https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03459-7
Article discusses results of a survey of PhD students. Some bits:
Interesting. But only some of the responses were from the United States. I don’t view CC from a computer, so I can’t parse the raw data. I would be curious to see how the US compares to the overall data set in the snapshot OP posted.
I was really annoyed by the way this Nature article started:
“The results of Nature’s fifth survey of PhD students bear out Kovačević’s experience, telling a story of personal reward and resilience against a backdrop of stress, uncertainty and struggles with depression and anxiety.”
And yet the rest of the article tells a dismal story about doctoral study across the globe. I don’t see anything here that tells “a story of personal reward and resilience.” I see a story that shows that doctoral students are rife with a wide range of issues - from mental health to general stress and overwork to harassment, discrimination, and bullying.
The only thing that even implies “resilience” is when you ask students directly whether they are “satisfied” with their decision to pursue a doctoral degree. But students have a vested psychological interest in answering that question with a “yes,” and the positive response to the "How satisfied are you…: question clashes with pretty much everything else that was measured in the survey.
The study shows that the majority of students are struggling with mental health, yet only 34% feel that mental health services at their university are adequate and less than 30% feel they are tailored for PhD students. Less than half of students say that the university supports good work-life balance. Nearly one-third of doctoral students show signs of a mental disorder in the last 12 months. Over one-fifth of students said they had personally experienced harassment, discrimination, or bullying in their program (with one-quarter of women reporting they had experienced harassment or discrimination). The highest rates were reported in North America. A whopping nearly 40% of gender minorities reported gender discrimination.
I looked at the satisfaction question and students in the United States don’t seem to differ much from students in other parts of the world.
The data is freely available and I encourage folks to download the Excel file and take a look at the open-ended comments. I don’t have time or inclination, frankly, to go through and code them all as I would were I doing a full-on analysis, but a scan shows that the majority of commentary is negative, and even the positive commentary is often nuanced and colored. My favorite was this one:
“Like my first car - broken in so many ways, but still running just enough to keep you thinking it can roll on as is for just a bit a longer.”
I cannot read most of the responses from outside of the U.S., as most of them aren’t written in English. But of the ones that are in English, a lot of them seem to reflect the same sentiments as the U.S. students.
Although I agree with the comments above, I trust the positive responses of the PhD students as much as I do the negative remarks.
When asked: “What do you enjoy most about life as a PhD student?”
The top four responses were:
Intellectual challenge–38%
Working with interesting and bright people–18%
University academic environment–13%
Creativity–11%
The main impression made upon me was that career uncertainty was the dominant concern among PhD students.
When asked about their main concerns, “uncertainty about job prospects” topped the list again as it did in the prior survey in 2017.
Only 26% felt that their PhD program was preparing them well for a “satisying career”. 56% of respondants preferred a career in academia.