Dire, globally high doctoral attrition rates are the result of competing impediments to the success of a doctoral aspirant who is unprepared to consistently produce scholarly doctoral-level writing, lacking the in the theoretical, philosophical, and intellectual training needed to think logically and metacognitively assimilate vast quantities of arcane and challenging research, utterly exhausted by the rigor, austerity, and privations attendant to the pursuit of a doctorate which is further magnified by the ceaseless, all-consuming, ambiguous, and increasingly demanding coursework, nearly all of which is performed autonomously, situated in a competitive atmosphere which places a special pressure on the private filial aspirations of female doctoral students. There are two overarching themes of this revised synthesis paper: The first theme addresses the fundamental tasks of writing and researching at a doctoral level using either a deductive or inductive approach. The second theme investigates the misunderstood journey from student to doctor—and its implications for individual doctoral aspirants and academia as a whole. These two major themes answer a number of questions beleaguering higher education worldwide.