phd extension due to covid 19

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• Funding opportunities
• Special Research Fund (BOF)

Exceptional extension of a PhD trajectory that was delayed due to COVID-19

This exceptional call is intended only for PhD students whose doctoral research is seriously delayed because of COVID-19 and for whom there are absolutely no alternative funding possibilities available with the promoter or the organisational unit (e.g. department, research group, etc.) of which the promoter is a member  

Funding and duration

An extension of the PhD trajectory can be requested (PhD scholarship or contract for scientific staff if a scholarship is no longer possible) for 4 up to 12 months. No bench fee is provided.

The call is open to all PhD students, regardless of the funding body of the PhD trajectory so far.

To be eligible for additional funding, all of the conditions listed below must be met:

• The doctoral research is in its final stage;
• The doctoral research still requires essential research activities aimed at data collection or data processing without which the completion of the doctoral degree is impossible;
• The data collection for the PhD research has been interrupted or seriously delayed for an extended period of time due to the effects of the COVID-19 crisis, with no alternative possibilities to continue or redirect the PhD research;
• The delay or interruption of the PhD research lasted at least four months;
• The circumstances and causes of the serious delay shall be duly substantiated;
• The additional funding either immediately links up with ongoing funding of the PhD student (whether or not via UGent), or follows funding that was recently terminated;
• There are no alternative funding possibilities available for the supervisor or the organisational unit (e.g. research group, possibly the department, etc.) of which the supervisor is a member in order to finance an extended PhD trajectory;
• The granted period for additional funding cannot exceed the period of the reported interruption or serious delay of the doctoral trajectory, with a maximum period of 12 months;
• Candidates who have received a COVID extension from the FWO are no longer eligible to apply at the Special Research Fund.

Some examples (non-exhaustive) of exceptional circumstances that may justify a request for additional funding:

• Fieldwork (incl. access to libraries, archives, museums, ...) that is essential for the PhD research cannot take place for a longer period of time due to travel restrictions;
• Essential research stays at a foreign research partner cannot take place due to travel restrictions;
• Experiments could not take place because the research infrastructure was fully used for COVID-19 related analyses or research activities;
• Seasonal research could not be started, resulting in a one-year delay for this research;
• Longitudinal research was interrupted for a longer period or could not be started;
• Research activities (e.g. questionnaires, focus interviews, ...) could not take place because of the impossibility of physical meetings with the target audience (residents of residential care centres, hospital patients, ...)

How to apply?

An application must be submitted by the promoter on the form provided for that purpose (in Dutch or English) and sent by e-mail to [email protected] .

• No fixed deadline , applications can be submitted at any time.

The evaluation committee meets monthly. The next meeting dates are: 14/05/2024, 6/06/2024, 4/07/2024, 27/08/2024, 24/09/2024, 17/10/2024, 18/11/2024, 17/12/2024, 21/01/2025, 20/02/2025, 20/03/2025, 24/04/2025, 20/05/2025, 17/06/2025.   Applications should reach us at least 10 days before the meeting of the evaluation committee, otherwise the application will be considered during the next meeting.

• If there is still ongoing funding for the PhD, the application can be submitted at the earliest 8 months before the end of the ongoing funding .
• Candidates are strongly encouraged to apply as soon as possible to ensure a subsequent extension. This is especially the case when the appointment must be made as a WP (group 1) and the candidate is subject to the single permit regulations (NON-EEA nationality).

Promoters will be informed of the result personally within one week after the evaluation committee took place.

Research Department Research Co-ordination Office - Special Research Fund

E [email protected]

Call and application forms

Application form Dutch  / applic ation form English

Scientific report

Final report : within three months following upon the end of the grant a final scientific/scholarly report has to be sent electronically to [email protected] . The promoter and co-promoter (if applicable) are included in this e-mail (either as sender, or in CC).

Duke Announces Funding Extensions, Other COVID Support Measures for Ph.D. Students

The following is a message that Provost Sally Kornbluth sent to Ph.D. students on July 16.

Dear PhD Students,

I write to provide an overview of policies that we are developing in response to the negative impacts of the COVID-19 global pandemic on Duke PhD students.  Let me begin by reflecting on what we have heard from all of you.  

Since the pandemic hit the United States in earnest this past March, our doctoral students have confronted significant disruptions to their academic progress and mounting obstacles in their day-to-day lives: lost access to labs and libraries, canceled conferences and workshops, uncertainty about visas, exacerbated challenges for those with disabilities, childcare and homeschooling responsibilities, social isolation, anxiety, depression, and financial strains. At the same time, we were all harshly reminded of the structural racial inequities in American society through witnessing violence against African Americans and the subsequent national conversation that is still evolving.

Over the past several months, you have demonstrated incredible resilience and adaptability in adjusting to these difficult conditions. Like our faculty, you have deepened your familiarity with digital modes of research and teaching. You have further embraced opportunities for professional development that can be accomplished remotely and have creatively reordered the sequence of your research plans. You have also continued to play key roles in Duke’s teaching and research mission.

The university’s responses to this unprecedented moment reflect the extensive input we have received from doctoral students, especially through program-level surveys; individual communications to DGSs, chairs, and deans; open letters from graduate student groups; and discussions in the Graduate and Professional Student Advisory Board that was created to provide student input for fall planning. These discussions have informed our efforts in three areas, summarized next and discussed in detail following:

• We will create a mechanism to provide tuition, fee, and stipend support to students who have reached the end of their guaranteed funding package and whose progress toward their degree has been significantly slowed by protracted pandemic-related impediments;  
• We will continue to urge flexibility in deadlines and modes of achieving key milestones, such as preliminary examinations, and PhD students with teaching responsibilities will have a choice about their teaching modality during the pandemic, given health and safety concerns; and  
• We will intensify our efforts to foster a supportive and actively inclusive climate for PhD education, excellent mentoring and advising for PhD students, and accessible mental health services.

Funding Extensions

Perhaps no pandemic-related issue has generated more concern among PhD students than the potential financial burdens created by delays resulting from curtailed access to research materials and venues. Here is what Duke has done and plans to do to help address those concerns.

Summer funding:  This summer, Duke  identified funding and employment opportunities  for every PhD student who sought it, including those past their sixth year. We plan to continue this next summer should COVID-19 pose continuing problems with off-site internships and professional development opportunities that prepare students for diverse careers. 

Tuition-and-fee scholarship for 7th-year students:  Currently, The Graduate School’s guaranteed PhD funding package covers tuition and mandatory fees for students in years 1-5, and students are eligible for a tuition scholarship in year 6 (which will also cover mandatory fees starting in fall 2020) as long as they have made an effort to apply for external or departmental tuition coverage. 

In light of the pandemic, we are working on a framework to allow students in year 7 whose progress is being seriously affected by the pandemic in the 2020-21 academic year to apply for a scholarship that would cover tuition and mandatory fees for either a semester or a full year, depending on the severity of the delay. This would apply to students who will be in their seventh year in the 2020-21 academic year and have faced significant delays in completion due to the pandemic.

Stipend extension for 6th-year students:  Currently, PhD students are guaranteed a stipend for years 1-5. As part of our COVID-19 response, students who will be in their sixth year in the 2020-21 academic year will be able to apply for an extension in compensatory stipend 1 , in the form of a TA-ship or RA-ship, for either a semester or a full year, depending on the severity of the delay. (Sixth-year students already receive  coverage for their tuition and mandatory fees ).

Students in years 2-5:  PhD students who will be in years 2-5 during 2020-21 will be eligible to apply for the stipend extension and the tuition-and-fee scholarship as they approach their sixth and seventh years, respectively. Students should ensure that their advisors and thesis committee have an accurate and ongoing picture of the effects of the COVID shutdown on their research.  Students should also document any pandemic-related effects on their progress in their 2019-20 annual reports.  If such reports have already been filed for this year, it will be important to amend the current reports to include details of COVID-induced delays. This documentation will be important for any later applications for extension of financial support once students reach their sixth year.

Details on the funding extensions, including application instructions and deadlines, are posted at  gradschool.duke.edu/covid19funding .  Students will need to provide a clear and compelling explanation of how COVID-19 has substantially delayed progress toward the degree. They will also need to obtain approval from their advisor and director of graduate studies.

Flexibility on Deadlines and Modes of Completing Program Milestones

The Graduate School has already extended the deadline for completing preliminary examinations (or portfolios, in the case of some departments) by a full semester, and demonstrated significant flexibility around the timing of thesis defenses. Preliminary examinations and thesis defenses also  may now occur remotely . We will continue to adjust deadlines, should shifting circumstances associated with the pandemic warrant. 

PhD students with instructional responsibilities, whether as instructors of record or discussion section leaders, will be able to choose whether they teach online or in person based on their individual health concerns or personal circumstances. This is similar to the latitude that Duke faculty members have in choosing their mode of holding class.

Program Climate, Advising/Mentoring, and Mental Health

I have asked each of our schools with PhD programs to reexamine how they will ensure a positive environment and effective advising and mentoring structures for PhD students. Many schools had already embarked on these matters in response to the  2018 report  of the Re-imagining Doctoral Education (RiDE) Committee, but the pandemic requires renewed attention and greater dedication to these efforts.

Importantly, as we proceed with responses to the pandemic, we must also redouble our efforts to eliminate bias and racism from our graduate programs. In the coming months we will roll out, among other actions, revised Responsible Conduct of Research trainings that address racism in the research environment, anti-racism programming and, in each school, curricular revisions that address issues of systemic racism. 

Some initial school-based responses, to be augmented as the summer and fall progress, include the following: 

• Arts & Sciences Dean Valerie Ashby has charged every PhD program in Trinity to create standards for good advising/mentoring and mechanisms of accountability associated with those standards, as well as to assess the quality of its intellectual and social climate. She has appointed the first A&S dean of graduate education, Neil McWilliam, to focus on these issues and coordinate program-level action.   
• The School of Medicine has reorganized the Office of Biomedical Graduate Education, revamped a coordinated first-year curriculum with a greater focus on professional development, wellness, community building through OBGE Gateway Groups, and implemented mentoring training for Gateway Group faculty leaders.  
• The Nicholas School of the Environment, in partnership with its Graduate Student Association, has embarked on a school-wide effort to assess the frequency of negligent or abusive advising and develop policies and practices to eliminate that behavior.  
• The new executive director of the Duke Career Center, Greg Victory, is working with The Graduate School and the individual schools to improve coordination of career advising for PhD students.  
• Maria Wisdom, director of interdisciplinary advising and engagement, has expanded the group coaching that she offers to humanities and social science PhD students.

All of these steps have the goal of more consistently providing Duke graduate students with strong advising and mentoring, which have only become more pivotal amid our current conditions, and which, more than ever, work best when graduate students can count on a team of complementary advisors.

Finally, Student Affairs has engaged  Blue Devils Care , a free service that gives all Duke students access to mental health providers at any time, as well as expanded options for scheduling counseling sessions. 

In closing, I wish to emphasize that our PhD programs represent a crucial dimension of Duke’s core mission to expand the frontiers of knowledge. We will continue to work with faculty and staff to support your efforts as researchers and instructors, and to improve our structures for training amid these challenging times. I wish you a safe, healthy, and productive remainder of the summer.

Sally Kornbluth, Provost

1 – Clarification: Departments can choose to provide the sixth-year stipend extension as either compensatory (in the form of a TA-ship or RA-ship) or noncompensatory.

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Challenges in PhD education due to COVID-19 - disrupted supervision or business as usual: a cross-sectional survey of Swedish biomedical sciences graduate students

Emma börgeson.

1 Institute of Medicine, Department of Molecular and Clinical Medicine, Wallenberg Laboratory and Wallenberg Centre for Molecular and Translational Medicine, 41345 Gothenburg, Sweden

2 Region Vaestra Goetaland, Department of Clinical Physiology, Sahlgrenska University Hospital, 41345 Gothenburg, Sweden

Matus Sotak

Jamie kraft, grace bagunu.

3 Revelle College, University of California San Diego, CA-92093 La Jolla, USA

Christina Biörserud

4 Department of Surgery, Institute of Clinical Sciences, Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Box 115, 405 30 Gothenburg, Sweden

5 Department of Surgery, Sahlgrenska University Hospital, 413 45 Gothenburg, Sweden

Stephan Lange

6 Department of Medicine, University of California San Diego, CA-92093 La Jolla, USA

Associated Data

The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding authors on reasonable request.

It remains unclear to what extent the SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the normal progression of biomedical and medical science graduate programs and if there was a lasting impact on the quality and quantity of supervision of PhD-students. To date, multiple editorials and commentaries indicate the severity of the disruption without providing sufficient evidence with quantifiable data.

An online survey was submitted to the administrative offices of biomedical and medical PhD-programs at eight major universities in Sweden to gauge the impact of the pandemic on the students. It consisted of multiple-choice and open-ended questions where students could provide examples of positive and/or negative supervision strategies. Open answered questions were coded as either examples of positive or negative support.

PhD students were divided into two groups: those with improved or unchanged supervision during the pandemic (group 1, n = 185), versus those whose supervision worsened (group 2, n = 69). Group 1 received more help from supervisors and more frequent supervision via both online and alternative platforms (email/messages and telephone). There was no significant difference in educational-stage, gender or caretaking responsibilities between the groups.

Conclusions

It is important for the scientific community to learn how to provide the best possible supervision for PhD students during the pandemic. Our data suggests that more frequent supervision, and using a diverse array of meeting platforms is helpful. In addition, it is important for the students to feel that they have their supervisor’s emotional support. Several students also expressed that they would benefit from an extension of their PhD programs due to delays caused by the pandemic.

The first case of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was reported in December 2019 and the World Health Organization (WHO) declared it a pandemic on March 11, 2020 [ 1 ]. The virus has wreaked havoc world-wide, resulting in 83.3 million cases of SARS-CoV-2 and 1.8 million deaths (WHO [ 2 ] January 3, 2021: Fig.  1  a), and having devastating socio-economic impact.

  a . Number of COVID-19 cases and deaths world-wide, as reported on the World Health Organization COVID-19 dashboard on Jan 3. 2021. b . Number of COVID-19 cases in Sweden, shown by region. c . Geographic location of universities and number of survey participants

As recently highlighted in several commentaries and editorial articles, the COVID-19 pandemic poses challenges for PhD students and their supervisors [ 3 – 8 ]. In the fields of biomedicine and medicine, the majority of research is conducted through ‘wet-lab’ experiments that need physical presence at the university. Furthermore, students enrolled in medical graduate programs often require access to the hospitals and/or human subjects to conduct their research. Navigating restricted physical access and remote work pose a significant burden on both PhD students and their supervisors.

In Sweden, a PhD in biomedicine or medicine requires 240 educational credits [ 9 ] and is typically completed in 4–5 years, although students may work at 50 % pace (e.g. allowing medical doctors to simultaneously work clinically). The PhD is divided into two parts: doctoral courses and an individual research project. The latter should result in authorships on at least four scientific manuscripts, of which one must be accepted for publication. The degree is free of charge, regulated by government decrees, [ 10 ] and students are entitled to regular supervision by their primary supervisor.

In this study, we conducted and analysed an online survey with the overarching aim to investigate how the supervision of PhD students has been affected by the pandemic. The survey was conducted in Sweden, where more than 400,000 cases of COVID-19 were reported by the end of 2020 [ 2 , 11 ] (Fig.  1 b). The students answered questions related to their demographics, and provided detailed examples of positive and/or negative aspects of how their supervision has been changed during the pandemic. Our analyses provide suggestions for specific pedagogical approaches for the supervision of doctoral students that are tailored to help them finish their studies and successfully complete their PhD program during this difficult time.

Study design and participants

The survey investigated how the education, supervision and mentoring of PhD students in Sweden has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic (Table  1 ) and was conducted using Entergate software ES Maker [ 12 ]. It was distributed via the administrative offices of biomedicine and medicine graduate programs at 8 Swedish universities, between November 2020 and March 2021. A total of 262 answers were received (Fig.  1  c).

Survey cover and questions. Multiple-choice answers are highlighted by square brackets and italicised text

The survey was assessed by the Swedish Ethical Review Authority (Dnr 2021 − 00481) and found to be exempt. For conducting the survey, we followed the general principles and recommendations provided by the Helsinki Declaration [ 13 ] and the Belmont Report [ 14 ]. Written informed consent to participate in the study was obtained from participants as outlined on the survey cover sheet shown in Table  1 .

Data analysis and availability

Participants were grouped based on how they assessed the changes in the quality of mentorship during the pandemic. 260 of the 262 participants answered the question. Six respondents answering ‘not applicable’ (N/A) were excluded. The remaining 254 respondents were divided into two groups: group 1 contain PhD students that experienced improved or unchanged mentorship, while students in group 2 experienced worsened supervision and mentorship.

The open-ended question was independently analysed using inductive thematic analysis [ 15 ]. Briefly, the answers were carefully read after which they were coded, analysed and categorised into examples of positive and negative support (Table  2 ). When highlighting quotes, obvious spelling mistakes were corrected to facilitate reading. The original dataset is available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.

Thematic analysis of the question: “ What (if anything) do you wish that the supervisors/mentors would change in order to help you cope with the COVID-19 related restrictions during your PhD?” . Note that the total % may be higher than 100 %, as a respondents’ complete answer may fit several themes

All statistical analyses were done using Prism 8 (GraphPad Software). Answers that had too few respondents to be analysed (e.g. the not-applicable (N/A) option) were excluded from the statistics, as indicated by “ε”. When illustrating results in the figures, each group was set to 100 % to facilitate comprehension.

