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While studies examining graduate engineering student attrition have grown more prevalent, there is an incomplete understanding of the plight faced by persisting students. As mental health and well‐being crises emerge in graduate student populations, it is important to understand how students conceptualize their well‐being in relation to their decisions to persist or depart from their program.

The purpose of this article is to characterize the well‐being of students who endured overwhelming difficulties in their doctoral engineering programs. The PERMA‐V framework of well‐being theory proposes that well‐being is a multifaceted construct comprised ofpositive emotion,engagement,relationships,meaning,accomplishment, andvitality.

Data were collected in a mixed‐methods research design through two rounds of qualitative semistructured interviews and a survey‐based PERMA‐V profiling instrument. Interview data were analyzed thematically using the PERMA‐V framework as an a priori coding schema and narrative configuration and analysis.

The narratives demonstrated the interconnectedness between the different facets of well‐being and how they were influenced by various experiences the participants encountered. The participants in this study faced prolonged and extreme adversity. By understanding how the multiple dimensions of well‐being theory manifested in their narratives, we better understood and interpreted how these participants chose to persist.

While previous work in higher education documents the impact of high tuition costs of attending graduate school as a key motivator in attrition decisions, in engineering, most graduate students are fully funded on research fellowships, indicating there are different issues causing individuals to consider departure. There has been little work characterizing nonfinancial costs for students in engineering graduate programs and the impact these costs may have on persistence or attrition.

Framed through the lens of cost as a component of the expectancy–value theory framework and the graduate attrition decisions (GrAD) model conceptual framework specific to engineering attrition, the purpose of this article is to characterize the costs engineering graduate students associate with attending graduate school and document how costs affect students' decisions to persist or depart.

Data were collected through semistructured interviews with 42 engineering graduate students from R1 engineering doctoral programs across the United States who have considered, are currently considering, or have chosen to depart from their engineering PhD programs with a master's degree.

In addition to time and money, which are costs previously captured in research, participants identified costs to life balance, costs to well‐being, and identify‐informed opportunity costs framed in terms of what “could have been” if they had chosen to not go to graduate school. As these costs relate to persistence, students primarily identified their expended effort and already‐incurred costs as the primary motivator for persistence, rather than any expected benefits of a graduate degree.

The findings of this work expand the cost component of the GrAD model conceptual framework, providing a deeper understanding of the costs that graduate students relate to their persistence in engineering graduate programs. It evidences that motivation to persist may not be due to particularly strong goals but may result from costs already incurred. Through this research, the scholarly community, students, advisors, and university policymakers can better understand the needs of engineering graduate students as they navigate graduate study.

While researchers in graduate engineering education are beginning to study facets of student experiences as they relate to attrition and persistence, theoretical applications of thriving theory have not been applied to graduate education contexts. Literature addresses students who persist and those who depart, inherently making assumptions that students who persist are doing well.

The purpose of this article was to understand graduate student well‐being within students that persist and depart from the engineering PhD through an adapted model of the Spreitzer et al.'s Socially Embedded Model for Thriving at Work.

Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with 64 current and former engineering PhD students, representing various stages of the PhD, status of persistence, questioning departure, or having left a PhD program. Interview transcripts were analyzed using an abductive analysis approach.

An expanded model for thriving in graduate school was developed. While this study contextualizes the core elements of thriving theory (context features, agentic behaviors, and produced resources), we propose that the mechanisms for thriving in graduate school lie in interactions across these themes in processes we call Adapting, Internalizing, and Cultivating. We also reveal the presence of hidden competencies (from the point of view of the graduate student participants) that facilitate these transitions.

Thriving in graduate school is an interconnected process which has not been explored in the context of engineering. This study shows how even students who persist in their degree may only be surviving, rather than thriving.