the program fosters subjective and professional transformations even before the formal attainment of the degree, re-signifying degree completion as a human, situated, and relational process. This study contributes to rethinking degree-completion programs from the perspective of those who experience them, shifting the focus from completion rates toward an understanding of formative processes in postgraduate education.