Demographic analysis of study participants

Study participants were separated into two groups based on whether their quality of mentorship had changed (Table  1 ). Students in group 1 experienced improved or unchanged mentorship/supervision during COVID-19 (185 students), while group 2 where students that experienced worse mentorship/supervision during the pandemic (69 students) (Fig.  2  a).

Demography of survey participants. a . Grouping of responses to the question whether the quality of the mentoring changed. Respondents in group 1 experienced improved or unchanged mentorship, while respondents in group 2 experienced worsened mentorship during the pandemic. The total number of participants, and numbers of respondents for each group are shown. b - d . Analysis of participants’ gender distribution ( b ), caretaking responsibilities (e.g. childcare, eldercare, etc.) ( c ) and educational stage ( d ) revealed no statistical differences between groups 1 and 2. The number of total participants for each question, the number of responses and distributions (in %) in each group, as well as p-values determined by comparison between groups 1 vs. 2 using Fisher’s exact test are shown

The distribution of men and women, as well as levels of caretaking responsibilities, were similar between the groups (Fig.  2 b-c). We also evaluated answers according to the educational stage of the PhD students, as students at an earlier career stage (2 years or less) might perceive pandemic-related restrictions differently compared to those at a later stage (after the half-time assessment - later than 2 years). However, there was no difference in early versus late stages between groups 1 and 2 (Fig.  2 d).

Change in supervision format during the COVID-19 pandemic

The frequency of supervisory meetings was significantly different between groups 1 and 2. Group 1 either had increased (15 %) or unchanged (68 %) number of meetings with their supervisors during the pandemic (Fig.  3 ). In comparison, nearly 74 % of students in group 2 indicated that the frequency of supervision decreased during the pandemic.

Changes in the supervision frequency during the pandemic. Shown is the number of total participants, the number of responses and distributions (in %) in each group, as well as p-values determined by comparison between groups 1 vs. 2. Significant differences in responses between groups 1 and 2 and specific subgroups were calculated using Fisher’s exact test

The students were subsequently asked how the format of their supervision had changed during the pandemic, and what medium (online, telephone, in-person, etc.) was used for supervision meetings. Both groups 1 and 2 had overall more online meetings, but the increase was similar between the groups, suggesting that group-specific differences are not due to a switch to an online meeting format per se (Fig.  4  a). A majority in both groups indicated that in-person meetings decreased (Fig.  4 b), but group 2 had a higher fraction of students that had no in-person meetings at all (Group 1:10 %, Group 2: 28 %, p  = 0.0004), while more students in group 1 reported that in-person meetings were unaffected by the pandemic (group 1: 21 %, group 2: 5 %, p  = 0.0016). Comparing the methods of communication through email/messages (Fig.  4  c), group 1 had a higher proportion of students where the communication was unchanged (group 1: 54 %, group 2 34 %, p  = 0.0059), while group 2 received significantly less supervision via emails as compared to before the pandemic (group 1: 2 %, group 2: 16 %, p  = < 0.0001). There were few differences between groups 1 and 2 when it comes to supervision via telephone (Fig.  4 d), although nearly half of students in group 1 (48 %) indicated that use of this medium was unchanged, compared to only 30 % of students in group 2.

Changes to the supervision done ( a ) online (e.g. via Zoom, FaceTime, Skype), ( b ) in person, ( c ) via email messages or ( d ) via phone. Shown is the number of total participants, the number of responses and distributions (in %) in each group, as well as p-values determined by comparison between groups 1 vs. 2. Significant differences in responses between groups 1 and 2 and specific subgroups were calculated using Fisher’s exact test

The importance of support provided by supervisors/mentors during the pandemic

The students were subsequently asked: “What (if anything) do you wish that the supervisors/mentors would change in order to help you cope with the COVID-19 related restrictions during your PhD?”. Group 1 received more help from their supervisors. However, students in this group were also more likely to answer that they did not need additional help compared to participants in group 2 (Fig.  5 ).

Help received from the supervisor to cope with COVID-19 related restrictions during the pandemic. Shown is the total number of participants, the number of responses and distributions (in %) in each group, as well as p-values determined by comparison between groups 1 vs. 2. Significant differences in responses between groups 1 and 2 and specific subgroups were calculated using Fisher’s exact test

We included an open answer box for this question. Participants could describe the additional help they had received during the pandemic, or what support was lacking. In total 86 students (32 %) provided specific answers in the text field. These data were coded as summarised in Table  2 and described below.

Positive examples of support received during COVID-19

[ Theme 1: Good help with the doctoral studies ]

A large proportion of students in group 1 (20 %) reported that their mentors have been flexible with meeting times, lab-work, deadlines and rescheduling events when needed. None of the respondents in group 2 gave a comparable answer. Importantly, the students in group 1 reported specific examples of help they received for reorganising their PhD project in relation to COVID-19 imposed restrictions.

We have done some re-scheduling in prioritised tasks to use the time better [when] things are delayed. Setting up lab meetings and other meetings on zoom, discussing covid-related matters and how to improve the working conditions (especially in the work place). For example, we made an online booking system to schedule lab work so that we are not more than a max number of people working at the same time.

[Theme 2: Good emotional support]

Many students in group 1 (25 %) said they received support from their mentors during the pandemic, with ample opportunities to connect through online meetings, text messages or email. Indeed, some students perceived that their supervisors were less busy and had more time to mentor them during the pandemic. Others reported that it was particularly helpful when mentors gave concrete advice on how to stay focused when working from home. The students also appreciated when supervisors showed sympathy and interest in their mental and physical well-being. A positive open dialogue that allowed for discussions on pandemic-related disruptions was also mentioned.

Due to less time spent traveling to different meetings, my mentors are more available and have more time for meetings and respond [to] my work. They help me by being supportive, [care] about my wellbeing and [that] of my family abroad. We discussed as a group how to handle it in reference to our own needs and came to a group conclusion about coping with the restrictions. Understanding and checking in. Being flexible regarding the current situation and making it clear that it is not my job to solve it.

[Themes 3 and 4: Good administrative support; Good work environment]

One supervisor arranged an extension for the PhD student, which was appreciated and reduced stress. Students also reported that supervisor provided ergonomic support and arranged opportunities to work from home and/or in a safer environment, e.g. by establishing an online calendar to avoid crowds and encouraging zoom meetings.

Negative examples describing lack of support

[Themes 5 and 6: Lack of support in doctoral studies; Poor emotional support]

Several students asked for help to restructure their PhD in response to the pandemic, specifically mentioning the need for more follow-ups and clearer rules. However, the majority of students in group 2 belonged to Theme 6 (40 %), expressing the wish to have received more encouragement, contact and empathy, as well as support with mental health issues.

Acknowledging the difficulties of [the] current situation, including not being able to travel to see family, the pandemic’s impact on the ability to concentrate and perform mental work, considering extensions of study time, asking about the mental health of their employees and offering support, normalising the inability of “performing as usual” under these circumstances. Be more hands-on! Call, message, email [to see] how everything is going!

[Themes 7 and 8: Lack of administrative support; Poor work environment ]

Many students stated that they would like help with providing a PhD extension due to pandemic-related delays. Concerning comments were received that students felt pressured to work in the lab regardless of the exposure risk to COVID-19.

I would like my supervisors to not push me to do experiments that are not necessary or important. Having to do unnecessary experiments makes me stressed as I will have to […] expose myself more to covid-19. I would also like if supervisors cared a bit, [...] apparently there is no possibility of extension, but how about reducing the ‘requirements’? For example instead of having 4 articles maybe these could be reduced to three?

One student requested support with home ergonomics and a few students requested help adjusting to online work (e.g. attendance of journal clubs should be available online, at-home work should be encouraged).

Finally, one student requested more practical advice, e.g. administrative help to rearrange courses and for the supervisors to be more active in the online meetings.

All our lab meetings, group seminars and journal clubs have been cancelled since March, I wish they would resume.

” Be prepared before meetings. Use the sharing function in meeting. Put on the web cam. …“ .

Successful supervision strategy during the pandemic: providing practical help and emotional/mental support

One of the main tasks of a PhD supervisor is to help and support the doctoral candidate. Students in group 1 reported that they received more help from their mentors, even though they also answered that they did not need as much help as those in group 2. We interpret these data as that the supervisors in group 1 may have been more active in reaching out and offering help, perhaps even when it was not requested. On the basis of the survey data, we would argue that this is a successful educational approach.

The pandemic has led to changes in the format of the supervision, as meetings moved primarily online. Noteworthy in the results was that although both groups experienced a similar increase in online meetings, group 2 had a reduction in the meeting frequency and received less supervision via alternative platforms (e.g. email or telephone). Students in group 2 highlighted the need to employ several ways of communicating, but specifically suggested to increase the use of online platforms. Interesting, new research indicate that student academic leaning is enhanced when utilizing a multitude of online tools [ 16 – 19 ]. This may be important to note for future recommendations on how to conduct online doctoral supervision, as recently reviewed by Gray and Costa [ 20 ].

A positive notion among many students was that they appreciated when their supervisors had ample time for them, providing regular meetings and structured advice. This may be related to a recent study by Wang and DeLaquil [ 21 ] that provided a guide to good PhD mentorship during the pandemic. Examples included to schedule regular meetings without set agendas to discuss research in an unstructured environment and promote creativity. Indeed, a handful of students reported improved PhD mentorship during the pandemic, mostly due to supervisors having more time and providing regular meeting opportunities over a range of different platforms.

Students also found it important that their supervisors cared about their physical and mental wellbeing. Studies have shown that prolonged stays at home can raise other concerns, such as caring for family members and coping with stress, as well as physical (e.g. poor ergonomics or a work station) and mental health problems [ 4 ]. In fact, PhD students often report experiencing a sense of isolation during their training even in normal times, [ 22 ] which is likely exacerbated during COVID-19 [ 23 , 24 ]. Analysing specific responses, it was apparent that many students suffer from mental health problems and poor emotional support (as highlighted in theme 6) during the pandemic, and that those who had supervisors that offer encouragement and sympathy fair better.

Students with caretaking responsibilities

Recent commentaries suggested that students with caretaking responsibilities (e.g. childcare) may be particularly effected during COVID-19 [ 25 , 26 ]. We did not find any differences in either sex or caretaking responsibilities between the two groups of students in Sweden. However, this finding should be interpreted with caution when interpolating to other countries, as Scandinavia has beneficial regulations for parents (e.g. paid parental leave for an extended period of time, paid childcare, paid time-off to care for sick children etc.). Nonetheless, several students from both groups highlighted specific challenges posed by caretaking responsibilities:

From a respondent in group 1: “…I was pregnant at the time, in [the] UK pregnant women were recommended to self-isolate but this was not the case in Sweden and it was stressful that my boss would not let me work from home until it was demanded by the university as a whole” .

“[I would like] A better understanding of the problems with work life during the spring of the pandemic, when you have small children that are forced to stay at home due to sniffles.” 1 (student in group 1)

“…understand that tasks take more time during a pandemic, especially … having to cope with family responsibilities.” (student in group 2).

We believe this highlights the question of caretaking responsibilities as an important consideration.

The clock is ticking – time delays and possible extension to PhD programs

PhD students are a vulnerable group due to financial and time-constraints imposed by their educational and research program. A common theme among students (particularly in group 2) was that they requested an extension of their PhDs, given delays caused by the pandemic. This may be particularly relevant for PhD students in the field of biomedicine and medicine, as these require physical presence in the lab and/or clinic to conduct their research, as also recently highlighted by several editorials [ 27 – 29 ]. An important consideration is where the funding for such an extension should come from. Many PhD students are funded by their supervisor’s external research grants. One approach could be that the university or the government provides the necessary funds to extend PhD programs. It may be important to consider that PhD programs in other countries (not Sweden) rely financially on graduate student tuition fees, particularly from international students. Thus, the pandemic poses a significant economic burden on universities, which may in turn affect the educational program [ 30 ].

Limitations

The doctoral programs in Sweden/Scandinavia differ from many other countries. PhD studies are free of charge and students are entitled to generous parental leave and childcare facilities, rendering students less vulnerable compared to students in other countries. Sweden also had very few COVID-19 lockdown regulations and restrictions, which is unique world-wide, and even separate from other Scandinavian countries [ 31 ]. The data in this study should be interpreted taking this into consideration.

Response rates were difficult to assess as the survey was distributed through the administrative offices. In addition, it is unclear if the respondents encompass a representative sample of PhD students in the fields of biomedicine and medicine. Hence, our analysis is only based on submitted responses, and may thus not be generalized to all PhD students.

The majority of students in the survey reported that the quality of their supervision was either improved or unaffected by the COVID-19 pandemic (group 1). However, nearly a third of students (27 %) felt that their supervision/mentorship had worsened (group 2). It is important for the scientific community to learn from this, to provide the best supervision possible in these difficult circumstances. The data suggests that more frequent online meetings and alternative communication platforms (email/messages and telephone) proved helpful. In addition, supervisors should ensure that the students receive emotional support during challenging times. Based on specific comments, some students would also benefit from an extension of their PhD programs due to delays caused by the pandemic.

Acknowledgements

We thank the funding agencies for their support.

Abbreviations

Authors’ contributions

EB and SL contributed to the conception and design of this study. EB, SL, CB, JK, GB and MS contributed to the collection, analysis and interpretation of data. All authors contributed to the writing, editing and revision of the text, and approved of the submitted version of the manuscript. All authors agree to be accountable for all aspects of our work.

EB is supported by grants from the Wallenberg Centre for Molecular & Translational Medicine at the University of Gothenburg, the Knut & Alice Wallenberg Foundation, the Swedish Research Council (grant No. 2016/82), the Swedish Society for Medical Research (grant No. S150086) and the European Research Council (ERC-StG No. 804418). The work of SL is supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (grants No. HL128457, HL152251), the Swedish Heart Lung Foundation (grant No. 20180199) and a grant from the Novo Nordisk Foundation.

The funding bodies played no role in the design of the study and collection, analysis, and interpretation of data and in writing of the manuscript. Open Access funding provided by University of Gothenburg.

Availability of data and materials

Declarations.

The survey was assessed by the Swedish Ethical Review Authority (Dnr 2021 − 00481) and found to be exempt as it does not fall within provisions stated in §§ 3–4 of the ethical review act. Written informed consent to participate in the study was obtained from participants as outlined on the survey cover sheet shown in Table  1 .

Not applicable.

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

1 In Sweden, childcare facilities have been open during the pandemic, but children are not allowed to attend if showing any signs of illness and thus even a minor “sniffle” that would normally allow the child to addend pre-school/school meant that they needed to be at home.

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Contributor Information

Emma Börgeson, Email: [email protected] .

Stephan Lange, Email: ude.dscu.htlaeh@egnals .

Graduate School

Covid-19 appointment extensions for phd students.

In recognition of the disruption that COVID-19 has caused to many doctoral students’ research, Brown University announced on April 7, 2020 that PhD students would be eligible to apply for extended stipend support to compensate for time lost due to COVID-19. Given the length and continuing disruption of the pandemic, the University, in conversation with SUGSE (now GLO), decided to extend this support to two semesters. The outlines of this agreement can be found in the  Side Letter of Agreement to the Graduate Student Union Contract   (pp. 47-49).

As indicated in that letter, students who were in their third, fourth or fifth year of study in spring semester 2020 are eligible to apply for a two semester extension. Each semester (up to two) of a COVID-19 Appointment Extension will include an appointment as a Teaching Assistant (I or II), Teaching Fellow, Proctor or Research Assistant.

In order to establish the criteria for the awarding of a COVID-19 Appointment Extension and details of implementation, the side letter called for the establishment of a COVID-19 Appointment Extension Committee. This committee includes graduate students selected by the Graduate Student Council and SUGSE/GLO, faculty from multiple disciplines, and administrators. This committee met actively over the summer and early fall of 2020 to develop the criteria for extensions, application and review processes, and an appeal process. The following policies were developed through an iterative process of consensus building: 

• Application Review Process Eligible students will apply for COVID-19 Appointment Extensions through  UFunds . Applications will be reviewed by the Graduate School and, in cases that are not already approved by the Graduate School, by the COVID-19 Appointment Extension Committee. 
• Timing of Appointment Extensions Students requesting Appointment Extensions will apply during the final term of their standard funding: Students in the humanities and social sciences should continue to apply for DCP funding for year 6, then (if needed) apply for the COVID-19 Appointment Extension to support year 7. Students in the life sciences and physical sciences who need Appointment Extensions should apply during the year in which they would normally have finished (in the absence of COVID-19).
• Students needing COVID-19 Appointment Extensions for 2022-23 Students whose funding would otherwise conclude at the end this fall and need COVID-19 Appointment Extensions for spring 2023 through summer 2023 (or a portion of this period) must apply by November 4, 2022. The application will be available in UFunds under “COVID-19 Appointment Extensions” between October 10 at 9:00 am EDT and November 4 at 11:55 pm EDT.
• Appeal Process If an applicant is deemed ineligible or an application is not approved by the COVID-19 Appointment Extension Committee, students may appeal the decision by submitting a written justification (typically no more than 300 words) to  [email protected] . This written appeal must be received within 10 working days of the student’s notification of ineligibility or denial. The Committee will review all appeals and make a final decision as soon as possible, normally within three weeks of receipt.

Brown University is committed to supporting our students through a challenging period. These opportunities for extended funding are intended to enable students to successfully complete their degree despite these challenges. If you have questions, please email  [email protected] .

