Grad school cuts are shrinking Ph.D. enrollment at Duke
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This fall, a large drop in Ph.D. student enrollment at Duke University is causing the number of doctoral students conducting research at the Research Triangle's pillar institutions to shrink.
Why it matters: Uncertainty over federal spending on scientific research drove speculation that fewer Ph.D.s would be admitted in 2025.
- Those fears proved true for Ivy League institutions and their peers like Duke, so the relative stability of large schools like UNC-Chapel Hill and N.C. State may make them more attractive landing spots for students.
State of play: The U.S. graduates more Ph.D.s than any other country, Axios previously reported. Graduates go on to invent things, cure diseases and win Nobel Prizes.
- The Triangle produced the sixth-most life sciences Ph.D.s of any region this past year, according to research from the real estate firm JLL.
By the numbers: Doctoral student enrollment remained essentially flat at the three largest Triangle universities, shrinking a fraction of a percent to around 11,000 Ph.D. hopefuls this academic year from last.
- The number of doctoral students at Duke, the state's largest source of Ph.D.s, shrank by 5.0% compared to last year.
- At UNC-Chapel Hill, Ph.D enrollment grew 2.5%. N.C. State saw 2.1% growth.
What they're saying: Holden Thorp, a former chancellor at UNC-Chapel Hill and provost at Washington University in St. Louis, said public university budgets are holding up better than private ones at the moment.
- "In a private university, the graduate student stipends are a kind of discretionary expense," he told Axios. And when an institution like Duke or Harvard's budget is squeezed by grants being eliminated, "PhD stipends would be one of the first things to go," he said.
Public university budgets, however, are more rigid and budgeted according to categories, he said.
- "The UNC system has still had some decent [state] budgets," he added, "and a lot of those graduate stipends get paid because the graduate students are paid to teach classes in addition to doing research, and that is much more dedicated funding."
Zoom out: Brett Cox, a Raleigh-based senior research manager at the real estate firm JLL, tells Axios that the high concentration of Ph.D. holders in the Triangle has helped build the Triangle's reputation as a place where smart people gather.
- "That is our brand now," Cox says. "People understand that there's intellectual capital here, that smart people live here and they want to be here as well."
- Beyond that, Cox says, it's given a huge boost to the region's research and STEM-based industries, especially in the life sciences area.
Threat level: A slowdown of federal funding from Trump administration targets like the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Agency for International Development has led to layoffs and program cuts.
- "We're at risk of kind of slowing our innovation," Cox says.
What's next: The cuts may require pivoting to private funding sources, like local research nonprofit RTI International is doing, or result in fewer breakthroughs in local labs.