If You Fund Them, Will They Come? Implications from a Ph.D. Fellowship Program on Racial/Ethnic Student Diversity

Prior research demonstrates the important role that financial considerations play in prospective students’ decision-making when applying to and enrolling in graduate school. Racially/ethnically minoritized students, in particular, face persistent challenges during the graduate application and enrollment process. Capitalizing on a natural experiment, we identify the effects of introducing a Ph.D. fellowship on the composition of applicants and enrolling students in Ph.D. programs at a large public university’s graduate school of education. Using administrative data from 9 years of applications, we use difference-in-differences and event study analyses to show that the fellowship increased the number of applicants overall, as well as the share of Black applicants and enrollees in impacted cohorts, with no significant effects on academic preparation. To better understand why and how a Ph.D. fellowship might impact students’ application behaviors and experiences once in graduate school, we supplement our primary findings with survey responses from current Ph.D. students at the graduate school of education.