22 August 2024: Due to technical disruption, we are experiencing some delays to publication. We are working to restore services and apologise for the inconvenience. For further updates please visit our website: https://www.cambridge.org/universitypress/about-us/news-and-blogs/cambridge-university-press-publishing-update-following-technical-disruption

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• > Journals
• > Journal of Experimental Political Science
• > Volume 9 Issue 1
• > Through Their Own Eyes: The Implications of COVID-19...

Article contents

Introduction, literature review, theory and hypotheses, research design, supplementary material, through their own eyes: the implications of covid-19 for phd students.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 November 2020

• Supplementary materials

COVID-19 is expected to radically alter higher education in the United States and to further limit the availability of tenure-track academic positions. How has the pandemic and its associated fallout affected doctoral students’ career aspirations and priorities? We investigate this question by comparing responses to a PhD career survey prior to and following significant developments in the pandemic. We find little evidence that the pandemic caused substantial shifts in PhD students’ aspirations and priorities. However, some differences emerge when considering later dates in our survey period, particularly among more senior students who express a greater interest in some non-academic careers and job characteristics. Contrary to expectation, we also find evidence that the pandemic improved some students’ perceptions of their academic departments. In our conclusion, we speculate whether steps taken by the comparatively well-resourced institution that we study helped to mitigate some of the more negative consequences of the pandemic.

“Graduate school was hard enough before the plague…How do we best advise our Ph.D. students in these times?”

“Covid-19 is, in my view, an extinction event.”

The coronavirus disease pandemic (COVID-19) is expected to dramatically change higher education in the United States, and not for the better (Greenblatt Reference Greenblatt 2020 ; Hartocollis Reference Hartocollis 2020 ; Kelsky Reference Kelsky 2020 ). Universities are projecting severe budget shortfalls and many have instituted hiring freezes and furloughs, leading some commentators to conclude that negative effects from COVID-19 will exceed those of the 2008 or even 1930s recessions (Carlson Reference Carlson 2020 a; Greenblatt Reference Greenblatt 2020 ; Kelsky Reference Kelsky 2020 ). While the economic fallout from COVID-19 has exacerbated problems with an already-precarious job market, for many students the crisis has upended their expectations for post-graduate employment opportunities (Carlson Reference Carlson 2020 b; Cassuto Reference Cassuto 2020 ; Kelsky Reference Kelsky 2020 ). In accordance with these developments, many are pressing universities to take concrete steps to prepare students for an altered post-pandemic reality, with some arguing that the current crisis should hasten investments in existing efforts such as greater preparation for non-academic careers (Carlson Reference Carlson 2020 b; Cassuto Reference Cassuto 2020 ; Wood Reference Wood 2020 ).

In this paper, we use an original survey to investigate how COVID-19 affected current 2nd and 5th year PhD students’ career aspirations, perceived career preparation and support, and professional development. As part of a larger study supported by the Council of Graduate Schools, we had already started surveying 2nd and 5th year PhD students from a comparatively well-resourced, large East Coast university prior to news breaking of COVID-19 and its impact on the academic job market. Footnote 1 To facilitate causal inference, we exploit the as-if random timing (with respect to an individual’s likelihood of completing the survey) of the introduction of this news to evaluate the effects of COVID-19 on PhD students’ aspirations and perceptions by using an interrupted time series design. Footnote 2 We do so by comparing survey responses prior to and following the breaking of COVID-19 news. Because the survey was in its 3rd year of operation, we are able to use data from the previous year’s survey to rule out alternative explanations and potential challenges to inference – for instance, that our study is picking up changes caused by COVID-19 to the survey sample, as opposed to survey responses.

Our study promises to increase our understanding of the consequences of COVID-19, as well as possible policy responses that might limit its damage. Obtaining insights into the effects of COVID-19 on PhD students’ aspirations and priorities could be critical to informing universities’ efforts to effectively meet students’ evolving needs and protect their mental health and economic well-being (Foley Reference Foley 2020 ; Ortega and Kent Reference Ortega and Kent 2018 ; Reithmeier et al. Reference Reithmeier, O’Leary, Zhu, Dales, Abdulkarim, Aquil, Brouillard, Chang, Miller, Shi, Vu and Zou 2019 ; Sauermann and Roach Reference Sauermann and Roach 2012 ; Woolston Reference Woolston 2017 ; Zahneis Reference Zahneis 2020 ). It could also provide important information to prospective students considering whether to pursue doctoral education in a post-pandemic world (Sauermann and Roach Reference Sauermann and Roach 2012 ). Determining whether, and among whom, preferences are changing due to the pandemic could also shed light on whether educators and administrators should anticipate a widening of the gap between desired and available academic positions, in general and in particular for disadvantaged groups (Sauermann and Roach Reference Sauermann and Roach 2012 ; Zahneis Reference Zahneis 2020 ).

Our study also makes a number of contributions to the extant literature. Although in recent years there has been growing interest in studying the career paths of PhD alumni (Reithmeier et al. Reference Reithmeier, O’Leary, Zhu, Dales, Abdulkarim, Aquil, Brouillard, Chang, Miller, Shi, Vu and Zou 2019 ), there exists very little original data on and understanding of the career paths of current PhD students (Roach and Sauermann Reference Roach and Sauermann 2017 ; Sauermann and Roach Reference Sauermann and Roach 2012 ). However, understanding current students’ opinions – and, critically, how those opinions evolve over the course of one’s doctoral studies – can provide important insights into what shapes career aspirations and how graduate programs are performing. Our study also extends existing studies conducted only with current Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) students (Roach and Sauermann Reference Roach and Sauermann 2017 ; Sauermann and Roach Reference Sauermann and Roach 2012 ), many of whom face a very different job market than do non-STEM students, by surveying students from both non-STEM and STEM fields. And our study advances a literature on how recessions affect college major choice among college students by considering how a negative job market shock affects a wider range of outcomes, from aspirations to priorities to program satisfaction , among PhD students of different years (Ersoy Reference Ersoy 2019 ; Liu Sun and Winters Reference Liu, Sun and Winters 2019 ; Shu Reference Shu 2016 ).

In recent years, a number of scholars have sought to address the dearth of data on PhD career pathways, primarily through studies of PhD alumni or of current PhD students in STEM fields (Ortega and Kent Reference Ortega and Kent 2018 ; Reithmeier et al. Reference Reithmeier, O’Leary, Zhu, Dales, Abdulkarim, Aquil, Brouillard, Chang, Miller, Shi, Vu and Zou 2019 ; Roach and Sauermann Reference Roach and Sauermann 2017 ; Sauermann and Roach Reference Sauermann and Roach 2012 ). Reithmeier et al. ( Reference Reithmeier, O’Leary, Zhu, Dales, Abdulkarim, Aquil, Brouillard, Chang, Miller, Shi, Vu and Zou 2019 ) collected publicly-available data on employment outcomes for all doctorate graduates from the University of Toronto for the period 2000–2015. The authors find that an increasing number of graduates are employed in non-academic careers, and they call for changes to an “outmoded” graduate education apprenticeship model and a greater acceptance and encouragement of a diversity of non-academic careers (Reithmeier et al. Reference Reithmeier, O’Leary, Zhu, Dales, Abdulkarim, Aquil, Brouillard, Chang, Miller, Shi, Vu and Zou 2019 , p.10).

Sauermann and Roach ( Reference Sauermann and Roach 2012 ) and Roach and Sauermann ( Reference Roach and Sauermann 2017 ) conduct two surveys of current STEM PhD students. Sauermann and Roach ( Reference Sauermann and Roach 2012 ) find that PhD student demand for academic careers outstrips supply, that academic departments and advisors are not perceived as encouraging of non-academic careers, and that students become more interested in non-academic careers, and less interested in academic careers, over the course of their studies. A follow-up study indicates that decreasing interest in an academic career is driven by a perceived mismatch between job preferences and academic positions, as opposed to poor job availability (Roach and Sauermann Reference Roach and Sauermann 2017 ). Woolston ( Reference Woolston 2017 ) finds that many PhD students are desirous of academic positions, but that career uncertainty and stresses have led to widespread mental health issues. These studies echo Reithmeier et al. ( Reference Reithmeier, O’Leary, Zhu, Dales, Abdulkarim, Aquil, Brouillard, Chang, Miller, Shi, Vu and Zou 2019 ) by calling for sweeping changes to graduate education.

Our project also speaks more broadly to studies on how recessions affect career choice, the majority of which have used undergraduate students’ college major decisions as a proxy for choice. These studies indicate that students respond strategically to recessions. Ersoy ( Reference Ersoy 2019 ) finds that the 2008 Great Recession resulted in a shift away from recession-sensitive majors and toward recession-resistant majors. Liu Sun and Winters ( Reference Liu, Sun and Winters 2019 ) similarly find that the 2008 recession led to greater registration of STEM majors, and a decline in business majors, and they document some stronger effects for white and Asian men. And Shu ( Reference Shu 2016 ) finds that undergraduates who were first-year students during the 2008 recession and who had below-average academic credentials were more likely to major in STEM fields as opposed to management or economics, and to improve their academic performance.

How should we expect PhD students to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated economic fallout? If PhD students respond strategically to the recession as studies indicate undergraduate students do, then we should expect them to invest more heavily in preparation for, and become more open to, non-academic careers as compared with academic careers (Ersoy Reference Ersoy 2019 ; Liu Sun and Winters Reference Liu, Sun and Winters 2019 ; Shu Reference Shu 2016 ). Footnote 3

Hypothesis 1 COVID-19 will make PhD students more receptive to non-academic careers, and will lead them to invest more heavily in non-academic skills.

Note that there are multiple reasons that such a shift could occur: notably, students could be driven to non-academic careers because the recession leads them to a) update downward on their chances of obtaining an academic job or b) adopt more risk-averse (salary, security) preferences for what they want from a post-graduate job.

Hypothesis 2 COVID-19 will make PhD students less optimistic about their chances of obtaining an academic position and/or more desirous of non-academic job characteristics that provide financial security.

While we pose the above hypotheses, we acknowledge that Roach and Sauermann ( Reference Roach and Sauermann 2017 ) find that declining interest in academic positions over the course of graduate study is caused by a mismatch in preferences, as opposed to perceived academic job availability. Should their results hold with our own data, then perceptions of a less robust job market might not lead to confirmation of Hypothesis 1 posed above – though a change in preferences still might. Indeed, Woolston ( Reference Woolston 2017 ) also finds that many students pursue academic positions despite knowledge of a difficult job market, which results in uncertainty and significant mental stress.

Hypothesis 3 COVID-19 will make PhD students more likely to report that they have difficulties managing stress, and to express greater uncertainty in the direction of their post-graduation career.

Studies show that doctoral programs offer limited support for non-academic careers (Reithmeier et al. Reference Reithmeier, O’Leary, Zhu, Dales, Abdulkarim, Aquil, Brouillard, Chang, Miller, Shi, Vu and Zou 2019 ; Roach and Sauermann Reference Roach and Sauermann 2017 ; Sauermann and Roach Reference Sauermann and Roach 2012 ; Woolston Reference Woolston 2017 ). Should we find that COVID-19 is leading more students to consider non-academic careers, then we expect that this should lead to greater dissatisfaction with academic department performance regarding preparation and support for their post-graduate career.

Hypothesis 4 COVID-19 will lead PhD students to express greater dissatisfaction with their academic department’s support and preparation for their desired post-graduate career.

Previous studies indicate that there may be reason to expect some heterogeneous effects. Sauermann and Roach ( Reference Sauermann and Roach 2012 ) and Roach and Sauermann ( Reference Roach and Sauermann 2017 ) document declines in interest in academic careers over the course of doctoral studies. COVID-19 might hasten a decline in interest in academic jobs that some 2nd year students would have experienced later in the program; COVID-19 might have a lesser effect among 5th year students who had already decided to either pursue academia or not prior to COVID-19 news breaking. A greater effect among 2nd years would also be consistent with evidence that the 2008 recession changed college majors among undergraduates who were first-year students when the recession hit (Shu Reference Shu 2016 ). On the other hand, a negative shock to the academic job market might be more salient among 5th years than among 2nd years, as 2nd years might feel relatively insulated from the pandemic’s consequences and might expect a market recovery by the time they graduate. We propose the latter possibility, though we acknowledge both expectations.

Liu, Sun, and Winters ( Reference Liu, Sun and Winters 2019 ) find that the recession led to greater strategic shifts among men and white and Asian individuals. More advantaged groups may be more able to bear the costs of a weakened market and thus might be less affected by COVID-19. Alternatively, individuals from less advantaged groups may have already faced greater barriers to being in their current positions, and may thus be less swayed by market fluctuations. We follow evidence in Liu, Sun, and Winters ( Reference Liu, Sun and Winters 2019 ) in our formulation of the next hypothesis.

Hypothesis 5 COVID-19 effects detailed above will be greater among 5th year students, and among those from comparatively more advantaged social groups.

Our spring 2020 survey with 2nd and 5th year PhD students was the third and final annual survey in a series coordinated by the Council of Graduate Schools and implemented across a number of doctoral institutions. The survey was first fielded on March 2, 2020, before the news of COVID-19 reaching the university’s region or the anticipated impact of COVID-19 on the academic job market had broken, and concluded on May 15 (see Appendix Table C1 for a timeline of COVID-19 events). The survey was thus fielded prior to and following COVID-19 news being broken, and covered a period with significant fluctuation in recorded COVID-19 cases and deaths (see Figure  2 ).

Figure 1 Survey Responses Over Period of Study.

NOTES : This figure displays the number of completed surveys (light grey bars, which correspond to the left y-axis) and the cumulative distribution of completed surveys as more surveys are completed (black line, which corresponds to the right y-axis) by the survey completion day. Vertical black dashed lines indicate COVID-19-relevant cutoff dates. On the x-axis, we only label dates on which survey reminders were sent out to participants (see footnote 5).

To recruit participants, the survey team first obtained email addresses from the University’s online management system for all currently enrolled 2nd and 5th year PhD students. Using a university alias, the research team then sent all students invitations to participate in the survey, followed by scheduled email reminders. Footnote 4 , Footnote 5 Participation was voluntary and students’ informed consent was elicited. Respondents were told that, should they wish to enter their information, they would receive a $10 Amazon.com gift card if they were among the first 200 respondents to complete the survey and claim the reward. Over 750 students received an initial invitation to complete the survey.

The questionnaire was programmed into Qualtrics survey software, included five sections that aimed to capture students’ career aspirations, priorities, and professional development, and took approximately 10 minutes to complete. To increase the statistical power of our tests and to address concerns about multiple comparisons, we combine individual survey items into six indices using inverse covariance weighting (Anderson Reference Anderson 2008 ). Indices were chosen to facilitate testing of stated hypotheses, and they measure interest in (1) academic and (2) non-academic careers , investment in (3) academic vs. (4) non-academic skills , and desire for (5) academic vs. (6) non-academic job characteristics . We supplement these indices with a few individual survey measures, such as reported satisfaction with academic department support and preparation for one’s desired post-graduate career, where there were not multiple questions that could be combined into an index to evaluate a hypothesis. See Appendix Sections A and B for, respectively, survey text and details on which survey outcomes are used to create indices and to evaluate the hypotheses laid out in Section 3.

We take significant developments in COVID-19 as our “treatment” variable, under the assumption that the timing was as-if random as regards an individual’s probability of taking the survey. To estimate the causal effect of COVID-19 fallout on PhD students’ career aspirations and priorities, we can thus compare survey responses before and after critical moments in COVID-19. Blais et al. ( Reference Blais, Bol, Giani and Loewen 2020 ) use a similar identification strategy in their study on political attitudes, which was also fielded beginning March 2, 2020.

Following Blais et al. ( Reference Blais, Bol, Giani and Loewen 2020 ), we run four different specifications of an ordinary least squares regression model (see Appendix Section D). In the first, we regress outcomes of interest on a treatment indicator that demarcates whether a respondent completed the survey before news of COVID-19 and its economic impact broke, or after. Additional specifications incorporate the progressive spread of COVID-19 and introduce time trends (specification #2), include demographic variables as controls (#3), and account for any observed imbalance between subjects interviewed before and after the treatment cutoff using entropy balancing (Hainmueller ( Reference Hainmueller 2012 ), #4). As a placebo test, we run the same analysis on data from spring 2019.

Descriptive statistics and balance

In total, 329 participants completed the survey, reflecting a response rate of approximately 44%. Footnote 6 Figure 1 displays survey responses, and Figure  2 the number of cases and deaths in the US and New York (a more localized reference point for students at the University), over the period of study. Figure  1 shows that responses are distributed across the period of study, with responses recorded for 33 distinct days in the period, and tend to peak on survey invitation and reminder email dates. Figure  2 reveals that cases and deaths began to reach large magnitudes in April, and that they stayed at a high level through the end of the survey period. Table  1 indicates that subjects across cutoffs were balanced on most demographic observables, with statistically significant differences inconsistently emerging on the percentage of women and white respondents. Footnote 7 Nevertheless, in specification 3 we include controls for all demographic variables for which we have sufficient data, and in specification 4 we conduct analysis using entropy balancing.

Figure 2 COVID-19 Cases, Deaths Over Period of Study (US and New York).

NOTES : This figure displays the number of recorded cases (top panel) and deaths (bottom panel) attributed to COVID-19 over the course of study. Black lines are for the entire US, and light grey lines for New York state only. Dashed lines are daily counts, and solid lines are 7-day averages. Vertical black dashed lines indicate COVID-19-relevant cutoff dates. On the x-axis, we only label dates on which survey reminders were sent out to participants (see footnote 5). Raw data used to generate these figures is publicly available on the following New York Times GitHub page: https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-data .

