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Background A substantial monetary investment supports STEM doctoral students in the United States (U.S.) through a variety of funding mechanisms (e.g., fellowships, research, and teaching assistantships). However, we have limited knowledge of how students’ funding influences their development of career-relevant skills during graduate school. Using survey data from STEM doctoral students (n = 719) across 35 highly ranked U.S. institutions, we use exploratory factor analysis and nested multivariate regression modeling to understand how students’ primary funding influences development of: (a) research skills; (b) teamwork and project management skills; (c) peer training and mentoring skills, and (d) communication skills. Results We find significant differences in students’ self-reported development for all four career-related skills based on their primary funding type. Students with research assistantships reported higher research and teamwork and project management skills than those with teaching assistantships. Yet, students with teaching assistantships reported significantly higher development of peer training and mentoring than students funded via all other types. Students funded via external fellowships reported lower skill development than students funded primarily by research assistantships across all four career-relevant skills. Conclusions Doctoral students' development of career-relevant skills are not uniform across primary funding types. Particularly, the perceived benefits of external fellowship funding (i.e., prestige, autonomy, increased pay) may come at the cost of fewer opportunities to develop skills important for career success. STEM graduate education scholars, practitioners, and policymakers should consider and ameliorate the varied impacts that funding mechanisms can have on graduate students’ development of career-relevant skills.

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P–12 and higher education finance policies and resources impact human resources administration. By examining education finance policy analyses covering fifty states written from 2013 to 2019, we illuminate human resource trends and challenges that emerged during this time. The purpose of this document analysis was to synthesize and share emerging human resources trends in education finance from across 50 states with a wide audience of P–12 and higher education administrators, graduate students, and policymakers, paying particular attention to issues of educational inequities. We identified key human resources administration areas where state financial support for P–12 has increased (pre-K, special education, and English language learning), areas of priority for state policymakers for both P–12 and higher education (career and technical education, performance-based funding), and challenges for P–12 (stagnating teacher pay coupled with rising health insurance and retirement costs and increasing student enrollment).