Chapter 5: STEM Doctoral Student Degree Attainment: How Demands, Structures, and Networks Impact Timely Degree Completion

In the past decade, there has been a concerted effort to diversify doctoral student pools and to increase timely student completion of doctoral degrees in science, engineering, technology, and mathematics (STEM) fields. According to the National Science Foundation (NSF), only 6.5% of those who earned research doctorates in STEM fields in 2016 from U.S. degree granting institutions were students of traditionally underrepresented minority (URM) backgrounds as defined by the NSF (2018a) to include, Hispanic or Latino, American Indian or Alaska Native, or Black or African American persons. Although, this is an improvement from a decade ago, URM students continue to be underrepresented in STEM doctoral education. Further, there is evidence to suggest that URM student paths may look different from those of White and Asian counterparts. For those URM students who do complete, their path to completion in some STEM fields appears to take longer than their White and Asian counterparts (NSF, 2018b). Median time-to-doctorate since entering doctoral programs for Hispanic or Latino, American Indian or Alaska Native, or Black or African American students are close to those of their White and Asian counterparts in most STEM broad fields; however, median time-todoctorate since entering graduate school, as well as since earning their bachelor’s degrees, are longer for URM students in almost all broad STEM fields (NSF, 2018b). Furthermore, a study of URM STEM doctoral students at 21 U.S. research universities found that having prior master’s degrees positively correlated with likelihood of degree completion among Black/African American students, as well as URM men (Okahana, Klein, Allum, & Sowell, 2018). This suggests that URM student pathways may not be a continuous transition from bachelor to doctoral degrees.