Table 1 Balance on Demographics: Full Sample

NOTES : * p < 0.1, ** p < 0.05, *** p < 0.01.

Figure  2 indicates that the severity of the COVID-19 crisis was unlikely to be clear to respondents completing the survey at earlier dates in our survey, as the number of cases and deaths attributed to COVID-19 only began to accelerate in late March. In our analysis in the main text, we therefore mainly present effects using our latest specified cutoff, April 11, which in our data also corresponds closely to peaks in daily and 7-day average COVID-19 cases and deaths in the US and New York. We also consider a later cutoff, May 8, which is the first day that a respondent explicitly mentioned COVID-19 in an open-ended response. Responses later in the survey period, and beginning May 8 in particular, suggested that students were beginning to recognize the potential severity of the pandemic and its implications for job prospects. One wrote, “COVID19 might affect my answers to this, since I am worried about what the academic job market is going to look like (even though it was already very intense before this).” Another commented, “Devastating to consider that academia as we knew it is most likely gone now. I had solid job possibilities in talks already that will probably not exist when I’m finished with my degree.” We therefore consider May 8 as a cutoff though we acknowledge that it was not specified in our pre-analysis plan. Footnote 8 Appendix Section F also presents results for some earlier cutoff dates.

Evaluation of hypotheses

We begin by presenting in Table  2 effects in the aggregate using our four different specifications and two different cutoffs (April 11 and May 8). Footnote 9 We do not find strong support of our stated Hypotheses 1–4 on our full sample: there is some evidence that subjects after specified COVID-19 cutoff dates desire non-academic job characteristics, careers and skills more, and academic careers and skills less, but it is inconsistent and some findings run contrary. There is also some evidence that subjects after the May 8 cutoff are more likely to claim the gift card incentive, potentially signaling greater economic anxiety (H2). Contrary to expectation, there is some evidence that respondents after COVID-19 cutoffs feel that they can manage stress better, and that their academic departments are more supportive of, and have prepared them more effectively for, their desired post-graduate career.

Table 2 Overall Effects by Cutoff Date

NOTES : * p < 0.1, ** p < 0.05, *** p < 0.01. Standard errors clustered by survey completion day in parentheses.

Our first four hypotheses are grounded in the notion that COVID-19 and its associated economic fallout will change PhD students’ perceptions of their likely post-graduate career, their preferences for what they want in a career, and how well they feel prepared for their desired career. As we note in Hypothesis 5, 2nd year students may feel comparatively more insulated from career concerns than 5th year students and thus might be expected to respond less strongly to COVID-19 news. Table  3 offers some weak support for this hypothesis: 5th year students are more likely than 2nd year students to favor non-academic careers and non-academic job characteristics following COVID-19 cutoff dates.

Table 3 Interaction Effects by Cutoff Date

NOTES : * p < 0.1, ** p < 0.05, *** p < 0.01. Standard errors clustered by survey completion day in parentheses. All regressions include component parts of interaction term, that is, indicators for the cutoff date and PhD year are entered as independent terms in the regressions but are not shown here to retain space.

What is driving these heterogeneous effects? Figure  3 breaks down results on non-academic careers and job characteristics by index component parts for 2nd and 5th year students. A few findings are worth note. First, the figure provides some support for Hypotheses 1, 2, and 5: 5th year students following COVID-19 cutoff dates register more interest in non-academic careers in non-profit and for-profit industries (H1), appear to more highly value job characteristics not as readily associated with academia such as job location and security, salary and benefits, and contribution to society (H2), and these effects appear to be much stronger for 5th as compared with 2nd year students (H5). Second, it appears that some of the trends developing with our April 11 cutoff date become more exaggerated with our later cutoff date. Third, we find some evidence that 2nd year students particularly following the May 8 cutoff appear to sour on non-academic careers and job characteristics after the outbreak of COVID-19: they become less interested in applied research, management, development, non-profit and for-profit work, and professional services, and they appear to prioritize salary less.

Figure 3 Treatment Effects by PhD Year: Index Components.

NOTES : This figure plots treatment effects separately for 2nd (light grey with triangles) and 5th (black with circles) year students using our simple OLS specification. The top panel displays treatment effects for the April 11 cutoff date, and the bottom panel displays effects for the May 8 cutoff date. We show effects for two overall indices (bolded, non-academic career index and non-academic job characteristics index ), followed by effects for their component parts on their original 1–5 scales, and labels refer to the outcome for the two most immediate intervals to their left. 90% and 95% confidence intervals are shown.

Appendix Section F probes the robustness of the results we present using data from the previous year’s survey in 2019. We find that the results we report are largely robust to these exercises and results increase our confidence that any changes we document are attributable to COVID-19 and not differences between early and late survey participants, or other differences between 2019 and 2020.

We study how news about COVID-19 and its associated economic fallout and implications for the academic job market affected current 2nd and 5th year PhD students’ career aspirations and priorities. To do so, we compare PhD students’ responses to a career survey prior to and following significant developments in the US COVID-19 news cycle.

We do not find much support for the expectation that COVID-19 would powerfully alter PhD students’ aspirations and priorities. While there is some evidence that PhD students became more desirous of non-academic job characteristics and skills, evidence is limited and other findings run contrary. Contrary to expectation, we also find some evidence indicating that respondents feel that their academic departments are better meeting their needs, and that they are better able to manage stress, following the pandemic outbreak. We also find some evidence that 5th year students, perhaps because they are less insulated from the pernicious consequences of the pandemic, are more likely to embrace non-academic positions following the outbreak than are 2nd year students (who for some outcomes appear to pivot even more strongly toward academic careers). These findings only emerge for later cutoffs in our survey period, when the number of documented COVID-19 cases and deaths was peaking over the period.

How should we interpret these results? There are a few reasons why we might not have observed that COVID-19 led many students away from academic aspirations. First, it is possible that COVID-19 was an insufficient shock to students’ commitment to an academic career. Research has shown that many PhD students pursue academia despite knowledge of a challenging job market (Roach and Sauermann Reference Roach and Sauermann 2017 ; Woolston Reference Woolston 2017 ); those who had committed to academia despite an already very difficult job market might not have been swayed by the pandemic. Further, students, particularly those who are more junior, may have viewed the pandemic as creating a temporary negative shock, and thus may have felt that their long-term prospects remained largely unchanged.

A second possibility is that the efforts of departments and universities to blunt some of the worst consequences of the pandemic were effective at reducing students’ concerns. Although no agreement had been reached during the survey period, discussions regarding extension of graduate student funding due to the pandemic were already in process, a fact of which many students were well aware. Indeed, a third possibility for which we find some evidence is that the pandemic may have reaffirmed some students’ commitment to academia. Students who are more satisfied with their academic departments may be more eager to seek out academic careers; those who anticipated receiving more future funding than they would have otherwise could have even updated positively about the academic market.

A fourth possibility is that the cutoffs we consider were too early to capture more substantial effects. Footnote 10 The effects we report begin to emerge when considering cutoffs in late March only, and the first mention of COVID-19 in an open-ended response occurred on May 8. It is possible that students were still processing the consequences of COVID-19, and that they would have offered more pessimistic opinions had we surveyed them later. While this is certainly possible, evidence that students view their departments more favorably at later cutoffs suggests that there might be some countervailing forces. Nevertheless, we hope that future work will consider longer-term effects of the pandemic on career aspirations, in particular by investigating responses from students who graduated in summer and early fall 2020.

Why do some students report lesser stress, and greater satisfaction with academic career support and preparation, following pandemic cutoffs? First, students may have been pleased with the efforts taken by their departments and universities to mitigate pandemic consequences, as detailed above. Faculty were especially vocal in advocating for their graduate students during this time, in some instances allying with their doctoral students as they requested a number of protections from the University. Such efforts, and the frequent communication by many departments’ directors of graduate study, may have been received favorably and may have helped to reduce student stress. We acknowledge that our findings might not be as applicable to less well-resourced schools. Second, some departments may have become more welcoming and encouraging of non-academic careers, which could also work to increase the mental health of graduate students considering such paths. We also highlight this as a potential area for future research, which may reveal department strategies that proved particularly successful and which could be exported elsewhere.

While results show some reasons for optimism, they also indicate that the gap between demand for and supply of academic positions may continue to grow in the wake of the pandemic, as changes in demand in our sample do not appear to keep up with sharp expected decreases in supply. While we cannot know how well our results will speak to other cases, we hope to move this literature forward by providing new information and data against which others can compare their own.

To view supplementary material for this article, please visit https://doi.org/10.1017/XPS.2020.34

Material for this paper is based upon work supported by the Council of Graduate Schools, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (31600612), and National Science Foundation (1661272). The authors would like to thank the Council of the Graduate Schools, Jeff Engler, Julia Kent, and Hironao Okahana for their support and Kelsey Sheridan for her assistance. The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare. This study was approved by New York University’s Institutional Review Board and was pre-registered with the Center for Open Science here: https://osf.io/wq9kt/ . The data, code, and any additional materials required to replicate all analyses in this article are available at the Journal of Experimental Political Science Dataverse within the Harvard Dataverse Network, at: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/5NKX4F .

1 See https://cgsnet.org/understanding-career-pathways for more on the larger study.

2 See Blais et al. ( Reference Blais, Bol, Giani and Loewen 2020 ) for a similar approach.

3 Although economic fallout from COVID-19 is expected to negatively impact many sectors, effects on higher education are anticipated to be particularly severe (Greenblatt, Reference Greenblatt 2020 ; Hartocollis, Reference Hartocollis 2020 ; Kelsky, Reference Kelsky 2020 ).

4 2% of students had opted out of receiving email blasts and were not contacted.

5 Students received an initial invitation on March 2, with reminders on March 13, March 24, April 9, April 15, April 29, May 8, May 13, and May 15.

6 We recorded a total of 350 completed surveys, but we found that in a few cases, the same participant had completed the study multiple times, often months apart. In these instances, we elected to keep the participant’s most recent completed survey only, resulting in our final tally of 329 surveys.

7 Because there were no surveys completed between March 20 and March 24, or between April 11 and 12, results would be identical for these cutoffs and we accordingly only include the earlier date in our analysis.

8 See Appendix E for departures from our pre-analysis plan.

9 To ease comparisons across specifications, we limit analyses to a subsample for which there is no missing data on demographic variables (used for specifications 3 and 4) and thus for which we can present results across all four specifications. Results for specifications 1 and 2 are similar qualitatively and quantitatively using the full, larger sample (280 subjects for most indices) and are available upon request. Minimum detectable effect (MDE) size computations at 80% power and with a significance level of p <0.05 indicate that we are sufficiently powered to detect effects using this sample: MDEs for all index outcomes well exceed our specified smallest effect size of interest, Cohen’s d = 0.3 (Lakens, Reference Lakens 2014 ). This increases our confidence that null findings are not attributable to insufficient sample size.

10 While it is also possible that the cutoffs we consider were too late , we think this is unlikely because the impact of the pandemic in early March was not well understood. We do not find consistent evidence that respondents from spring 2020 in the aggregate are more or less pessimistic about academic careers than are respondents in spring 2019.

Figure 1 Survey Responses Over Period of Study. NOTES : This figure displays the number of completed surveys (light grey bars, which correspond to the left y-axis) and the cumulative distribution of completed surveys as more surveys are completed (black line, which corresponds to the right y-axis) by the survey completion day. Vertical black dashed lines indicate COVID-19-relevant cutoff dates. On the x-axis, we only label dates on which survey reminders were sent out to participants (see footnote 5).

Figure 2 COVID-19 Cases, Deaths Over Period of Study (US and New York). NOTES : This figure displays the number of recorded cases (top panel) and deaths (bottom panel) attributed to COVID-19 over the course of study. Black lines are for the entire US, and light grey lines for New York state only. Dashed lines are daily counts, and solid lines are 7-day averages. Vertical black dashed lines indicate COVID-19-relevant cutoff dates. On the x-axis, we only label dates on which survey reminders were sent out to participants (see footnote 5). Raw data used to generate these figures is publicly available on the following New York Times GitHub page: https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-data .

Figure 3 Treatment Effects by PhD Year: Index Components. NOTES : This figure plots treatment effects separately for 2nd (light grey with triangles) and 5th (black with circles) year students using our simple OLS specification. The top panel displays treatment effects for the April 11 cutoff date, and the bottom panel displays effects for the May 8 cutoff date. We show effects for two overall indices (bolded, non-academic career index and non-academic job characteristics index ), followed by effects for their component parts on their original 1–5 scales, and labels refer to the outcome for the two most immediate intervals to their left. 90% and 95% confidence intervals are shown.

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• CAREER COLUMN
• 25 June 2020

Five ways to tackle PhD research anxieties triggered by COVID-19 lockdowns

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Linamaria Pintor-Escobar is a second-year PhD student, studying antibiotic discovery in Actinomycetes bacteria at Edge Hill University in Ormskirk, UK.

Among researchers, PhD students are perhaps suffering the most from coronavirus lockdown restrictions put in place around the world. Interruptions caused by the pandemic are producing a cohort of worried research students who are concerned about the completion and quality of their work.

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Challenges in PhD education due to COVID-19 - disrupted supervision or business as usual: a cross-sectional survey of Swedish biomedical sciences graduate students

Affiliations.

• 1 Institute of Medicine, Department of Molecular and Clinical Medicine, Wallenberg Laboratory and Wallenberg Centre for Molecular and Translational Medicine, 41345, Gothenburg, Sweden. [email protected].
• 2 Region Vaestra Goetaland, Department of Clinical Physiology, Sahlgrenska University Hospital, 41345, Gothenburg, Sweden. [email protected].
• 3 Institute of Medicine, Department of Molecular and Clinical Medicine, Wallenberg Laboratory and Wallenberg Centre for Molecular and Translational Medicine, 41345, Gothenburg, Sweden.
• 4 Revelle College, University of California San Diego, CA-92093, La Jolla, USA.
• 5 Department of Surgery, Institute of Clinical Sciences, Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Box 115, 405 30, Gothenburg, Sweden.
• 6 Department of Surgery, Sahlgrenska University Hospital, 413 45, Gothenburg, Sweden.
• 7 Institute of Medicine, Department of Molecular and Clinical Medicine, Wallenberg Laboratory and Wallenberg Centre for Molecular and Translational Medicine, 41345, Gothenburg, Sweden. [email protected].
• 8 Department of Medicine, University of California San Diego, CA-92093, La Jolla, USA. [email protected].
• PMID: 34022871
• PMCID: PMC8140581
• DOI: 10.1186/s12909-021-02727-3

Background: It remains unclear to what extent the SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the normal progression of biomedical and medical science graduate programs and if there was a lasting impact on the quality and quantity of supervision of PhD-students. To date, multiple editorials and commentaries indicate the severity of the disruption without providing sufficient evidence with quantifiable data.

Methods: An online survey was submitted to the administrative offices of biomedical and medical PhD-programs at eight major universities in Sweden to gauge the impact of the pandemic on the students. It consisted of multiple-choice and open-ended questions where students could provide examples of positive and/or negative supervision strategies. Open answered questions were coded as either examples of positive or negative support.

Results: PhD students were divided into two groups: those with improved or unchanged supervision during the pandemic (group 1, n = 185), versus those whose supervision worsened (group 2, n = 69). Group 1 received more help from supervisors and more frequent supervision via both online and alternative platforms (email/messages and telephone). There was no significant difference in educational-stage, gender or caretaking responsibilities between the groups.

Conclusions: It is important for the scientific community to learn how to provide the best possible supervision for PhD students during the pandemic. Our data suggests that more frequent supervision, and using a diverse array of meeting platforms is helpful. In addition, it is important for the students to feel that they have their supervisor's emotional support. Several students also expressed that they would benefit from an extension of their PhD programs due to delays caused by the pandemic.

Keywords: Biomedical science; COVID-19; Graduate program; Medical sciences training; PhD.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Demography of survey participants. a…

Demography of survey participants. a . Grouping of responses to the question whether…

Changes in the supervision frequency…

Changes in the supervision frequency during the pandemic. Shown is the number of…

Changes to the supervision done…

Changes to the supervision done ( a ) online (e.g. via Zoom, FaceTime,…

Help received from the supervisor…

Help received from the supervisor to cope with COVID-19 related restrictions during the…

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Graduate students locked down? PhD students’ satisfaction with supervision during the first and second COVID-19 lockdown in Belgium

Roles Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Writing – original draft

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Research Group TOR, Sociology Department, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium

Roles Data curation, Investigation, Project administration, Writing – review & editing

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Software, Writing – review & editing

Roles Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Writing – review & editing

Roles Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Supervision, Writing – review & editing

• Theun Pieter van Tienoven, 
• Anaïs Glorieux, 
• Joeri Minnen, 
• Petrus te Braak, 
• Bram Spruyt

• Published: May 23, 2022
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0268923
• Reader Comments

Supervisor support is crucial for the successful and timely completion of the PhD and the largest contributor to PhD students’ overall job satisfaction. The COVID-19 pandemic affected PhD students’ life substantially through delayed experiments, missed timelines, running out of funding, change to online team- and supervisor meetings, mandatory working from home, and social confinement.

This contribution considers PhD students’ satisfaction scores to reflect the extent to which PhD students felt supported by their supervisor during the COVID-19 pandemic so far and aims to investigate to what extent did PhD students’ satisfaction with supervisor support changed over time.

