The shrinking future of Ph.D.s
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The pipeline for Ph.D.s out of U.S. universities is shrinking at an unprecedented rate: Spots are disappearing, interest is fading and other countries are eager to fill the void.
Why it matters: America graduates more Ph.D.s than any other country. They go on to invent things, cure diseases and win Nobel Prizes.
- “There are some permanent effects,” said Emily Levesque, an astronomer at the University of Washington. “There’ll be students who never got to pursue Ph.D.s. That’s a group of experts that’s lost forever.”
By the numbers: Harvard is cutting Ph.D. admission slots in sciences by 75% and in humanities by 60%, the Harvard Crimson reported this past week.
- Several departments at other top universities are shrinking admit pools or pausing admissions altogether, Nature’s Alexandra Witze reports. MIT admitted fewer biology Ph.D.s this year than last. The University of Washington’s astronomy department is suspending Ph.D. admissions for the upcoming academic year.
- Brown is pausing PhD admissions in at least six humanities and social science departments, per The Brown Daily Herald.
Zoom out: Trouble has been brewing for years. ”This is an acceleration of a trend that was already underway,” said Julie Posselt, a professor of higher education at the University of Southern California. “It’s not a situation that we can solely place blame on the Trump administration for.”
- As more graduate students unionize, it’s becoming tougher for universities to afford their salaries, pushing some programs to shrink, she notes.
- Even before the Trump administration started revoking international students’ visas, many were already choosing programs in Australia, China, the U.K., Germany and beyond over U.S. schools.
- At the same time, the “is college worth it?” debate looms large, and many prospective students are wary of taking on debt to pursue grad school. About 70% of Americans say higher education is “going in the wrong direction,” per a recent Pew Research Center survey.
Zoom in: Now there’s fresh political pressure.
- The Trump administration has canceled billions in federal funding for research at universities.
- International student arrivals to the U.S. in August dropped by 19% as the government clamps down on visas, AP reports.
- Plus, the administration is pushing universities to align more closely with its ideologies in exchange for preferential funding. The University of Texas is in talks with the White House to make a deal, Axios Austin’s Asher Price reports.
The bottom line: As funding dries up and the pipeline of new talent thins, researchers worry America could give up its long-held edge in science and technology to other countries.
- “We have the strongest system of graduate education in the world,” Posselt said. “And losing that is a big concern for people.”
