Physics PhD Students - Types of Financial Support

by Mark McFarling and Michael Neuschatz

Highlights

The type of financial support that PhD-level physics students receive depends most strongly on how far they have progressed in their studies. Most students start out in teaching assistantships and move into research assistantships in their second or third year of study.
A student's chosen research method can also affect what type of support he or she receives, with experimentalists more likely than theoreticians to move quickly into research assistantships as they progress in their studies.
Foreign students are more likely to hold teaching assistantships than US citizens, but closer inspection shows that nearly all of this gap can be attributed to the fact that fellowships are much more readily available to US citizens, and that foreign citizens more often identify themselves as theoreticians.

There were approximately 9,700 physics students enrolled in PhD physics programs in 2001 and over 90% of these students were financially supported. The three most common forms of financial support were teaching assistantships, research assistantships and fellowships. While many factors affected what type of support a student was likely to receive, two stand out.

The biggest such factor was how far along students were in their program of study (Figure 1). Generally, new students started out in teaching assistantships and moved into research assistantships as they progressed. By their third year, over half held research assistantships. In addition, about one-sixth of first year students were granted fellowships, although this dropped slowly but steadily to 1 in 12 by year 7.

Sixty-one percent of all PhD-level students identified their research method as experimental based, while most of the rest had a theoretical approach (Table 1), and this difference was the second major factor affecting what type of support they would receive. While an equal percentage of both theoreticians and experimentalists held teaching assistantships in the first year of their studies, by year four, only 12% of experimentalists held teaching assistantships, compared to 38% of theoreticians (Table 2). Concomitantly, a higher percentage of experimentalists held research assistantships, and this was true regardless of year of study. The data also show a higher percentage of theoreticians holding fellowships in the first few years of study.

Over half of physics PhD-level students were citizens of countries other than the US (Figure 2), and on the surface it appears that this was a major factor in determining what type of support a student would receive (Table 3). In actuality, the differences between US citizens and non-citizens were largely attributable to two factors. First, fellowships are much more readily available to US citizens, primarily because the majority of these are funded by US government sources such as the National Science Foundation. Second, there was a significant difference between the two groups in their selected research method, with 41% of foreign students identifying their approach as theoretical, compared to 28% of US citizens. Given that theoreticians were in general more likely to be teaching assistants, this helps explain why there was a higher percentage of teaching assistants among foreign students than among their US counterparts.

About the graduate student survey:

Since 1968, the AIP Statistical Research Center has periodically reported information about physics and astronomy graduate students. The data for this discussion are primarily based upon the 2001 Physics & Astronomy Graduate Student Survey. This survey was conducted during the spring of 2001 and was sent to students who were currently enrolled as graduate students, as identified by Physics and Astronomy department. Response rates for the known population were 39% for physics and 46% for astronomy.