It uses two longitudinal two cohorts of wave 4 to 5 of the PhD Survey at a Belgian university. These cohorts are representative of two different ways the COVID-19 pandemic might have impacted doctoral research. Cohort 1 (n = 345) includes a pre-COVID measurement (April-May 2019) and a measurement immediately after the start of the abrupt lockdown in April-May 2020. Cohort 2 (n = 349) includes the measurement at the onset of the pandemic in 2020 and after a year with continuously changing containment policies (April-May 2021). The composite measure of satisfaction with supervisor support is based on six items with high internal consistency.

No significant net effect of time was revealed. Instead within subject interactions with time showed that in cohort 1, PhD students at the start of their PhD trajectory and PhD students with family responsibilities reported lower supervisor satisfaction scores over time. In cohort 2, PhD students not pursuing academic careers reported lower satisfaction scores over time.

In times of crises, special attention needs to be paid to PhD students who are extra susceptible to uncertainties because of their junior status or personal situation, and especially those PhD students for whom doctoral research is not a trajectory to position themselves in academia.

Citation: van Tienoven TP, Glorieux A, Minnen J, te Braak P, Spruyt B (2022) Graduate students locked down? PhD students’ satisfaction with supervision during the first and second COVID-19 lockdown in Belgium. PLoS ONE 17(5): e0268923. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0268923

Editor: Carlos Alberto Zúniga-González, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Nicaragua Leon, NICARAGUA

Received: February 2, 2022; Accepted: May 10, 2022; Published: May 23, 2022

Copyright: © 2022 van Tienoven et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: Raw data cannot be shared publicly because of the institution's privacy regulations. Data code necessary to replicate results are available from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel's Institutional Data Access (contact via [email protected] ) for researchers who meet the criteria for access to confidential data.

Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

At the time the SARS-CoV-19 virus took hold of the world (early 2020), it was not clear how the COVID-19 pandemic would unfold over the years. At the onset there was an abrupt, chaotic, and very strict lockdown. Gradually, fluctuations in infections led to a varying policy of tightening and easing. Like so many others, PhD students are also confronted with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. This impact translates into uncertainties about being able to carry out research in the set research period, into the loss and/or digitization of the intellectual and social support of colleagues and supervisors, and into challenges of combining PhD research with impacted responsibilities in family and personal life.

Concerns about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic are mainly vocalized in (bio)medical and sciences disciplines [ 1 – 5 ]. On the one hand, these disciplines rely heavily on experiments in laboratories that are not so easily postponed or on face-to-face medical investigations that could not proceed because of social distancing rules. On the other hand, these disciplines tend to have the academic tradition to write commentaries and letters to editors. Undoubtedly, PhD students in all academic disciplines are in precarious statutes and are faced with the uncertainties and difficulties of the COVID-19 pandemic. Similar, all academic disciplines will have reasons to expect a negative impact on their PhD research. Therefore, a comparison of disciplines and the different type of research that characterizes these disciplines, is recommended.

Regardless of the disciplines, supervisor support is crucial for successful completion of a PhD [ 6 ] and expected to be even more important in the unprecedented research environment created by the COVID-19 pandemic [ 7 , 8 ]. Especially because supervisor support can take away uncertainties and positively contribute to PhD students’ well-being [ 9 , 10 ]. For these reasons, the evaluation of supervisor support by PhD students can be considered an important indicator of how supervisors’ efforts and abilities mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Against that background, this contribution aims to answer the following question: to what extent did the COVID-19 pandemic impact PhD students’ satisfaction with supervisor support during the abrupt onset and during a year of alternating tightening and easing of restrictions? We will use longitudinal data of two cohorts. Cohort 1 (April-May 2019 –April-May 2020) represents a pre-COVID measurement and a measurement immediately after the start of the abrupt lockdown (March-May 2020). Cohort 2 (April-May 2020 –April-May 2021) represents a measurement at the onset of the pandemic and after a year with continuously changing containment policies. Moreover, our data are conducted university wide, which allows to compare all academic disciplines.

Supervision and satisfaction among PhD students

PhD students are assessed on their thesis, whether after an oral defence, and this process typically takes four years [ 11 ]. During this process, the support of supervisors in terms of expertise, time, and support is essential [ 12 ]. The pedagogical aspect of supervision plays a key role in the successful and timely completion of the PhD trajectory and is considered to be closely related to supervisors’ ideas of the purpose of doing doctoral research [ 11 , 13 ]. Training PhD students to become independent and innovative researchers happens through learning research skills, requirements, and the ability to create new ideas, whereas enabling PhD students to develop as individuals happens through motivating PhD students in frequent meetings and taking feedback on supervisory arrangements [ 13 ].

Supervisory arrangements are said to “make or break” PhD students [ 6 ]. Not surprisingly, then, supervisors are the largest contributor to PhD students’ overall job satisfaction [ 9 ]. The expertise and scholarly ability, as well as the more personal supporting role of the supervisor play an important role here [ 14 , 15 ]. The frequency and quality of the meetings, the encouragement, support, and feedback to publish, and opportunities to attend research seminars all contribute to the satisfaction of PhD students [ 12 , 15 ]. However, ultimately, supervisors’ supportiveness trumps supervisors’ academic qualities as the main contributor to PhD students’ satisfaction [ 9 ].

It is not entirely inconceivable that a higher degree of satisfaction with the support of their supervisor also leads to a higher degree of well-being among PhD students [ 9 ]. All the more so because a large-scale, international study shows that large numbers of PhD students who had experienced depression and/or anxiety disagreed with statements about sufficient support from their supervisors [ 10 ]. Moreover, disagreement about or disruptions in supervisory arrangements cannot be ruled out [ 16 ]. In fact, common disagreements relate to supervisors not being involved in research decisions and PhD students judging supervisors not being up-to-date and providing dubious advice [ 17 ]. Disruptions in the relationship between supervisors and PhD students often relate to the duality in supervision situation because the tutoring relation and the supportive, more personal relation may interact negatively [ 18 ]. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic forced universities to accelerate the implementation of a digital learning environment which implied additional challenges for establishing and maintaining dependency relations [ 19 ]. Digital competences [ 20 ], the quality of the digital leaning environment, and the engagement to this environment [ 21 ] will add to the complexity of supervisor arrangements. A ‘match’ between PhD students and supervisors in both the personal and academic relationship is crucial for completion rates and increased PhD students’ satisfaction [ 22 ].

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic

The precariousness of this balance between expected and obtained support from supervisors, between PhD students’ and supervisors’ professional and personal relationships, and the substantial impact this has on the successful completion of PhD research on the one hand and the well-being of PhD students on the other, was further emphasized at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Numerous commentaries and editorial articles exposed the difficulties that PhD students encountered due to the pandemic: delayed experiments, missed timelines, running out of funding, change to online team- and supervisor meetings, mandatory working from home, social confinement (especially for foreign researchers), and the need for a supportive, divers and inclusive research community [ 1 – 5 ]. Following this call for attention to the well-being of scientists and PhD students during the COVID-19 pandemic, several studies followed that began to explore these challenges and threats further [ 7 , 8 , 23 – 28 ]. PhD students’ worries and concerns tend to fall into three categories [ 8 ].

Disruption of and changes in research activities.

The COVID-19 pandemic forces some PhD students to alter their research designs and exposes them to the risk of going in overtime in times when funding becomes more scarce [ 8 ]. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic affects research designs unequally. PhD students that planned electronic data collection or had already collected data might even benefit from the COVID-19 pandemic because it causes people to familiarize with online technology or because it left PhD students with more time to spend on writing their theses [ 23 ]. Regarding the latter element Paula [ 4 ], however, warns that mandatory working from home in a crisis situation that extends beyond the realm of work cannot be equated with a boost in productivity. Indeed PhD students report a decrease in productivity [ 8 ] and an increase in workload [ 23 ].

Personal concerns.

PhD students report not only being worried about the immediate as well as the long-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their own health, but also on the health of friends and family [ 8 ]. In addition to health concerns, PhD students also report financial concerns. Indeed, research in Australia, for example, finds that the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbates the financial precarity of PhD students, with many considering quitting their research [ 26 ]. Finally, there are concerns about maintaining social connectedness [ 8 ]. Face-to-face networking with peers facilitates support such as problem solving and personal development [ 29 ]. Additionally, PhD students report meeting with friends and family as a coping strategy for stress [ 30 ].

Career impact.

Research on the career impact of the COVID-19 pandemic shows ambiguous results. Quantitative data from 2 nd and 5 th year PhD students, for example, report that the COVID-19 pandemic, which thoroughly shook up the academic job-market, hardly changes the career aspirations of PhD students [ 25 ]. Contrarily, qualitative data from master students, PhD students, and postdoctoral researchers, report that PhD students are concerned about their competitiveness as a researcher and consider not pursuing a career in academia [ 8 ]. This ambiguity might result from different samples and methodology, but it might also relate to PhD students’ motivation to conduct PhD research. PhD students motivated by a professional quest (i.e., to derive professional advantages in terms of employment prospects or working conditions) or PhD students motivated by a fundamental desire for self-actualization are less likely to have academic career aspirations compared to PhD students motivated by an intellectual quest [ 31 ]. Additionally, this impact might be mediated by the academic discipline since, for example, medical PhD students tend to be much more motivated by career building aspirations than PhD students in sciences [ 32 ].

The impact of the preceding elements might be twofold. On the one hand, these worries and concerns contribute to PhD students’ stress levels, which are usually already high [ 30 ]. On the other hand, PhD students’ might expect additional support from their supervisors as a result from the COVID-19 pandemic. This expected additional support can be grouped in two categories [ 8 ]: understanding and empathy on the one hand and guidance and direction on the other hand. The former deals with understanding for delays, decreased productivity, and moral support to get back on track. The latter deals with the structural support such as adjusting their research plan, flexibility in timelines, and financial support.

Although the status of PhD students is sometimes considered precarious due to financial and time constraints, research reports a chasm in support for PhD students in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic [ 7 ]. One group reports unchanged support–a few even report improved support –and the other group reports worsened support. Surprisingly, these groups do not differ significantly by gender, living situation or year of their PhD trajectory. However, the group that reports worsened support is characterized by significantly larger shares of PhD students that saw a decrease in the frequency of supervision, that did not meet with their supervisor in person, that also witnessed a decrease in supervision via email messages, and that did not receive help from their supervisor to cope with COVID-related restrictions during the pandemic [ 7 ].

The case of PhD students in Belgium

This study contributes to the growing body of knowledge on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on well-being of PhD students in a unique way. We will analyse PhD students’ satisfaction with supervisor support in two cohorts that are representative of two different ways the COVID-19 pandemic might have impacted doctoral research.

The first cohort concerns PhD students that were conducting doctoral research in April-May 2019 and in April-May 2020. This cohort was confronted very abruptly with a strict lockdown imposed by the Belgian Federal Government, and which reached its height on 18 March 2020 with the complete closure of schools and borders for non-essential travel. Social contacts had to be limited as much as possible and ‘contact bubbles’ were imposed. In no time universities switched to ‘code red’ which lasted until the end of the academic year (mid-July 2020). For many PhD students code red meant mandatory working from home, closure of all on campus facilities, and online contacts with supervisors and colleagues. Additionally, data collections had to be interrupted, postponed, or redesigned, because face-to-face interactions were not possible and laboratory use was scaled down to take into account social distancing regulations. Conferences, workshops, and other courses were cancelled or entirely took place online.

However, although the first lockdown was extremely disruptive for work and family life, with the summer of 2020 and the development of vaccines on the horizon, hope arose that this lockdown was a one-off. From July 2020 onwards, almost all restrictions were eased and the academic year of 2020–2021 started with hope.

This turned out to be a vain hope. From October 2020 onwards, the number of cases that tested positive for the SARS-CoV-19 virus started to rise again. The school autumn break was extended until mid-November and new restrictions were put in place. The second cohort represents PhD students that were conducting doctoral research in April-May 2020 and in April-May 2021. After facing a sudden lockdown, this cohort is characterized by an academic year that alternated between ‘code orange’ and ‘code red’ with varying restrictions on the number of days allowed to return to the workplace, the number of colleagues allowed to meet in person or to operate in laboratories, the possibilities to provide onsite, hybrid, or online teaching, and the partial opening of campus life. In other words, the shock effect of the first lockdown turned into a yearlong period of uncertainty, unpredictability, and great stress on the mental resilience of PhD students.

Expectations

Based on the existing literature and the particularities concerning the way the pandemic evolved, we hypothesize that the first lockdown in 2020 has a substantial negative effect on PhD students’ satisfaction with supervisor support when compared to 2019 ( H1a) . The lockdown of 2020 was unprecedented and both PhD students and supervisors not only had to cope with changes in the modus operandi of supervision and research plans, but also with the challenges of personal situations. We consider the difference between satisfaction scores of 2019 and 2020 to reflect the extent to which PhD students felt supported during these abrupt events. We hypothesize that the second lockdown of 2021 has a less substantial negative effect on PhD students’ satisfaction with supervisor support when compared to 2020 ( H1b ). Although it remained a year of relaxation and tightening of measures to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, the chaotic nature of the first lockdown will have partly given way to acquiesce in the situation, however disruptive it still has been. As such, we consider the satisfaction scores of 2021 to reflect the extent to which PhD students felt supported during the academic year full of uncertainties.

In addition to the hypothesized shift in PhD students’ satisfaction scores, we expect certain characteristics to have an additional direct or indirect influence on conducting doctoral research and which can therefore be a reason to expect (even) more support from supervisors.

Discipline.

The type of doctoral research and especially, the collection of research data, may vary across disciplines, which, in turn, may have been impacted differently by the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is plausible that PhD students expect (extra) support from supervisors in solving these research related problems and in adapting their research plan and are therefore stricter in their assessment of the support they received from their supervisor. However, we expect little variation between the faculties, precisely because each department has its own problems when doing doctoral research during the COVID-19 pandemic ( H2 ). Additionally, pre-COVID-19 research shows that different elements of supervisory might cancel each other out in an overall satisfaction score. Indeed, PhD students in humanities and social sciences tend to put more value on academic advising and a personal touch, whereas PhD students in biological and physical sciences strongly assess not being used as cheap labour and, together with their peers in social sciences, put more value on career development [ 15 ].

Phase of doctoral research.

PhD students that are in the finalizing phase of their doctoral research are much more likely to know the ins and outs of academia than PhD students that just started. The latter might not only need more intellectual support to get their research started, but also more administrative support to find their way. In the absence of colleagues due to mandatory working from home or alternating days at work, these PhD students might expect (extra) support from supervisors. Similarly, PhD students that are in the executing phase of their doctoral research (i.e., collecting data) face several uncertainties and thus, might also expect (extra) support from supervisors. Although one study does not report differences based on year of research [ 7 ], another study makes notion that PhD students in their post-data collection phase might have less concerns [ 23 ]. Therefore, we hypothesize that the expectancy of (extra) support results in a stricter assessment of satisfaction with this support. In other words, we expect the satisfaction scores of PhD students that are not in the finalizing phase not only to be lower than their peers who are in the finalizing phase of their PhD ( H3a ) but also to decrease more over time ( H3b ).

Career aspirations and motivations.

Motivations to embark on a PhD trajectory vary and relate to different career aspirations [ 31 ], which in turn may be impacted differently by the COVID-19 pandemic [ 8 , 25 ]. We expect that students who are motivated by an intellectual quest and aspire an academic career will be more focused on contributing to the academic community and outperforming their peers. For them, not only is the PhD itself important, but also getting published, visiting conferences, and other activities that will create valuable academic resume. We expect these PhD students to be affected most and thus to expect more support and to assess this support stricter, which will result in a decrease of satisfaction scores over time ( H4 ).

Living situation.

The different living situations of PhD students are impacted differently by the COVID-19 restrictions. PhD students that live alone face the consequences of social isolation due to restrictions that limit social contact, whereas PhD students living with children face the challenging consequence of combining working from home with family life that, mainly due to school closures, was completely withdrawn into the domestic sphere too. Expectations for supervisor support may change depending on the extent to which the family context is affected by the COVID-19 restrictions. In line with earlier findings [ 8 ], we therefore expect the score of satisfaction with supervisor support not only to vary between PhD students in different living situations ( H5a ), but also that the change in score over time is stronger for PhD students that live with children or in other living situations compared to PhD students that live with a partner only ( H5b ).

Nationality.

The social restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, such as shutting down campus life, the very restrictive conditions under which it is possible to meet with friends or family and the ban on non-essential travel abroad, have an impact on the social supportive network of PhD students. We consider foreign PhD students to be extra vulnerable for these consequences that, in turn, might have repercussions on doing doctoral research and result in the need for (extra) support and understanding from supervisors. In line with earlier expressed concerns [ 3 ], we therefore expect foreign PhD students’ assessment of supervisor support to be stricter and thus lead to a decrease in satisfaction scores over time ( H6 ).

Pre-COVID-19, more female than male PhD students reported higher levels of anxiety and depression [ 30 ] and more stress [ 33 ]. During the COVID-19 pandemic women, and especially women with caregiving responsibilities, start to publish less [ 28 ] and, out of necessity, have to prioritize their time in ways that are unfavorable for their future careers [ 27 ]. Although research did not report a difference in the share of women that reported worsened supervisor support compared to those whose support remained unchanged [ 7 ], we do expect women’s assessment of supervisor support to be stricter and thus lead to a stronger decrease in satisfaction scores over time when compared to their male counterparts ( H7 ).

