How an Anti-Science President and the COVID-19 Pandemic Altered the Career Trajectories of STEM Ph.D. Students of Color

Principal Investigator(s):  View help for Principal Investigator(s) Ebony McGee, Vanderbilt University

Version:  View help for Version V1

Name File Type Size Last Modified
QUAL_Theme_Coding.xlsx application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet 83.8 KB 07/21/2021 12:25:PM
QUANT_Analysis.R text/x-rsrc 5 KB 07/21/2021 12:14:PM
QUANT_Dataset.csv text/csv 107.6 KB 07/21/2021 12:23:PM
Readme.docx application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document 15.5 KB 01/22/2021 06:51:PM

Project Citation: 

McGee, Ebony. How an Anti-Science President and the COVID-19 Pandemic Altered the Career Trajectories of STEM Ph.D. Students of Color. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2021-07-21. https://doi.org/10.3886/E145701V1

Project Description

Summary:  View help for Summary In this mixed-methods study, we perform content analysis on open-ended survey items to reveal primary themes related to how PhD students are responding to the Trump policy and the COVID-19 pandemic. In our dataset, 40.7% of the respondents reported that their career plans have been affected by Trump’s anti-science policies, 54.5% by the COVID-19 pandemic. Our study revealed three themes were (1) awareness of the reduced funding for STEM and higher education, (2) heightened awareness of and commitment to the pursuit of social and racial justice, (3) interest in seeking job opportunities abroad. The top three themes for the COVID-19 pandemic were (1) shifting graduation timelines and adjusting research to the virtual campus life; (2) losing jobs, concerning about hiring freezes and fewer job openings, (3) reconsidering their place in a STEM field post-pandemic, including a possible complete change in career plans; thoughts of leaving the country for international jobs.



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