STEM doctoral students’ skill development: does funding mechanism matter?

Abstract

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.

Exploring factors that impact physical science doctoral student role identities through a multiple case study approach

“…Further, participants reported relying on departmental funding from working as a teaching assistant; however, if they received funding from elsewhere (e.g., research grants), they could spend that time on research instead. This is in alignment with prior research that demonstrates that doctoral students' primary source of funding corresponds with the development of different skills (Grote et al, 2021). For example, both Alex and Blake discussed how research funding enabled further engagement with the practices of research.…”

Doctoral advisor selection processes in science, math, and engineering programs in the United States

“…Similarly, Borrego et al (2021) showed that it is often this first contact through admission that dictates the funding mechanism that students are offered. However, this process is often unclear to students and limits their agency in what mechanism (e.g., teaching or research assistantship) they are offered, which could have important implications on their subsequent opportunities within their program and beyond (e.g., Grote et al, 2021;Kinoshita et al, 2020). Prior work has also shown that students rely on both formal and informal networks to decide who they want their advisor to be (Maher et al, 2020b), which puts women and certain minoritized students at a disadvantage as they are often isolated in doctoral education (Posselt & Grodsky, 2017).…”

STEM PROGRAM LEADERS' STRATEGIES TO DIVERSIFY THE DOCTORAL STUDENT POPULATION: INCONGRUENCE WITH STUDENT PRIORITIES

“…They also found that university personnel frequently described waiving application fees for racially minoritized doctoral students (Sowell et al, 2015). For a more complete discussion of doctoral student funding and variations across and within STEM disciplines, we suggest reading Knight et al (2018) and Grote et al (2021).…”