Data & method

This study relies on data from the PhD Survey of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). The VUB is located in the Brussels Capital Region, which is both part of the French and Flemish Community of Belgium. The registration of these language communities in the Belgian Constitution in 1970 implied the establishment of so-called cultural communities that are given the power to regulate language use regarding, for example, education. As a result, the VUB has been legally and officially recognised as the Dutch-speaking university in Brussels alongside the French-speaking university since 1970, but both universities have their joint origin in the French speaking Université Libre de Bruxelles that was founded in 1834.

In the academic year 2019–2020 just over 19,000 students were enrolled in 149 study programmes of which one third is taught in English. About 10% of enrolled students are enrolled in PhD programmes. The general admission requirements to conduct doctoral research at the VUB (and any other Flemish university) include possession of a recognized master’s degree, the need of a supervisor, and the need of funding. PhD students in Belgium can rely on different funding opportunities, such as general or themed scholarships from (inter)national funding institutions (e.g., the national research council), research funding from a research project or multiple research projects in the name of the supervisor, or by combining PhD research with a position as teaching assistant.

PhD students enrol in the compulsory Doctoral Training Programme which facilitates PhD students with the possibility to develop their (research) skills through, for example, courses, seminars, workshops, and career coaching. There are three different doctoral schools under which all faculties are divided. The Doctoral School of Natural Sciences and (Bioscience) Engineering (NSE) includes the Faculty of Engineering Sciences and the Faculty of Sciences & Biosciences engineering. The Doctoral School of Human Sciences (DSh) includes the Faculty of Social Sciences & Solvay Business School, the Faculty of Arts & Philosophy, the Faculty of Psychology & Educational Science, and the Faculty of Law & Criminology. The Doctoral School of Life Science and Medicine (LSM) includes the Faculty of Medical Sciences & Pharmacy and the Faculty of Physical education & Physiotherapy.

Doctoral research typically lasts for four years and ends with a successful oral defense of the thesis.

In the empirical part of the study, we rely on data from the PhD Survey. This annual survey is commissioned by the Research, Training & Development Office (RTDO) at the VUB and conducted by the Research Group TOR (Tempus Omnia Revelat) at the same university. The PhD Survey serves as a monitor-instrument to evaluate the support provided to PhD students by RTDO and at the same time monitor aspects of well-being and job satisfaction of PhD students.

A pilot of the PhD Survey among a limited number of faculties took place in the springtime of 2017 (wave 0). Since 2018 onwards, the PhD Survey is being conducted university wide and the 4 th wave has been completed in 2021. The PhD Survey is longitudinal in its design since it aims to follow PhD students throughout their PhD trajectory, which typically lasts four years. Attrition can be attributed to PhD students quitting or successfully finishing their PhD, or non-response to one or more waves. For privacy reasons we have no access to administrative data that would enable to distinguish between these different types of attrition. Influx is natural and based on the number of new PhD students registered at the VUB on the 1 st of January preceding the launch of the next wave. Typically, PhD Students start in October or November, but it is possible to start at any time of the academic year.

The PhD Survey exists of a single online questionnaire that is hosted on the data collection platform MOTUS and accessible through the MOTUS web application [ 34 ]. The PhD Survey generally takes place in the last two weeks of April and the whole month of May. PhD students across all faculties receive an email with login credentials to participate in the survey. Up to two reminders are sent, eight and 20 days after the day of initial invitation. Additionally, the PhD Survey is advertised in the monthly PhD newsletter in the months preceding the PhD Survey and, between reminders, group emails are sent at the faculty level.

Based on the rules of the own institution at the time of PhD Survey waves 0 (2017) to 4 (2021), no advice from the ethics committee is required for an internal survey. Nevertheless, the PhD Survey follows common ethical aspects. PhD students were informed in the emails about the aim of the study, about how data will be used and how feedback can be obtained, and who to contact for further questions and technical support. The emails included information and links about the study’s privacy statement and the general privacy statement of the software platform used to administer the survey. PhD students consented to the survey by clicking on the link in the emails and using their username and password to login to the software platform.

This contribution uses data from wave 2 held in 2019 [ 35 ], wave 3 held in 2020 [ 36 ] and wave 4 held in 2021 [ 37 ]. Response rates are 44.9%, 44.3% and 42.8%, respectively, which is in line with other surveys on PhD students [ 25 ]. We created two cohorts. Cohort 1 exists of all PhD students that responded to both the 2019 and 2020 editions of the PhD Survey (n = 345). This cohort represents a pre-COVID measurement (April-May 2019) and a measurement (April-May 2020) that followed immediately after the start of the abrupt lockdown that lasted from March till May 2020. Cohort 2 comprises all PhD students that responded to both the 2020 and 2021 editions of the PhD Survey (n = 349). This cohort represents a measurement at the onset of the pandemic (April-May 2020) and a measurement (April-May 2021) after a year with continuously changing containment policies. The construction of two cohorts is motivated by the hypothesized difference of impact from the COVID-19 pandemic and sample size maximisation. The first cohort represents PhD students that were abruptly impacted for an intense and short period. The second cohort represents PhD students whose research was impacted by a year of alternating tightening and easing of restrictions.

Although feasible, a three-wave study would only contain 167 PhD students. Moreover, due to privacy regulations, no administrative data on completion of or drop-out from the PhD trajectory is available. This makes it hard to evaluate attrition. Indeed, it cannot be known whether a PhD student is a first-year graduate in 2020 or simply did not respond to the survey of 2019.

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0268923.t001

The main independent variable of interest is time . To assess the net effect of time , the statistical models control for socio-demographic characteristics of the PhD students, as well as objective and subjective characteristics of PhD students’ work environment. Socio-demographic characteristics includes a dummy for female , a dummy for Belgian nationality , and living situation (with partner [reference category], with children, other). Note that the category ‘with children’ includes both PhD students who are a single parent and PhD students that form a two-parent family. The category ‘other’ includes PhD students that live alone, with their parents, or in student houses or other shared housing.

Characteristics of work environment include membership of doctoral school (Doctoral School of Natural Sciences and (Bioscience) Engineering [NSE, reference category], Doctoral School of Human Sciences [DSh], Doctoral School of Life Science and Medicine [LSM]) to measure discipline, a dummy for whether the PhD is in the finalizing phase (self-defined), and a dummy for expected to work in academia . The latter variable is used as a proxy for the more general frame of reference and motivation of PhD students [ 31 ]. PhD students who aim to stay in academia know that they not only have to write an excellent PhD thesis, but also (intellectually) contribute to the academic community by trying to publish several journal articles, present at important conferences, and outperform their peers.

Table 2 provides an overview of the distribution of the socio-demographic and job characteristics for both cohorts.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0268923.t002

Analysis plan

The analysis proceeds in two steps. First, we provide descriptive statistics of (the changes in) the item scores that measure satisfaction with supervisory support as well as (changes in) the means of the composite measure. The Likert-item scores are considered an ordinal approximation of a continuous variable and therefore presented as means with a minimum of 1 and maximum of 5 [see discussions in 38 , 39 ]. The descriptive analyses are presented for both cohorts separately and tested for statistically significant differences between groups within cohorts using paired-sample t-tests. Given the relatively small sample size, the threshold for statistical significance is set at α = 0.10.

Second, we use one-way repeated measures ANOVA to assess the association between time and satisfaction with supervisory support net of socio-demographic characteristics and job characteristics. Statistical models are presented for both cohorts separately. In these models we first test for between-subject effects. Subsequently, we study the within-subject time effect. Then, we test for within-subject time interaction effects. In the final model we present all relevant between-subject and within-subject effects.

Descriptive results

Table 3 shows the mean scores and standard deviations for the items underlying the composite measure and the score on the composite measure for satisfaction with supervisor support. For cohort 1, the mean scores for stimulation/inspiration to solve research problems/issues by the supervisor, the expertise the supervisor has on the research subject, and the extent to which the supervisor is involved in the research were significantly lower in 2020 during the first lockdown compared to 2019. The other items, albeit not significant, showed a similar tendency towards a decreased satisfaction. As a result, the mean score of the composite measure for satisfaction with supervisor support dropped significantly between 2019 and 2020 from 7.360 in 2019 to 7.171 in 2020. This provisionally confirms H1a .

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0268923.t003

For cohort 2, only the mean scores for the satisfaction with the involvement of the supervisor in PhD research was significantly lower in 2021 compared to 2020. Again, almost all other items, albeit not significant, showed a similar tendency towards decreased satisfaction. The mean score of the composite measure for satisfaction with supervisor support dropped between 2020 and 2021 from 7.752 to 7.634, However, this difference was not statistically significant. This provisionally confirms H1b . We note that the average satisfaction score for 2020 in the first cohort was substantially lower than the average satisfaction score for 2020 in the second cohort. This might be ascribed to attrition caused by a healthy worker effect [ 40 ].

Multivariate results

Table 4 shows the results of the changes in the composite measure of satisfaction with supervisor support for cohort 1 (2019 vs . 2020). The partial η is an indication of the strength of an association and reads like a standardised regression coefficient [ 41 ]. Higher values reflect stronger associations. The Cohen’s d is an indicator of the effect size and expresses how many standard deviations lie between two means. Higher values imply larger effect sizes.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0268923.t004

Step 1 looks at the between-subject effects in the difference of satisfaction with supervisor support. This difference varied significantly by living situation. The Cohen’s d indicates that the satisfaction with supervisor support decreased substantially for PhD students living with children and for PhD students living with a partner compared to PhD students with other living situations. PhD students that are in the finalizing phase of their PhD research were more satisfied with supervisor support than their peers that are still in the starting or executing phase of their PhD research. Step 2 reports a decrease in supervisor support over time. Step 3 shows that this time-effect was larger for PhD students living with children or with partner and for PhD students that are not in the finalizing phase of their PhD research. The absence of any associations by doctoral schools, sex, and nationality confirms H2 and rejects H6 and H7 for cohort 1. There were no differences in the decrease of score of satisfaction with supervisor support between the doctoral schools, between Belgian and non-Belgian PhD students, and between men and women.

Step 4 presents the final multivariate model. The initial between-subject effects of living situation and being in the finalizing phase of PhD research and main effect for time were no longer significant. This leads us to reject H1a and H3a and H5a . Instead, satisfaction with supervisor scores differed within categories of living situations and phase of PhD research over time. H5b is partially confirmed. PhD students living with children were significantly less satisfied with support from their supervisor. However, it was not the PhD students in other living situations but the PhD students living with a partner that were significantly less satisfied with support from their supervisor. H3b is also confirmed. PhD students that are not in the finalizing phase of their PhD research were significantly less satisfied with support from their supervisor. Keeping constant variations over time within living situation and phase of PhD research led to a highly significant and substantial effect of the expectancy to work in academia. PhD students that expect to work in academia reported a smaller decrease in their satisfaction with supervisor support compared to their peers that do not expect to work in academia or are undecided. This not only rejects H4, but also inverts it.

We applied the same analytical strategy to cohort 2 for the comparison between 2020 and 2021. Only the expectancy to work in academia yielded significant effects (results not shown), which, again, is an inversion of H4 . Like cohort 1, PhD students that do not expect to work in academia reported a significantly lower score of satisfaction with supervisor support ( η = 0.288, p <0.001). Unlike cohort 1, there was also an interaction effect with time ( η = 0.098, p = 0.073) indicating that the decrease in the score of satisfaction with supervisor support was significantly larger for PhD students that do not expect to work in academia compared to their peers who pursue an academic career. All the other hypotheses are rejected.

Fig 1 summarizes the interaction terms with time. For cohort 1, it clearly shows the substantial decrease in the satisfaction score within PhD students living with children, PhD students living with a partner only, and PhD students that are not in the finalizing phase of their PhD research pre-COVID in 2019 and during the lockdown of 2020. For cohort 2, it not only shows the substantial difference between PhD students that expect and do not expect an academic career on this score, but also the substantial decrease on the score of satisfaction with supervisor support over time within PhD students that do not expect an academic career.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0268923.g001

PhD students’ satisfaction with supervisor support is an important indicator of their well-being. It reflects how well they feel supported in doing their doctoral research. This support came under pressure during the COVID-19 pandemic [ 1 – 4 ]. PhD students’ already high stress levels [ 28 ] might increase even further by the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic [ 42 ]. Many PhD students found themselves in situations that might have given rise to increased need of supervisor support. In line with existing research on the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic for PhD students [ 7 , 8 , 23 – 28 ], we found a significant decrease in PhD students’ satisfaction scores with supervisor support over time between 2019 and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 (i.e., cohort 1). However, multivariate analyses showed that this drop was caused by different groups of PhD students, which concurs with research that categorizes PhD students’ worries and concerns in three categories: personal concerns, disruption of research activities, and career impact [ 8 ]. Firstly, personal concerns, measured in this study as a challenging living situation, is most strongly associated with decreasing satisfaction with supervision This is in line with findings that report PhD students’ concern about health of friends and family [ 8 ] and findings about the daily family struggles of the COVID-19 restrictions [ 43 , 44 ]. Indeed, PhD students that live with children reported the largest drop in satisfaction scores. Similarly, PhD students that live with a partner only, also reported a substantial drop in satisfaction scores. This suggests that it is the inflexibility and unpredictability that stems from being responsible for or taking into consideration other family members during a lockdown that causes a mismatch between expected and provided support by supervisors.

Secondly, PhD students that just got started or were gathering data reported a substantial drop in satisfaction scores over time. Satisfaction scores of PhD students in their finalizing phase of their doctoral research remained unchanged. Junior PhD students might have a higher need for support to become acquainted with the research group and meeting colleagues, to kick-off a research agenda, or to change a research plan vis-à-vis data collection method and period. In other words, PhD students’ ignorance and uncertainty seem to play an important role in their assessment of–and consequent decrease in–the satisfaction score. This result suggests that the disruption of research activities due to the COVID-19 pandemic impacted junior PhD students most. Other studied consequences, such as the unproductivity of mandatory telework [ 4 ] and risk of working overtime [ 8 , 23 ] might be equally stratified by PhD students’ seniority.

Thirdly, PhD students that ambition an academic career were not less satisfied with supervisor support measured over a period of COVID-related measures between 2020 and 2021 (i.e., cohort 2). This was unexpected because other studies revealed PhD students’ increased concerns about career impact [ 8 , 25 ], which might give rise to a higher need for support. More worrisome is that PhD students without the ambition to pursue an academic career were much less satisfied with supervisor support over the same period. In other words, it seems that in a year of varying severity of COVID-19 restrictions and its impact on doing doctoral research, PhD students without an ambitious academic frame of reference are experiencing the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic to a greater extent.

The latter finding aligns with the idea that PhD students’ motivation differ and that the resulting expectations cannot be met with a single approach [ 31 ]. Indeed, this study also suggests that PhD students approach their doctoral research from at least two different frames of reference: as a trajectory of formation, learning and self-development versus an unconditional step to position themselves in the academic world. Both approaches require different levels of support from supervisors (and by extension from universities) and it is not inconceivable that the latter type of PhD student is easier to support in crisis situations than the former.

These findings point to policy challenges vis-à-vis PhD students. The results of the analyses of the first cohort clearly show that the COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to reinforce inequality and that a differentiated policy is needed to create and maintain a level playing field. Scholars indeed report on the need for both generalised and specific support running from financial assistance to mental health and pastoral support [ 45 ] and the need to follow up on existing support and/or identifying new forms of support for PhD students would be beneficial [ 46 ]. However, the results of the second cohort reveal much less inequality. This raises the question how stable the results of the first cohort are and whether the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic varies across different phases of the pandemic (and within subgroups). This stresses the importance of cross-sectional or longitudinal follow up on this matter. In this study, the next wave may shed more light on this, but if the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic does indeed vary as the pandemic continues and is contained, it makes it more difficult to implement policies to mitigate the impact hereof.

This contribution is not without its limitations. The COVID-19 restrictions not only directly and indirectly impacted PhD students, but also supervisors themselves. The results clearly point in the direction that for some groups of PhD students, supervisor support during the COVID-19 pandemic was insufficient. It is conceivable that the mismatch between support not only arose from changing expectations from PhD students, but also from work-related challenges, such as online teaching, recording lessons, organizing exams in a safe way, and family- or health-related challenges amongst supervisors. Although supervisors have an important responsibility towards their PhD students, we do not want to underestimate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on themselves at any point. Future editions of the PhD Survey would benefit from further contextualization by at least investing the expectations of PhD students and those of their supervisors. Additionally, in its current form, not much is known about attrition of the sample. PhD students that faced a severe impact from the COVID-19 pandemic on their (work-)life and judged the support from their supervisor, and by extension the university, insufficient, might have dropped out between the 2020 and 2021 PhD Survey data collection. Linking future editions with university’s administrative data would provide more information about attrition due to drop-out versus successful completion versus non-response in earlier waves.

PhD students’ satisfaction with supervisor support is an important indicator of their well-being. This study did not show a main effect of time on satisfaction with supervisor support following the unprecedent restrictions at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic between 2019 and 2020 (reject H1a) nor after a year of relaxed and tightened restrictions between 2020 and 2021 (reject H1b). However, substantial interaction effects of time showed a stronger negative impact on satisfaction with supervisor support of the COVID-19 pandemic over time for PhD students who start their doctoral research or conduct or plan data collection (accept H3b) and PhD students in living situations in which they bear multiple responsibilities (accept H5b) between 2019 and 2020, and for PhD students who do not expect a career in academia (accept H4) between 2020 and 2021. No interactions of time were found for doctoral schools (accept H2) indicating that PhD students in all university departments faced COVID-19 related challenges, or for nationality (reject H6) and gender (reject H7). Finally, satisfaction with supervisor score did not vary between PhD students in different phases of their PhD trajectory (reject H3a) or in different living situations (reject H5a) regardless time.

