I’ve heard professors say this. Funding pressures were given as one of the reasons I should graduate ASAP by my doctoral advisor….he gave me lots of good reasons….I think graduating ASAP was a good decision by the way.
The issue is that, on the surface, the data does not back up this claim. In fact, the exact opposite seems to be true. As of 2013, funding has never been better.
Below is data on doctoral student’s primary source of funding from 2001 – 2013 (In percentage). Keep in mind that the number of doctoral recipients has increased by 29% from 2003 to 2013.
2013 http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/sed/2013/data/tab35.pdf
Teaching assistantships: 20.8
Research assistantships or traineeships: 32
Fellowships or grants: 26.9
Own resources: 15.4
Employer: 3.0
Other: 1.8
For some strange reason I could not find data on 2012
Data for 2001-2011 is summarized on page 13 (figure 4A) http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/sed/digest/2011/nsf13301.pdf
Students funding themselves primarily from their own resources dropped from ~30% to ~15% between 2001 and 2013. This is a massive improvement, and a major change.
Now there may be some complex meanings hidden in the dept. of education/nsf data. I’d be happy to hear what they are.