In times of crises, which affects both PhD students and supervisors, special attention needs to be paid to PhD students who are extra susceptible to uncertainties because of their junior status or personal situation, and especially those PhD students for whom doctoral research is a trajectory of formation and self-development instead of a steppingstone to position themselves in academia.

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• 34. MOTUS. MOTUS research platform 2016–2021. Available from: https://www.motusresearch.io/en .
• 35. Glorieux A, te Braak P, Minnen J, Spruyt B. PhD Survey VUB 2019: Technical Report. Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 2019 Available from: https://torvub.be/torwebdat/publications/t2020_11.pdf .
• 36. Glorieux A, te Braak P, Laurijssen I, Van Deynze F, De Grande H, Minnen J, et al. PhD Survey VUB 2020: Technical Report. Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 2020 Available from: https://torvub.be/torwebdat/publications/t2021_15.pdf .
• 37. Glorieux A, van Tienoven TP, Spruyt B, te Braak P, Minnen J. PhD Survey VUB 2021: Technical Report. Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 2021 Available from: https://torvub.be/torwebdat/publications/t2022_10.pdf .
• 41. Ellis PD. The essential guide to effect sizes: Statistical power, meta-analysis, and the interpretation of research results: Cambridge University Press; 2010.

Community Response to COVID-19

Healthy brown, to brown graduate students: covid-19 appointment extensions for phd students.

In recognition of the disruption that COVID-19 has caused to many doctoral students’ research, Brown University announced on April 7, 2020 that PhD students would be eligible to apply for extended stipend support to compensate for time lost due to COVID-19. Given the length and continuing disruption of the pandemic, the University, in conversation with SUGSE (now GLO), decided to extend this support to two semesters. The outlines of this agreement can be found in the Side Letter of Agreement to the Graduate Student Union Contract (pp. 47-49) at: http://brown.edu/go/extensions

As indicated in that letter, students who were in their third, fourth or fifth year of study in spring semester 2020 are eligible to apply for a two semester extension. Each semester (up to two) of a COVID-19 Appointment Extension will include an appointment as a Teaching Assistant (I or II), Teaching Fellow, Proctor or Research Assistant. Sixth-year students who received extended funding over the summer were also eligible to apply for Appointment Extensions for this fall; those who applied have already been funded.

In order to establish the criteria for the awarding of a COVID-19 Appointment Extension and details of implementation, the side letter called for the establishment of a COVID-19 Appointment Extension Committee. This committee includes graduate students selected by the Graduate Student Council and SUGSE/GLO, faculty from multiple disciplines, and administrators. This committee met actively over the summer and early fall to develop the criteria for extensions, application and review processes, and an appeal process. The following policies were developed through an iterative process of consensus building:

Application Review Process

Eligible students will apply for COVID-19 Appointment Extensions through ufunds.brown.edu . Applications will be reviewed by the Graduate School and, in cases that are not already approved by the Graduate School, by the COVID-19 Appointment Extension Committee.

Timing of Appointment Extensions

Students requesting Appointment Extensions will apply during the final year of their standard funding: Students in the humanities and social sciences should continue to apply for DCP funding for year 6, then (if needed) apply for the COVID-19 Appointment Extension to support year 7. Students in the life sciences and physical sciences who need Appointment Extensions should apply during the year in which they would normally have finished (in the absence of COVID-19).

Students needing COVID-19 Appointment Extensions beginning spring 2021

Students whose funding would otherwise conclude at the end of the fall 2020 semester and need COVID-19 Appointment Extensions for spring 2021 and fall 2021 will apply during October 2020. The application will be available in UFunds under “COVID-19 Appointment Extensions” by October 15 and will be due by November 2. Eligible students will be contacted when the application is live. If you are in your last funded semester of doctoral study this fall and believe that you are eligible but have not been contacted by October 21, please contact [email protected] .

Students needing COVID-19 Appointment Extensions for 2021-22

Students whose funding would otherwise conclude at the end of the spring 2021 semester and need COVID-19 Appointment Extensions for fall 2021 and spring 2022 will apply in January 2021. The application will be available in UFunds under “COVID-19 Appointment Extensions” by January 15 and will be due in February. Eligible students will be contacted when the application is live. If you are in your last funded semester of doctoral study in Spring 2021 and believe that you are eligible but have not been contacted by January 20, please contact [email protected] .

Appeal Process

If an applicant is deemed ineligible or an application is not approved by the COVID-19 Appointment Extension Committee, students may appeal the decision by submitting a written justification (typically no more than 300 words) to [email protected] . This written appeal must be received within 10 working days of the student’s notification of ineligibility or denial. The Committee will review all appeals and make a final decision as soon as possible, normally within three weeks of receipt.

Brown University is committed to supporting our students through a challenging period. These opportunities for extended funding are intended to enable students to successfully complete their degree despite these challenges. If you have questions, please email [email protected] .

• Help & FAQ

Extension of the PhD trajectory due to Covid-19 (BOF Budget)

• Eeltink, Sebastiaan (Administrative Promotor)
• Elskens, Marc (Administrative Promotor)
• Versées, Wim (Administrative Promotor)
• Mattelaer, Alexander (Administrative Promotor)
• Oberthur, Sebastian (Administrative Promotor)
• Wambacq, Piet (Administrative Promotor)
• Lambert, Bart (Administrative Promotor)
• Claeys, Philippe (Administrative Promotor)
• Keulen, Stefanie (Administrative Promotor)
• Anckaert, Ellen (Administrative Promotor)
• Mast, Jelle (Administrative Promotor)
• Tompa, Peter (Administrative Promotor)
• Coene, Gily (Administrative Promotor)
• Hubin, Annick (Administrative Promotor)
• Leermakers, Martine (Administrative Promotor)
• Gao, Yue (Administrative Promotor)
• Chemical Engineering and Industrial Chemistry
• Chemical Engineering and Separation Science
• Interdisciplinary Historical Food Studies
• Analytical, Environmental & Geo-Chemistry
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• https://structuralbiology.brussels
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• Sustainable chemicals production research cluster: Separation Technology & Economics and Policy making
• Laboratorium for Micro- and Photonelectronics
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• History, Archeology, Arts, Philosophy and Ethics
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• Linguistics and Literary Studies
• Pathology/molecular and cellular medicine
• Clinical Biology
• Follicle Biology
• Brussels Institute for Journalism Studies
• Centre for Ethics and Humanism
• Centre of Expertise on Gender, Diversity and Intersectionality
• Materials and Chemistry
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Project Details

Description.

Flemish discipline codes in use since 2023

• Social epidemiology

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• Domestic labor Social Sciences 100%
• caregiver Social Sciences 65%
• researchers Agriculture & Biology 38%
• research projects Agriculture & Biology 13%
• labor economics Social Sciences 11%
• economic value Social Sciences 8%
• students Agriculture & Biology 8%
• online courses Agriculture & Biology 8%

Research output

Research output per year

Meaningfulness experienced in performing domestic labor in Chinese families: a qualitative study from caregivers’ perspectives

Research output : Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

• Domestic labor 100%
• caregiver 65%
• labor economics 11%
• economic value 8%
• Ideologies 6%

Projects per year

IRPCOE1-B: Interdisciplinary Research Programme: Centre of Expertise in Gender, Diversity and Intersectionality

Coene, G. & Celis, K.

1/10/19 → 30/09/25

Project : Fundamental

• Uganda 100%
• Reproductive Health 69%
• Infertility 66%
• Sexual Health 64%

Further action to support doctoral students affected by COVID-19

22 February 2021

UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) has announced further action to support PhD students whose studies are being affected by COVID-19.

Funding that was not used for extensions for students in their final year will now be available for UKRI-funded students in other years.

UKRI is also consulting on giving grant holders greater flexibility, so that they can fund further extensions for its funded students if this is required.

Today, Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser has written an open letter explaining how this, together with £11 million in new block grants to English universities, is supporting doctoral students.

Funding for the students who need it most

In April 2020, £44 million of urgent funding was made available to cover up to six month extensions for doctoral student stipends and university fees for UKRI-funded students in their final year.

UKRI’s training grant holders were asked to allocate this phase one funding on a case-by-case basis to students who needed additional time to complete their studies because of the pandemic.

In November, £19.1 million in phase two funding was allocated to research organisations to enable them to provide support to PhD students most in need.

Not all students eligible for phase one funding needed support. UKRI has today confirmed the case-by-case approached has freed up £7 million to enable additional extensions to students earlier in their studies, based on need.

New funding and flexibility within grants

A further contribution of £11 million in block funding will be made available to English universities via Research England.

This will support the work those organisations are undertaking to help their postgraduate research communities, including those not funded with UKRI studentships.

UKRI has also written to training grant holders exploring options to increase the flexibility to use training and cohort development funding to fund extensions.

It is also consulting training grant holders on providing flexibility to reduce recruitment in 2021/22. This would release funding for extensions for current students, and on whether to extend eligibility for extensions.

UKRI intends to set out further guidance after this consultation, in the early spring.

Science, Research and Innovation Minister Amanda Solloway said:

COVID-19 has placed immense pressures on our country’s PhD students, and it is a priority of mine that we continue supporting our world class research community through this pandemic and beyond. Today’s measures will provide vital support to doctoral students most disrupted by the pandemic, ensuring they have the flexibility to continue carrying out their crucial research during these challenging times.

Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser, Chief Executive of UKRI, said:

PhD students face huge challenges in both their work and personal circumstances. The measures announced today will help those most affected by this crisis, including students with caring responsibilities. We will continue to work with the community to make the best use of the limited resources available to us to support students and the wider research and innovation system through these unprecedented times.

Further information

Support so far.

In April 2020 UKRI announced its policy to support UKRI-funded students we fund through the lockdown period and beyond.

This included additional funding to cover extensions of up to six months for doctoral students in the final year of their programme, whose training was disrupted by COVID-19.

For students not in their final year, flexibility was given to grant holders to assess their needs on a case-by-case basis and use underspend in the grant to meet the cost of any extension required.

To help contribute further to the support required for those students most in need, UKRI is awarding £19 million of additional funding across around 100 research organisations.

This will enable support for extensions for its funded doctoral students who are unable to mitigate the delays and impact of COVID-19 on their research project, for personal or work-related reasons, on a needs-priority basis.

UKRI has also written to research organisations and its 300 training grant holders seeking views on giving them flexibility in current training budgets to fund further extensions.

New allocation for phase two

The organisation is moving £7 million not required by students from the phase one programme to enable additional extensions to students earlier in their studies, based on need.

It will be delivering an additional £11 million of block grant funding to English institutions via Research England to support doctoral students, including those not funded by UKRI.

Plus, following our consultation, training grant holders (mostly universities) could have the flexibility to use training and cohort development funding , and to reduce student recruitment in 2021/22 to fund further extensions.

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• Keeping King's safe together

Your questions answered – postgraduate research students

Introduction.

Updated: 24 January 2022

You may find it useful to read these FAQs in conjunction with the regulation documents and forms available via the Centre for Doctoral Studies .

2021/22 guidance for new and continuing PGR students

We expect PGR students normally to be based in London for their research degrees, as per King’s academic regulations. However, we recognise that there are currently significant challenges for some PGR students, in terms of getting to the UK.

However, students are still able to travel to the UK (provided, if applicable, that any necessary visas have been arranged). Nonetheless, such travel does likely incur significant financial cost, in terms of tests and quarantine , above and beyond the normal costs of visas and travel. In such situations, PGR students, whether new or continuing, might want to consider the potential to study remotely.

Studying remotely is not necessarily a simple decision:

• The nature of many courses means that there is a considerable component of study & research that can only be undertaken in person. Therefore, any consideration of studying remotely should start with a discussion between the student and the supervisory team, to assess whether remote study is feasible.
• As well as this practical consideration, there may be other factors, for example the terms and conditions of the funding of the PhD which may also influence this decision.
• In some cases, students are starting a more structured programme of training in their first year as part of a cohort of students. It may not be possible to undertake this training remotely and/or the student might feel it is a major disadvantage not joining the programme in person (when most other students are physically present). This could make it much harder to settle in and build key working relationships.

However, assuming none of these issues are a significant impediment, the student can study remotely.

In all cases, if the student requires a visa to enter the UK, advice should be sought from the Visa advice team to check any specific individual circumstances. Students who have visas, and who have started studying remotely outside of the UK, will need to be studying in the UK in person by the UK Visas and Immigration deadline of 6 April 2022 (or by the next deadline set by their supervisory team, whichever is earlier).

Students should indicate on the Study location form their location (this should be completed as part of enrolment or re-enrolment). Students do not need to complete the Off-campus study form if the remote study is COVID related.

Another option which might be considered is delaying the start of the degree until the next entry point, in June 2022. However, again, the same factors will need to be considered, as described above. Continuing students should consider interruption of study if remote study is not feasible

Are current recruitment and scholarship application processes still going ahead?

Yes. Recruitment is not impacted. Find out about the latest scholarships .

I am an international student and have accepted a place for a research degree but haven’t enrolled yet. What do I need to know?

Your Confirmation of Acceptance for Studies (CAS) is valid for 6 months from the date of issue. As long as you apply for your visa within 6 months of being issued your CAS, it will be valid for use, although you might need to update it with your intended arrival date in the UK. To find out more on CAS updates visit our article How can I change information in my CAS?

I am a student from an EU country. What do I need to know?

As you may be aware the UK exited the European Union on the 1 January 2020.

You can find information on the Advice & Guidance pages:

Students with Pre-settled or Settled Status

Students in the UK with no status

Students outside the UK

Please contact the Advice & Guidance Team for specific advice

Individual student risk assessments

Protecting the health and wellbeing of the entire King’s community is a priority for the university. For our latest updates and safety guidance, please refer to the Keeping King’s safe together webpages.

How do I study on campus safely?

In order to be physically on campus, you will need to have conversations with your supervisors using the return to campus policy .

If you are planning to come to campus, you should complete our online risk assessment tool . You will need to use your King’s account to complete the form. The form will explain the measures that we have put in place to support you and identify if any further steps are required.

What should I do if I am identified as high or medium/high risk and planning to come to campus?

Please discuss the results with your supervisor who will advise you about the next steps and ask you to complete an individual risk assessment.

What should I do if I am identified as high risk but am not planning to come to campus?

If you are not planning to come to campus, then you do not need to take any further action on risk assessments. However, it is advisable to let your supervisor know as early as possible so that adequate support can be put in place for when you join us on campus.

Support for long-term health conditions and disabilities

If you have a long-term health condition or a disability, there are a range of articles in our Disability support section that explain how our services can support you during your time at King's.

Continuing your research

Please speak to your supervisor(s) about your research, in particular, to discuss what research you can continue to undertake given the current situation. It is important to emphasise that most research activities can continue, accessing King’s systems remotely where needed. You may find the guidance from the Research Ethics Office particularly helpful if your research involves human participants.

Please read all the information on this page, which includes guidance on how to record any disruption to your progression.

Can my research continue on campus?

Please discuss continuing your research on campus with your supervisor(s) if you have not already done so and follow your Faculty/department guidance on this. When on campus please ensure that you are tested regularly . Respecting safe distancing, wearing a face covering unless exempt and regular hand washing are the best ways to help reduce transmission of the virus. Please see the Keeping King’s Safe Together webpages for information.

Thesis submission deadline

In 2020 we extended the thesis submission deadline for all students (who enrolled prior to 1 April 2020) by 3 months. There are currently no plans to issue a further blanket submission deadline extension. Students who need additional time to submit should request this via the exemption process with guidance from their faculty. Such requests are dealt with on a case-by-case basis. This extension does not guarantee additional stipend payments. It is just an extension of the submission deadline.

I am a funded student. What is the impact of the King’s submission deadline extension on me?

As a funded student (e.g. those on UKRI programmes) you should follow the terms and conditions of your funding body and seek advice from your supervisor and the relevant programme manager.

Please see further information in the funding section below.

When do I need to submit my RD1 form if my expected submission deadline has changed?

The RD1 form should be submitted a minimum of four months before your intended submission date. Download the RD1 form .

I am already in the process of completing my thesis corrections. Will I receive an extension?

If you are in the process of completing your thesis corrections, you will not receive an automatic extension. Submitting corrections is a critical point involving a number of individuals such as external examiners. Students are therefore encouraged to complete and submit corrections within their current deadline if at all possible. However, if you absolutely cannot complete your corrections due to COVID19, please apply for an exemption. Upon approval, the research degrees team will communicate this decision to your examiners.

I am a visiting research student. Will my visit get extended automatically by three months?

We are not automatically extending such visits.

Does the three month extension affect upgrade deadlines?

No, it doesn't. The vast majority of PGRs successfully complete the upgrade process well within the timeframe of 9-18 months, as set out in the academic regulations. We have therefore decided that there is no need to institute a blanket extension to the upgrade process at this point.

I am an international student. Do I need to extend my visa because of this extension?

Please get in touch with the Student Advice & Guidance Team for help and support.

Do I have to use the additional three months granted by the university?

No. For example, if you are a full-time PGR student, you can still submit your thesis within four years. The extra three months, which extends your deadline to four years and three months, just gives you more time if you require it.

Will I have to pay extra fees for this three-month period?

No extra fees will be applied.

I need more time to pay my tuition fee, can I access any help?

If you need more time to pay your fee, please complete and submit the following form .

I have received the 3 months submission deadline extension. Does this mean my stipend payments will automatically be extended by 3 months?

Unfortunately not. The extension of submission deadline does not guarantee additional stipend payments. This is dependent on your research degree funding body and they will be able to advice you on any funding extensions (UKRI funded students please see contact details below). If your funding body is not able to provide additional support, please see the Financial Support section below.

I am funded by UKRI, who do I contact?

If you are part of the Doctoral Training Centres or Partnerships please contact your CDT or DTP Director or Manager, or your PGR faculty contact.

For general UKRI queries please contact [email protected]

Financial support

Can i access any financial support.

If you have been directly affected financially by the COVID-19 crisis, you may be eligible for financial support through the PGR Financial Aid scheme . This scheme is administered by the Centre for Doctoral Studies and involves a simple application form being submitted along with any relevant supporting documents. Please find full details on the Student Funding webpage .

For covid related financial support for students arriving in the UK, please visit Student Services Online .

Can I access any financial support for my visa extension?

Yes, currently PGR students whose Tier 4 (General) student visa expires on or before 31 July 2022can apply for assistance with their visa extension. See the PGR Financial Aid scheme guidance for further details.

Can I make a claim for additional stipend payments through this scheme?

The scheme will not replace or provide additional stipend payments (see questions in the ‘Funding’ section for more information) . The PGR Financial Aid scheme is designed to help those currently directly affected financially by the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. If you are in this situation, we encourage you to apply to the PGR Financial Aid scheme and also to seek advice from the Advice & Guidance team .

Recording disruption to progress

What records will i need to keep in order to apply for funding extension in the future.

In order to make a case for additional funding in the future, all funded students are advised to:

• Keep a record of how your project is being impacted, including copies of any supporting evidence. Examples of supporting evidence include notes of cancellation of a scheduled research visit, cancelled experiments abroad/field trips.
• Working with your supervisors, review your progress objectives on the online progress reports.
• Depending on what stage you are on the PhD trajectory, consider what you can practically and constructively do towards your PhD right now, to minimise the impact caused by COVID-19, and to continue to make progress. You might adjust objectives accordingly, to include new tasks which can be more easily carried out in your current working environment.
• In your online progress reports, record any impacts and time delays which are unavoidable (evidenced as per (1) above), and provide a description of what you have done to continue to progress (as described in (3)).

Where do I record my lack of progress due to COVID-19?

If your progress has been disturbed by this the current situation we ask you to record this your online progress reports.

We are expecting you to record your delays in:

• Question 1.2b – Briefly describe any issues/problems which have prevented you from achieving your targets
• Question 1.2c – Explain how these have been addressed and your plans to meet any unmet targets .

How can I explain the impact of COVID-19 to my thesis examiners?

We are giving all PGRs the option of including an Impact Statement alongside their thesis. This will enable you to explain to your examiners how you have modified your research in the light of COVID-19.  Find out more .

King’s College London recognises the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on PGR students. Students are expected to adapt their research activities to mitigate, as far as possible, the disruptions caused by COVID-19 restrictions. Nevertheless, the impact of disruptions on the research may merit explanation in the thesis. Examiners should consider the student’s COVID-19 impact statement in relation to the scope and volume of the research student’s work whilst always upholding the academic requirements for a research degree award.

Read the full Impact Statement Policy.

Upgrade and viva examination

Can my viva voce examination go ahead.

From 1 September 2021 the following oral examination formats are available to students:

• Face-to-face examination
• Fully remote examination
• Hybrid (partially remote) examination

For more information on oral examinations please refer to the Guidance for Oral Examinations document

Is there any guidance for online viva examination?

Yes, the Research Degrees Examination Team have provided a guidance document for everyone who is involved in setting up, conducting, participating, and managing the oral examinations for research degrees. You can find this document on the Research Degrees website .

Will my upgrade viva or MD presentation go ahead?

Yes, these are essential assessments. They can be conducted virtually. Please discuss with your supervisor and see local faculty or department advice.

My home environment is not suitable for online examination, what are my options?

If your home environment is not suitable for online examinations, such as upgrade viva and oral examination please get in touch with your supervisor for other onsite alternatives for you.

We are giving all PGRs the option of including an Impact Statement alongside their thesis. This will enable you to explain to your examiners how you have modified your research in the light of COVID-19. Find out more about the COVID-19 Thesis Impact policy on the Research Degrees website .

Interruption

Do i need to interrupt my studies if i am ill and self-isolating with symptoms.

Students who are not well, self-isolating with symptoms of Coronavirus, can apply for an interruption of studies , even if they are close to submission.

Do I need to interrupt my studies if I am self-isolating without symptoms?

We acknowledge that this situation will be disruptive and engagement with your studies may be difficult. If you are self-isolating without symptoms we would not anticipate that you interrupt your studies. However we recognise that individual circumstances may vary and, if you feel your studies will be impacted by self-isolation, we encourage you to discuss this with your supervisor.

International travel

Can i travel abroad for my research.

In light of the coronavirus pandemic, the university continues to update its travel policies, with additional authorisation requirements to ensure that staff and students are able to travel safely for the purposes of conducting College business, research or as part of a course.

The travel policy has now been updated to reflect changes in UK travel restrictions as a result of Step 4 of the government roadmap and individual vaccination status. Students can potentially travel, subject to appropriate risk assessment and approval by a Head of Department or designate. King’s travel insurance will be issued on approval of the risk assessment.

Risk assessment guidance is available on the Health & Safety Services’ SharePoint site and information about King’s travel insurance is available on the Finance website. If you have any questions about travelling on your student visa, please contact the Advice and Guidance team.

Fit to Fly : KCL TEST now offers free Fit to Fly certificates to King’s students and staff. KCL TEST is a convenient, non-invasive saliva test to check for coronavirus for those who do not have symptoms (asymptomatic). You can pick up a PCR test kit and return your completed sample during opening hours at hubs across all campuses. Find out more about Fit to Fly certificates .

Researcher development and training

What training and development opportunities are available to me.

Whilst no workshops or training courses are running on site during this time, the Centre for Doctoral Studies (CDS) and other training providers have worked hard to make sure that development opportunities are still available to our PGR community. In most cases we are delivering courses virtually, via platforms such as KEATS or Zoom. A large number of online courses are already available to PGRs.

In light of the ongoing restrictions and the uncertainty around travel in the coming months, King’s has taken the difficult decision to postpone the in-person graduation ceremonies due to take place in winter 2022. Please visit Student Services Online  for more information about future ceremonies .

Degree certificates

You can find more information about obtaining your degree certificate on the Student Services Online website .

Aarhus University logo

Graduate School of Natural Sciences

Extension of a phd programme due to covid-19, au's joint procedure for phd programmes which progress has been directly affected by covid-19.

COVID-19 and the consequences hereof such as the physical lockdown of Aarhus University, may affect some PhD student’s ability to finish their PhD programme as first planned. Aarhus University has a joint procedure for handling cases like these. The joint procedure is based on the political agreements on the phased reopening of the country, in addition to the  Circular on the agreement on the possibility of extending temporary employment contracts, as a consequence of delays occurring in connection with COVID-19  (in Danish only).

The objective of the procedure is to ensure a common point of departure for all PhD students at AU, while at the same time granting the individual Graduate School the flexibility to handle the challenges in individual students’ PhD projects in the most appropriate way. Therefore, all applications for extension due to COVID-19 will be processed on the basis of an individual, specific assessment. The assessment will be carried out by the Graduate School management at the Graduate School in question on the basis of the School's guidelines. The Graduate School management will make the final decision in the case. 

The joint procedure applies to PhD students whose progress has been directly affected by COVID-19:

• AU must ensure that enrolled PhD students are able to finish their PhD programmes, and that the quality of the PhD project lives up to applicable academic requirements for a PhD degree. 
• A delay in progress towards the PhD degree must be a direct consequence of COVID-19, including the periods of physical lockdown of AU. 
• All PhD projects that are or may be delayed because of the COVID-19-situation must be considered individually and through individual dialogue with the principal supervisor. The Graduate School also recommends discussing it with the Head of programme. The PhD student writes the application for extension and both supervisor and Head of programme must make a statement. 
• In the evaluation of the extension, every effort must be made to adjust the individual PhD project to allow the PhD student to complete their project as planned. 
• If the PhD project cannot be completed without an extension of the deadline, the amount of additional time to be granted must be calculated on an individual basis. 
• The nature of the delay in the PhD project must be described in the application for extension.

When and how to apply

It is possible to apply for an extension of a PhD programme due to COVID-19, if the PhD project has been delayed as a direct consequence of COVID-19, including the periods when AU’s campuses have been shut down. It is possible to apply for an extension due to COVID-19 throughout the PhD programme. However, the Graduate School recommends waiting to apply until the last year of the PhD programme where the exact extent of the Covid-19 delay will be easier to assess. Furthermore, it is possible to apply for an extension of a PhD programme due to COVID-19 more than once, if there are changes in circumstances laid down in the previous application.    

If an extension is deemed necessary, please follow the normal procedures described in section 7.4 of the GSNS Rules and Regulations with the “COVID-19 exception”, that fellowships can also be extended; not just the study time.

Please don't hesitate to contact your PhD Partner, if you have any questions. Find contact info here.

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• Coronavirus

COVID Wave Colliding With Back-to-School Season

Aug. 26, 2024 – Instead of peaking and retreating, this summer’s unusually prolonged COVID-19 wave is now firmly on course to collide with back-to-school season. That means more people spending time in close quarters indoors, like classrooms, and college students traveling back to campuses. It’s a recipe for an unpredictable period in the pandemic’s fifth year, and infectious disease experts are beginning to worry.

At the start of the summer, many hoped COVID would continue its trend toward joining the ranks of seasonal respiratory illnesses.

“This is a more substantial summer bump than we would have anticipated,” said William Schaffner, MD, an infectious diseases and preventive medicine expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Tennessee. “I am concerned that this COVID wave may not be much of a wave. It may be a surge and it may continue. There’s been a lot of COVID out there, and for the first time, I’m just a little nervous about how much of a dip we’re going to get before it goes up again in the wintertime.”

A small Texas school district canceled classes Wednesday to conduct a deep clean due to widespread COVID. The Calvert Independent School District operates a single school that typically enrolls fewer than 150 students in prekindergarten through 12 th grade. Their first day of school was Aug. 6.

Meanwhile, some college student health centers, such as the  University of Arizona 's, are telling students seeking COVID vaccines to get them at local pharmacies, at least until updated ones are stocked. From preschool to graduate school, the advice is to maximize prevention efforts like staying up to date on vaccines, practicing good hygiene like frequent hand-washing, and, if someone has symptoms of a respiratory illness, following  CDC guidance to help prevent spreading a virus.

In K-12 school districts, many ask that parents let their child’s school know if hey test positive for COVID. It’s best to check what your district’s policy is about returning to school after an illness, and a health care provider can also advise parents and caregivers on when a child is well enough to return to class. Generally, feeling better and being fever-free for 24 hours, plus being able to eat, drink, and have normal bathroom visits, are  signs that daily activities can resume .

A COVID-filled back-to-school season is somewhat of a surprise. At the start of the summer, many hoped COVID would continue its trend toward joining the ranks of seasonal respiratory illnesses. But ever-improving forecasting, which is increasingly being informed by the contents of the nation’s sewers, points toward not a summer COVID wave, but now a months-long surge.

Wastewater: Your Ultra-Local COVID Report

Wastewater detections of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID, are now being used more to predict hospital caseloads and community impacts. In New York state, for example, statistical models using wastewater data can accurately forecast hospitalization rates 10 days in advance. 

The CDC’s latest  wastewater monitoring report said COVID detections nationwide were “very high,” its highest label. Overall, 44 states reported either “high” or “very high” levels, with chart-topping readings reported in the Western U.S. 

The reason wastewater sampling can help forecast increased COVID activity is because people “shed” signs of the virus as soon as they become infected, and that shows up in wastewater even before people have symptoms. It’s also information that can be collected without the need for people to get tested themselves, which many either currently do at home or not at all. 

For the average person who wants to understand local COVID trends using wastewater data, the first step is to find out if any wastewater samples are being taken from nearby. The CDC  suggests checking your state, county, or city health department webpage to see whether they publish wastewater monitoring reports and site locations.

“I don’t think looking at national data is going to tell me something that’s going to be useful for how I’m going to interact in my current life and tell me if I should be worried about COVID right now,” said Katelyn Leisman, PhD, who works on the state of Illinois’s wastewater surveillance project and also is a research assistant professor in the Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics Department at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL.

But just like for hospital systems that use wastewater as a bellwether, increases in one area of the country could be a warning that COVID may be on a path toward a town near you.

“I could imagine, if there is a new surge happening somewhere in the country and that shows up in the nationwide data, then that might give me a sort of longer-term anticipation that the surge might spread around and I might see it soon,” Leisman said.

While wastewater surveillance isn’t being done everywhere, interest from local health departments continues to grow, says Adriane Casalotti, MPH, chief of government and public affairs for the National Association of County and City Health Officials in Washington, D.C.

Local health departments can share COVID wastewater surveillance reports to help people decide how to manage their risk, such as whether to suspect COVID when someone otherwise might blame similar symptoms on allergies, Casalotti said. 

“So much about COVID-19 right now is to know your own health status, know the status of the community around you, and then make the decisions that are best for you,” said Casalotti, whose organization helps create mentorship relationships between start-up surveillance programs and established ones, ranging from San Mateo County in California to the city of Lincoln, NE, and out to Chautauqua County in New York.

If local wastewater monitoring reports are trending upward, it’s time to evaluate your risk factors. Schaffner says that key questions to ask yourself include, “Are you older than 65? Are you frail? Do you have chronic underlying conditions? Are you immune-compromised? Are you a pregnant person? Are you up to date on your vaccines? If you are in any of those high-risk groups, it’s time to get out the mask again and time to think about not going into crowds.”

Schaffner called the currently circulating variants “extraordinarily contagious” and said at his hospital, most people who are being hospitalized are unvaccinated or not up to date with COVID vaccines.  Vaccination rates are very low nationwide – only an estimated 22% of adults got the latest 2023-24 version of the shot, and 37% of people ages 65 and older received at least one dose of the newest formulation, which is updated annually. Just 9% of people 65 and older have gotten two doses of the 2023-24 vaccine, which the CDC  recommends be spaced 4 months apart.

“It is still no fun to be hospitalized,” Schaffner said, urging more people to get vaccinated. “A hospital, if you have to be admitted, I can assure you it’s not a resort hotel. If you get sick enough with COVID to require hospitalization, you are feeling miserable, short of breath, coughing, feeling really fatigued, you don’t have an appetite, you may well have fever, and you may get some complications.”

Death rates due to COVID have fallen dramatically since the early days of the pandemic, and that’s largely, Schaffner said, because “we are much better at treating people than we were 3 years ago when this virus first hit, so many, many more people are leaving the hospital vertically, as I like to say, rather than horizontally.”

Meanwhile, scientists and analysts are reviewing daily, and in some places hourly, samples taken of wastewater to track virus levels. Officials in rural areas, where private septic systems are more common, have even considered sampling at high-traffic places like schools, hospitals, or even rest stops, Casalotti said.

Using wastewater surveillance for public health purposes isn’t new, although the scope of its use amid COVID is unprecedented. Today, it can also be used to track mpox or identify places where opioid addiction treatment resources are needed. One of the first instances dates back to the 1800s in England, when a London doctor named John Snow attempted to map a cholera outbreak, said Dustin Hill, PhD, an environmental data scientist and postdoctoral researcher at Syracuse University who works on New York state’s COVID wastewater surveillance.

“It was one of the first uses of epidemiology, and he used the wastewater system and water supply to track where the disease was showing up,” said Hill, who also was the lead author of a  study published in December that showed how wastewater surveillance can predict COVID hospitalizations more accurately than case data alone.

For those who are monitoring wastewater metrics for signs of whether this current COVID surge has peaked, they may be in for a bit of a wait for the signs of a downturn to show up on colorful line graphs.

“We tend to more look at how it can help us understand the beginning of a new surge, than to try to understand when we’re getting to a peak or getting to a downturn,” Leisman said. “That’s partly because people who have SARS-CoV-2 or COVID tend to contribute it to wastewater beyond when they are recovering or no longer infectious. And so that means that it’s possible that a wastewater surge, while it may start a little bit earlier because people are contributing as soon as they become infected, it may also last a little bit longer, and it’s a little bit less clear how the downturn of the peak would correlate with the downturn of the actual cases or infections.”

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UGC allows another extension for submission of M.Phil or Ph.D thesis

The extension has been granted in view of the study time lost due to COVID-19.

• Updated May 09, 2022, 9:22 PM IST

Universities and higher educational institutions can give another extension of up to six months beyond 30 June for M.Phil or Ph.D thesis submission on case-to-case basis after reviewing a student's work, an official of the University Grants Commission (UGC) said on Monday.

The first extension was granted in June, 2020 and extended further every six months due to prevailing the COVID-19 situation.

''The UGC has approved that an extension of up to six months beyond June 30 may be given to M.Phil and Ph.D students for thesis submission by their respective higher educational institutions on case-to-case basis based on the review of the students' work by the Research Advisory Committee and on recommendation of the supervisor and head of department,'' the UGC official said.

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